I believe everything in this OP piece

“…But where Sanders offers audacious, utopian solutions, Clinton adopts a more incremental approach that has a better chance of success during a time of divided government and political dysfunction when negotiation and compromise will be more important than ever.

For example, Sanders wants to establish a single-payer, British style health insurance system he calls “Medicare for all.” Clinton counters with the obvious: It was difficult enough for President Obama to win congressional support for the Affordable Care Act (which many Republicans in Congress still want to repeal) and the emphasis should be on building on and improving on the ACA, not tossing it out and starting from scratch…..”
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I was listening to a book-on-CD in my car the other day. It was called “Dont Know Much About The Civil War”. There were lots of tidbits about Lincoln and John Brown and abolitionists and pro-slavery advocates, etc, etc. There were lots of folks who wanted to end slavery because it was ‘wrong’. They just wanted to end it. Period. Cause it was the right thing to do. But then there were a lot of powerful people who thought that was asking too much. It was too soon. It was too simplistic. They preferred an incremental, slow, gradual move in the direction of ending slavery.

All through history there have been arguments on a gazillion issues, between the “lets just do whats right” folks and the “slow down, lets do this incrementally” folks.

Personally, I’m on the side of John Brown 🙂

PS — there’s this political DNC-meme, that Clinton is more ‘qualified’ and Bernie’s ideas are too simplistic. Personally, i think a trained monkey could be President (or a lawyer). I dont think things are nearly as complicated as the powers-that-be like to pretend.

The Times supports Hillary for all the usual reasons every
other mega-corporation supports a DNC-Democrat.

At any rate, Hillary will be the next CEO of Amerika
and things will roll on as per usual, and the Corporations
will continue to destroy the biosphere and the real, live, living,
actual, poor human beings, with names and lives, will continue to be ground into dust.

w
v

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by wv.

zn wrote:

Of course everyone waves their flags and pretends they aren’t just flags.

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My flag has a burning flag on it.
Just so you know.

w
v

waterfield wrote:

I know there are few is any here will agree but for the sake of discussion I’m posting it because it articulates precisely how I feel about the comparison.

I skimmed over that op-ed last night, and I have to admit, I barfed a bit. For a couple of reasons. And I’m not going to do a point-by-point on this that nobody wants to read. There are a lot of points I disagree with in here.

But I have a couple of questions for you, Waterfield, and they are sincere. I am not trying to bait an argument, or anything. I am genuinely…curious…or mystified, maybe. I am really curious…

1) Why do you (since you said you agree with all of this) classify “Medicare for All” as “utopian”? Dozens of countries have single-payer, government-regulated health care, and have had it successfully since WWII. Dozens of them. All without crashing their economies as the right claims it will, all without destroying quality of care, as the right says it will. Why is National Health Care utopian? Honestly, I cannot think of any reason that does not include the following assumption: corporations control our government, not people. And if that assumption is part of your answer, why don’t you want to support a movement that is trying to get democracy back in this country? I flat out do not understand this. I flat out do not understand how a “liberal” can say, “It’s okay that our democracy has been subordinated to the well-being of Wall Street, and we need to settle for ‘incremental’ progress.” I do not understand it. I’m serious, Waterfield. Why can’t we have national health care? Why is that dismissed as pot-smoking wishful thinking?

2) What makes you think that Hillary Clinton can accomplish more than Bernie Sanders? First of all, Hillary is hated more than Obama. More Than Obama. The Right HATES her. Don’t you think that they might try to obstruct her? Don’t you think her entire term will be One-Thing-After-Another in terms of rabid ugliness? And who is going to pressure congress on her behalf? The “Great and Passionate Incrementalists”? Who is more likely to apply pressure on behalf of legislation, Bernie Sanders supporters, or Hillary supports? You KNOW where the energy is. And Hillary has been in the thick of government for a long time, I will grant that. She has been in the trenches. But so has Bernie Sanders. He just hasn’t had the nationwide profile that Hillary has. Actually, he has been in national politics since he was elected to the House in 1990 whereas Hillary arrived in 1992. He is not the neophyte Hillary backers think. And his record of getting legislation accomplished is pretty good, especially considering his political views. He has respect on both sides of the aisle, and does NOT have the enormous negatives that Hillary has. Look at the political landscape, and explain to me where Hillary is going to get bi-partisan support for anything whatsoever.

These are honest questions. I don’t want a fight. I am just…befuddled by these beliefs.

Zooey,

Good questions, and points. And a key thing about Single Payer: It would radically reduce costs for Americans “consumers” and taxpayers. Our present system, as has been noted repeatedly, is twice as expensive as those other systems, the single-payer systems in other nations, like ZN’s example of Canada, and most of Europe. They pay half or less than we do, and they get far better coverage, have far less — or no — out of pocket costs, and everyone is covered. To me, it’s absolute madness that we don’t do this.

I’ve been told, for instance, by people from Canada, and in Europe when I was there, that cancer treatments are paid for. Virtually everything. Here, in America, the out of pocket costs for a typical patient with insurance can run at least into the thousands per treatment, and if a prolonged hospital stay is ever required, it can be tens of thousands out of pocket. That does not happen in Canada, Europe and anywhere with Single Payer.

No country on earth has a higher rate of medical bankruptcy than the US, and no other country pays anywhere close to what we pay for prescriptions drugs. There isn’t any reason to keep our system beyond making corporate America fat and happy, and the politicians who work to prevent Single Payer do so on their behalf.

Also: Not sure if this has already been posted here, by I think it’s a really good article (from Naked Capitalism) on Clinton/Sanders and the so-called pragmatism versus idealism debate:

The Crackpot Realism of Clintonian Politics

The most bizarre thing about these desperate calls to realism is our modern context. In what possible way is it “realistic” to continue voting for the lesser evil when we have an ongoing climate catastrophe no mainstream Democrat or Republican is willing to discuss, let alone actually do something significant about? During Obama’s first term he even pressured environmental groups to stop or tone down their discussions of climate change. Each lesser evil candidate just happens to be a greater evil than the last one. Each of their politics are unimaginable even as one is in the throes of the attacks on basic human decency engendered by the last one. The slogan of the Democratic party is “it could always be worse” while the promise is “it will always be worse”. When your realism involves supporting a trend that could quite realistically mean the end of human civilization forgive me for holding you in contempt.

In crackpot realism, a high-flying moral rhetoric is joined with an opportunist crawling among a great scatter of unfocused fears and demands. In fact, the main content of “politics” is now a struggle among men equally expert in practical next steps — which, in summary, make up the thrust toward war — and in great, round, hortatory principles.

Charles Wright Mills writing nearly sixty years ago captures this dynamic perfectly. Whereas then the steps towards war could be apocalyptic because of nuclear annihilation now the steps towards war seem more like a distraction while we sink into greater economic doldrums and come closer to social death. But not only does all this ignore the existential threats, it completely misses how American politics has evolved for over four decades. To the liberal commentariat the status quo is irrevocably right wing and politicians like Obama and Clinton are simply “grappling” with this reality. As Klein said “Clinton’s theory of change is probably analytically correct”.

Haiti ,Honduras, Libya ,Syria , Iraq and the Ukraine. Every thing she touches goes to shit and she wants a do-over ?She has sold weapons to despots , dictators and psychopaths, her next mistake could very well come in the form of a mushroom cloud and she is currently under investigation by the FBI !!!!’The absolute worst candidate in my lifetime,nothing incremental about it.

The one good thing about a Hillary presidency is that she would protect women’s reproductive rights and maybe promote equal pay, etc…

Hillary is also in favor of invading Syria to set up a “safe zone,” and confronting Russia along the border of the Ukraine and Baltic states, and has compared Putin to Hitler. She is cozy with Netanyahoo, and wants to kill the detente with Iran and put bombing them back on the table. She is all in favor of regime change.

And, if anything is done about the democracy, it will be to make it even harder for populists to gain traction. If she makes any changes to the system at all, she is likely to make it worse.

In the mean time, President Clinton is likely to mean that progressives will have to wait until 2024 to run a candidate again, even if Clinton is clearly vulnerable going into 2020.

I think 2024 is too late to save anything, and the job then will be about trying to salvage.

Trump, meanwhile, is less hawkish internationally – the Republican neocons are not going to endorse him – and a progressive can run in 2020 as the country may well decide it is time to give some democratic socialism a shot. I don’t know. He is also less likely to fast track the country to the TPP, and the complete obliteration of the working class. And in this scenario, I just sit there hoping that our legal system can stop Trump from doing insane things to non-whites.

This is just an awful, awful place to be. I cannot vote for either one of these people. I just can’t.