Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

How Change Happens

"Bernie Sanders’s single-payer plan isn’t a plan at all"

.. as for the destructive, lazy, sloppy idea of "false equivalence" between the two parties which is
still swilled by many, let's put that false idea on it's ass once and for all .. it is just simply dead wrong ..

Paul Krugman JAN. 22, 2016

There are still quite a few pundits determined to pretend that America’s two great parties are symmetric — equally unwilling to face reality, equally pushed into extreme positions by special interests and rabid partisans. It’s nonsense, of course. Planned Parenthood isn’t the same thing as the Koch brothers, nor is Bernie Sanders the moral equivalent of Ted Cruz. And there’s no Democratic counterpart whatsoever to Donald Trump.

Moreover, when self-proclaimed centrist pundits get concrete about the policies they want, they have to tie themselves in knots to avoid admitting that what they’re describing are basically the positions of a guy named Barack Obama.

Still, there are some currents in our political life that do run through both parties. And one of them is the persistent delusion that a hidden majority of American voters either supports or can be persuaded to support radical policies, if only the right person were to make the case with sufficient fervor.

You see this on the right among hard-line conservatives, who insist that only the cowardice of Republican leaders has prevented the rollback of every progressive program instituted in the past couple of generations. Actually, you also see a version of this tendency among genteel, country-club-type Republicans, who continue to imagine that they represent the party’s mainstream even as polls show .. http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-national-gop-primary .. that almost two-thirds of likely primary voters support Mr. Trump, Mr. Cruz or Ben Carson.

[ INSERT: Why 2016 Is Different From All Other Recent Elections
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Meanwhile, on the left there is always a contingent of idealistic voters eager to believe that a sufficiently high-minded leader can conjure up the better angels of America’s nature and persuade the broad public to support a radical overhaul of our institutions. In 2008 that contingent rallied behind Mr. Obama; now they’re backing Mr. Sanders, who has adopted such a purist stance that the other day he dismissed Planned Parenthood .. http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/planned-parenthood-bernie-sanders-218026 (which has endorsed Hillary Clinton) as part of the “establishment.”

[ It is a reality against dream scenario in many respects...
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But as Mr. Obama himself found out as soon as he took office, transformational rhetoric isn’t how change happens. That’s not to say that he’s a failure. On the contrary, he’s been an extremely consequential president, doing more to advance the progressive agenda than anyone since L.B.J.

Yet his achievements have depended at every stage on accepting half loaves as being better than none: health reform that leaves the system largely private, financial reform that seriously restricts Wall Street’s abuses without fully breaking its power, higher taxes on the rich but no full-scale assault on inequality.

There’s a sort of mini-dispute among Democrats over who can claim to be Mr. Obama’s true heir — Mr. Sanders or Mrs. Clinton? But the answer is obvious: Mr. Sanders is the heir to candidate Obama, but Mrs. Clinton is the heir to President Obama. (In fact, the health reform we got was basically her proposal, not his.)

Could Mr. Obama have been more transformational? Maybe he could have done more at the margins. But the truth is that he was elected under the most favorable circumstances possible, a financial crisis that utterly discredited his predecessor — and still faced scorched-earth opposition from Day 1.

[ Screw America for partisan political and personal gain, was the GOP House cretin's
chorus in the Caucus Room Restaurant on Obama's first inauguration day. And still.
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And the question Sanders supporters should ask is, When has their theory of change ever worked? Even F.D.R., who rode the depths of the Great Depression to a huge majority, had to be politically pragmatic, working not just with special interest groups but also with Southern racists.

Remember, too, that the institutions F.D.R. created were add-ons, not replacements: Social Security didn’t replace private pensions, unlike the Sanders proposal to replace private health insurance with single-payer. Oh, and Social Security originally covered only half the work force, and as a result largely excluded African-Americans.

Just to be clear: I’m not saying that someone like Mr. Sanders is unelectable, although Republican operatives would evidently rather face him than Mrs. Clinton — they know that his current polling is meaningless, because he has never yet faced their attack machine. But even if he was to become president, he would end up facing the same harsh realities that constrained Mr. Obama.

The point is that while idealism is fine and essential — you have to dream of a better world — it’s not a virtue unless it goes along with hardheaded realism about the means that might achieve your ends. That’s true even when, like F.D.R., you ride a political tidal wave into office. It’s even more true for a modern Democrat, who will be lucky if his or her party controls even one house of Congress at any point this decade.

Sorry, but there’s nothing noble about seeing your values defeated because you preferred happy dreams to hard thinking about means and ends. Don’t let idealism veer into destructive self-indulgence.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/22/opinion/how-change-happens.html

See also:

Normally, historically gradual change is the best path to big change...
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=119999701

Garden Rose -- false equivalence run amok (eom)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=73821840

Economy has grown the most when Democrats have been in power
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=74197566

rooster- Research "false equivalence".
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=77300114

3Saints -- not responsive, then falls off into false equivalence jibber-jabber
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=78792817

The idea is that they will finally drop the false equivalence, and
admit that he’s reasonable while the GOP is mean-spirited and crazy.
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=86590853

the_8th, Obama has been/is falsely portrayed as 'radically socialist' NOT by main-stream media, but by radically
conservative, hysterically 'Obama is Socialist!!!' conservatives .. by blaming the media you absolve the radical
TeaBagger conservatives .. you also, STILL continue to promote the false equivalence meme conservatives use...
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=95894298

Democrat vs Republican
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=101885509

conix -- that's it, just continue to cling, against the reality (and more
than just a tad hysterically self-righteously), to the same false equivalence
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=116733851

Which party over the years has pushed deregulation
more than the other? .. GWB belonged to the party...
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=110915997

The Banality of Trumpism
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=119113525

62 Billionaires Own As Much Wealth As Half of Humanity
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=119919411

Paul Krugman: On Inequality Denial
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=119976590