SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop. Only 16 submissions in the queue.
SoylentNews
posted by
martyb
on Tuesday February 19 2019, @05:14PM
from the how-many-candidates-are-there-now? dept.
from the how-many-candidates-are-there-now? dept.
"Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)........is launching a second run for the White House in 2020." breitbart.com/politics/2019/02/19/bernie-sanders-2020-bid
"Reaction to the news was split......with some supporting the 77-year-old and others upset with the move." foxnews.com/politics/trump-campaign-pokes-fun-at-bernie-sanders-2020-announcement-as-reaction-splits-on-candidacy
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Bernie Sanders Announces White House Bid
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 155 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
You will be successful in love.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Tuesday February 19 2019, @07:45PM (24 children)
It's one of the things I find so brutal about the American candidate selection systems. You have the sitting president on one side that is more or less a given unless he has already been re-elected previous or there is something horribly wrong with him. He just has to sit back and watch as the competition more or less annihilate each other until there is only one left. The process of selecting the one running candidate doesn't exactly make the candidates stronger or better either since every one seems hell bent on backstabbing and pulling out all the skeletons from the closet they can just find or hint at. In the current case Trump is just going to twitter-assassinate all of them for months as they are busy backstabbing each other to try and claw their way to the frontline.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by loonycyborg on Tuesday February 19 2019, @08:10PM (9 children)
Representative democracies have jumped the shark already, now they all are pure circus not connected to any actual social issues. By necessity a single vote doesn't give much information so any sort of election or referendum is decided by people offering the options. It can be manipulated heavily. Only meaningful way for citizens to influence government is to join it, so we should work on making government open for all social strata and making it meritocratic. One person will do nothing, even if they're the President.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Tuesday February 19 2019, @10:09PM (8 children)
With what would you replace it, friend? Monarchy? Rotating rule by whoever tops Forbes' list of richest Americans [forbes.com] each year? Gladitorial combat amongst those who wish to lead?
Do tell.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Insightful) by loonycyborg on Tuesday February 19 2019, @10:38PM (3 children)
It's already turning into monarchy. Bushes, clintons, on my.. And no president can win without expensive campaign funded by the richest people. It's not like I'm suggesting any revolutions but people should participate in government's work more actively than with elections. We need to move all world's government closer to things like direct democracy and Swaraj [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Tuesday February 19 2019, @11:13PM (2 children)
The president (at least here in the US) does not the whole government make. In fact, the Congress is (although they have tended to abrogate their responsibilities over the past few decades) intended to be co-equal with the Executive branch.
Direct democracy is fine for many purposes. However, where it falls down pretty regularly is in the protection of minorities, whether they be ethnic, political, social and/or geographic.
The issues with the US system of government isn't the system per se. The issues stem from the lack of a broader range of individuals, ideas and debates caused by the need for large sums of money to successfully compete in elections.
Mandatory public funding of elections, strict limits on lobbying and strong rules against "revolving door" governance would go a long way to fix such issues.
Do I have all the answers? No. However, it's pretty clear that the unrestricted flow of money into our political system tilts power strongly in favor of a small group of individuals and corporations. Removing that flow of money is a critical piece to any meaningful reforms.
Sadly, those empowered to make such reforms are the very people who benefit the most from the current system.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Tuesday February 19 2019, @11:48PM
While this is in no wise invalidating what you are saying, I would argue that congress was intended to be the preeminent branch.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 4, Informative) by fyngyrz on Wednesday February 20 2019, @05:06PM
The term is oligarchy. [wikipedia.org]
--
What I if told you
you read the previous line wrong
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Wednesday February 20 2019, @12:21AM
At this point, I think our best option is to randomly select a citizen each year. Perhaps secretly exclude anyone who is a member of a political party. Strictly police the emoluments clause so that President-for-a-year doesn't abuse the position for personal gain.
Either that or just give it to Judge Judy for life.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday February 20 2019, @09:21AM
Yes, yes, yes. The prize, however, must be putting the winner out of her/his misery, that's the only way to make sure you don't end being led by a psychopath.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @06:59PM (1 child)
Dictatorship of the proletariat according to the Transitional Plan (the one that deals with the Death Agony of Capitalism), which should give way to a kind of federated libertarian socialism once counterrevolution has died out.
Of course, the idea of socialism in one country is bunk, and so the dictatorship of the proletariat must be put into power by the process of permanent revolution.
My estimate is that a socialist culture will begin to emerge after 40 years of wandering in the desert of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the future history of Star Trek (between the Bell Riots and N-Day) also roughly agrees, so this must simply be the way it is done.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday February 20 2019, @11:22PM
I guess someone hasn't read his Santayana, or at least hasn't taken it to heart.
Lord Acton [wikipedia.org] pegged it, and long before the numerous failed attempts at creating a socialist paradise through revolution and the so-called "dictatorship of the proletariat."
That's not to say that capitalism coupled with democracy or (small 'r') republicanism are the best systems. They are, as Mr. Churchill rightly pointed out:
I don't pretend to have all the answers, but it's clear that as long as there is scarcity, there will be those who will seek to control more resources than others. As such, it makes more sense (and fetttered capitalism along with democracy has done much better at this than any other system we've tried so far) to attempt to create a world without scarcity, where we all may create the lives and meaning that we choose.
Is that a pipe dream? Maybe. Will we achieve such a society without upheaval and violence? Probably not. Is it a worthy goal? Most certainly.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 19 2019, @08:26PM
"...or there is something horribly wrong with him"
Isn't that rather obvious with Trump?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday February 19 2019, @09:26PM (10 children)
I respectfully disagree.
The point of having elections is to decide who we want to be in charge of things. Which means, among other things, determining if the skeletons in their closet are a big enough problem that we think they're a bad person to be in charge of things.
The reason the Democrats lost last time around wasn't because there was a contested primary, but because Hillary Clinton has a lot of skeletons in her closet and the Democratic apparatus (including but not limited to the DNC, MSNBC, and key PACs) was determined to ignore those problems and call anyone who said they were problems sexist.
The reason that didn't sink Trump is that the stuff that the Democrats thought were skeletons in his closet and spent lots of time and ink going "OMG! Did you see this?" were not in fact skeletons in the eyes of his base of support.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 5, Informative) by NotSanguine on Tuesday February 19 2019, @10:17PM (1 child)
Actually, the reason the Democratic Party lost in 2016 was due to the arrogance and stupidity of those running the campaigns on the 'D' side.
They ignored credible reports from Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin that victory was imperiled by both a poor ground game and a lack of focus on issues affecting aging middle-class voters.
Had the DNC and Clinton campaigns heeded those warnings, they could easily have turned those 77,000 voters in three states (out of a total of ~13,000,000 votes), which would have clinched the D's victory.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @03:15PM
"by both a poor ground game and a lack of focus on issues affecting aging middle-class voters."
And apparently, picking a candidate that was already the most hated person in politics had nothing to do with it.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Tuesday February 19 2019, @10:51PM (7 children)
huh. Interesting.
Well, you know, they lost my luntil-then-ifetime-democratic-vote to Trump when they murdered Seth Rich in July of 2016 and I read the leaked meeting notes of HRC with Goldman-Sachs (and other globalist bankers). One story for the plebs, the real story for the bankers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 19 2019, @10:56PM (1 child)
yaaaa you were a lifetime democratic voter /s
^ see runaway that is how you mark your sarcastic remarks
(Score: 1, Troll) by aristarchus on Wednesday February 20 2019, @06:04AM
But crafoo, like The Idiot Runaway1956 (2626), is not being sarcastic, they are actual idiots. It is like that scene in the battle between Freedonia and the other nations in the Marxist Bros. movie, when Grouch says: "The false consciousness of the lumpenproletariat in no way undercuts the authority of the dictatorship of the proletariat!" Wait, wrong script, oh, here it is: "He may talk like an idiot, and act like an idiot, but don't let that fool you, he really is an idiot!". That is Trump to a tea, or at a tee, or maybe his intellect is ti, and in the sum of the square roots of all the stupid people in America, cross-checked with the opinion of the Mighty Broussard, and funneled into the Brexist sap who had the good sense to ex-patriot himself off the merry old "France"? Holey crappola, crafoo, how do you expect to continue to exist on SoylentNews, when you post such crap, and have no redeeming qualities? Please, at least, explain to us how bit-coin is a real thing. That might be useful, or illegal.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday February 20 2019, @03:15AM (4 children)
1. You don't know who murdered Seth Rich. Nobody does.
2. Yup, the routine of telling the bankers one thing and the plebs something else was a problem. That said, you don't know who she was lying to, Goldman or the voters. Also, that's probably not a bigger problem than Donald Trump living in an alternate universe that changes from day to day. Had HRC been running against, say, Dwight Eisenhower, I would have voted for Ike.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @05:11AM (1 child)
That decision is not difficult in any way to be honest.
Had HRC been running against an inanimate carbon rod, I would have voted for the inanimate carbon rod.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday February 20 2019, @03:37PM
Unfortunately for all of us, she was running against someone who has demonstrated he can do a lot more damage than an inanimate carbon rod.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Wednesday February 20 2019, @05:03PM
Who has the money? Voters: nope. Wall St: yep.
We know who she was lying to and anyone who doesn't is deluded.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Sunday February 24 2019, @04:21PM
The motivation was certainly there, and it is by far the most powerful motivation of all realistic choices. The means was there. The circumstances contradict the official narrative. Are you asking people to believe in a highly unlikely coincidence? Do you apply this reasoning to all your positions, or just ones that support your particular internal narrative?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @04:06AM (1 child)
It's really fun to watch the opposing side beat themselves to death, knowing that sitting Prez is on the sidelines watching and making note of every move of the opposing self-flagellators.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday February 21 2019, @04:11AM
If someone handed him a one page paper that showed him everything he needed to do then he'd skim through it looking for the parts that talk about how awesome he is. Tump making notes? hah, what a joke
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.