Sanders is the single best candidate to run for President since my first eligibility to vote.
I voted for John Anderson against Reagan. This was before I understood there are really only 2 parties in this country. I was politically uneducated: I simply saw republicans as horrible fascists and Democrats as spineless and useless.
We know how THAT went. I was 20 then and the next 12 years were dark times. Reagan’s assault on unions, for example, was part of his overall legacy of destroying jobs and income potential for the common person and set off the MASSIVE wealth chasm that defines the 1% issue that is at the core of this election.
The secure pension that grandma and grandpa once received was called a defined benefit pension. Each hour a worker labored, he or she earned a contribution by the employer into a fund that would pay this benefit on retirement. It was deferred compensation.
Defined benefit pensions, safer conditions, and, of course, better pay, were among the many workplace improvements hard won by 5,000 strikes involving 4.6 million American union workers in the years after World War II. Before the war, in 1940, only 15 percent of private sector workers had defined benefit pensions. By 1960, 41 percent did.
That number rose to 46 percent in 1980. But then progress stopped. In 1981, Republican President Ronald Reagan broke the air traffic controllers union by replacing striking workers. That sent a signal for the first time since Democrat FDR paved the way for unionization in 1935 that the government would support corporations that destroyed unions, corporations that crushed the ability of working people to collectively bargain to improve their lives.
Corporations responded by doing everything they felt they could get away with to obliterate unions of working people. In 1980, about 23 percent of private sector workers were union members. Today, it’s 6.7 percent.
Since that fiasco I always vote Democratic simply to vote against the GOP.
We have been fucked so hard by Reaganism and now we are suffering through End-Stage Reaganism. The1% owning 40+% of everything: that is real and it’s a genuine problem. Reagan and ALL the ensuing governments — democratic or republican — did nothing to stop it.
Bill certainly didn’t do a lot to help out. Then, of course, the Cheney administration weaseled its way into the WHite House, further destroyed our lives and midwifed end-stage reaganism into being.
So, yeah, sure….I was reasonably content to vote for Obama, again the options were him or a shitbag republican so yeah, he was an easy choice. Twice.
But he is an incrementalist and a centrist. Incrementalism is not innovation and it is not progress. He has done some good things, beyond a doubt, but much potential will be left on the table. We need innovation, progress and the willingness to change things that have fucked the little person for almost 40 years.
Bernie is, in my perspective, the Anti-Reagan and there is simply no other candidate like this. He represents the opportunity to undo what I call End-Stage Reaganism: our currently supremely fucked-up economy and country. The Wealth Chasm: Reagan built that.
It is long past time for it to be utterly destroyed, uprooted, dug out and burned.
Many want to stick with incrementalism, many want real change. Some fear change, some fear not changing. I fear not changing.
There is no other candidate like him and with his age it is simply stupid to vote for incrementalism, unless you are already rich and comfortable.
(Which must be nice: I wouldn’t know.)
It’s not gender. It’s not race or culture. It’s the POLICIES, stupid.
And it’s vote for this now or wait til God-Knows-When for a similar opportunity while your life suffers needlessly. I’m not getting any younger and neither are you.