Delaware Dem

Monday Open Thread [4.4.16]

Ed Kilgore on Sander’s convention demands.

If anyone in the current Team Clinton expects Bernie Sanders to emulate her 2008 surrender, they’d better get over it quickly. It’s not happening. […] It’s important to understand that the Sanders campaign began as an effort by ideological progressives to “keep Hillary honest,” and then with success became an insurgency against the policies and political strategies of both the Clinton and Obama administrations. Unlike Clinton (and, for that matter, Obama) in 2008, Sanders is not the embodiment of some disenfranchised identity; he’s not the candidate of septuagenarian Jewish men. And he presumably has no personal political future to protect. It’s all about shaping the future of the party, and if he cannot do that as the nominee himself, he can make his mark via his own convention speech and Clinton’s, supplemented by concessions on the platform and perhaps the future Clinton administration.

What might Sanders expect? This, from Martin Longman:

This would include consultations on the veep, and concessions on many key appointments. Sanders will want a say in the staffing at Treasury, for example. He may have other demands, too. He’ll need to get some very visible wins that he can show his voters so they can feel like what they’ve done has made a difference and can continue to make a difference.

I would also play to Sander’s ego, which is pretty massive and has only been buoyed by his primary run. I would tell Bernie that he is still in charge of his revolution, that he, with the full financial backing of the DNC, DSCC and DCCC but without the interference of either, can travel the country over the next four years finding progressive candidates to run for office. Hillary can’t adopt his entire platform, because right now it is not financially, fiscally, or politically possible. For the precise reason that Bernie put the cart before the horse. Put Bernie in charge of grooming the horse to be a champion, and it will be a good thing for all.

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Saturday Open Thread [4.2.16]

John Fund: “To all outward appearances, Trump seems to be engaged in a form of self-sabotaging behavior in which people both move toward a goal and then from deep within do things to defeat themselves.”

“Even Trump’s friends are wondering what’s going on.”

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Friday Open Thread [4.1.16]

Matt Yglesias says Bernie Sanders is making unrealistic promises about his free college plan.

The bottom line is that electing Bernie Sanders president is not going to eliminate tuition for most American college students. Not because Sanders’s College for All bill probably wouldn’t pass even if he did win, but because even if it did pass the bill simply will not lead to the elimination of tuition in most cases. This isn’t Sanders’s fault, per se — it’s not sloppy legislative drafting — but it reflects the fact that the administration of public institutions of higher education in the United States is primarily a state matter. The federal government has a role, and it’s an important one, but it’s secondary. The fiscal cost of a total federal takeover of the system would be so prohibitive that Sanders doesn’t propose it, and that means his ideas can have only a limited impact on what happens on the ground.

That’s all fine, except Sanders’s rhetoric is raising expectations and mobilizing voters around promises of change that are completely at odds with what his policies and American institutions can actually deliver.

I’m telling you, if purist progressives thought they were disappointed by Obama, just you wait. They think the election of this one man will change everything, and everything Bernie has promised them will happen with the snap of his fingers. LOLz.

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