Posted on 06/02/2015 6:38:47 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
For those Democrats who insist their party is utterly mainstream, pragmatic rather than ideological, and right in the center of American politics, I have some news for you: You’re not.
The New York Times published a story reporting that Bernie Sanders — that would be the socialist Bernie Sanders, referred to by the Times as “the Senate’s most left-wing member” — is not only gaining momentum in Iowa, he has “been inspiring fervor among the Democratic base.” And how he has.
The Times story points to the fact the Sanders drew 700 people to an event on Thursday night in Davenport, the largest rally in the state for any single candidate this campaign season. His stop at a brewery in Ames on Saturday “was so mobbed that more than 100 people who could not fit inside peered through the windows.”
“Judging from Mr. Sanders’s trip here last week,” Trip Gabriel and Patrick Healy report, “there is real support for his message.”
Apparently so. Here’s more on-the-ground reporting from the Times:
The crowds at Mr. Sanders’s Iowa events appeared to be different from the state’s famously finicky tire-kickers. Many said they had already made up their mind to support Mr. Sanders. They applauded his calls for higher taxes on the rich to pay for 13 million public works jobs, for decisive action on climate change and for free tuition at public colleges.
“Look at all these people,” said Phyllis Viner, 68, a yoga instructor who attended his Davenport event at St. Ambrose University.
Lindsay O’Keefe, 22, who took a picture of a Sanders poster that read, “Paid for by Bernie 2016 (not the billionaires),” called Mr. Sanders “a really valuable candidate” who can “push Hillary to the left” even if he does not defeat her.
The next day, in Muscatine, Iowa, after a rally at a community college drew twice the expected audience of 50, Mr. Sanders seemed to be experiencing a contact high from the size of his crowds. He sat on a picnic table outside for a short interview.
“Be amazed at what you saw here,” he said, adding, “I want to win this.”
Be amazed indeed. Bernie Sanders — democratic socialist, 73-years-old, a man who is on the outer edges of American politics and on whose wall hangs a portrait of Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party presidential candidate of the early 20th century — is setting Democratic hearts aflutter. Senator Sanders won’t win the nomination, but he — along with Elizabeth Warren and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio — is stirring something deep within the souls of Democrats. They are giving voice to what many Democrats genuinely believe, what they long for, what they are desperate for: Progressivism in its most purified and unalloyed form.
Think about how the Democratic presidential race is lining up. According to the Washington Post, “Hillary Rodham Clinton is running as the most liberal Democratic presidential front-runner in decades, with positions on issues … that would, in past elections, have put her at her party’s precarious left edge.” Former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley is running to her left. And Bernie Sanders is running to his left.
And yet despite this, Democrats and liberals continue to act as if it’s Republicans and conservatives who are extreme, radical, revolutionary, on the fringe. Progressives have created an alternate reality in which they are moderate, temperate, centrist, the very model of reasonableness. They are blind to their own zeal and dogmatism, their own immoderation and intolerance.
The Democratic Party was once a great party. It may be a great party again. But for now, it is a radical party — and growing more radical by the day.
with tons and tons of help from the press, movies and tv.
And a good part of the education establishment!
yes
The far left owns the dem party. All their closet socialists, community organizers and anarchists are no longer in the closet.
And yet, whenever something goes wrong, the majority of the voting public blame conservatives.
Sanders is a far left socialist nutcase.
this is a guy who actually honeymooned in the USSR... in May 1988... while the USSR was still the USSR and an active and dangerous adversary of US interests (which that have again become under Putin).
he’s just a disgusting human being and it’s a gross embarrassment that he serves in our Congress. the fact that his views are now mainstream in the democRAT party comes as no surprise to those of us on the right who pay attention to what’s actually happening in this country.
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/bernie-sanders-sandinista-honeymooned-in-the-ussr
The writer has no idea what he is talking about. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich) is the most radical red in Congress, though he has a lot of competition from Jane Schakowski and CPUSA-connected Barbara Lee, among others.
Sanders is a “red herring”, if you’ll pardon the analogy.
He’s a Marxist-lite wackjob and always has been. He won as a politician in Vermont because that state was targeted by Lee Webb, John Froines (Chicago 7 and Vermont Environmental State official), Dave Dellinger, and lots of young Marxists wannabes in the early 70’s for a statewide takeover. And they did.
They took over city councils in small towns and worked their way up the political food chain. That is how Sanders got elected.
However, among the Marxists and communists and socialists I’ve met, Sanders is a one-tooth old has-been though his vote in the US Senate is always a dangerous one.
Watch Marxists like Martin O’Malley (a real loser now), Elizabeth Warren (a real liar but a smart one), and Hillary Clinton, an old-line Communist Party USA-tainted red (with longties to a Cuban KGB/DGI operative named Johnnetta Cole.
Liberals are Marxist-wannabes. Real Reds despite them, but use them, and then spit them out. Just look at Obama and David Axelrod re Rahm Emanuel.
Don’t forget Bill de Blasio and Alan Grayson.
Growing?
DeBlasio is a threat to New York and probably won’t get any further. Wouldn’t be surprised if the Mafia took him out as a threat to their power.
Grayson is batshit crazy and has turned into a “progressive” to cover up his mental instability, and the liberal fools/media fell for it.
Why is DeBlasio a threat to the mafia? His socialist policies will be against competition, so good for the mafia I think
How much more radical can they get? They’re full blown Marxists now.
Mr. Sanders “a really valuable candidate” who can “push Hillary to the left” even if he does not defeat her.
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And that is a good thing for our Team because she will not be able to back down from it and move to the Center in the General Election campaign.
40 years of teachers union education coming to its dead end.
Of course, they get pay and benefits never found in the private sector.
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