Bernie Sanders 2016: Can he raise a liberal army?

The Christian Science Monitor's DC Decoder ^ | May 26, 2015 | Peter Grier

[2ndDivisionVet]

It’s debatable whether liberals are a strong force in US national politics. But it's much more likely they’re increasingly powerful within the Democratic Party itself.

Self-described “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders kicks off his campaign for president on Tuesday in his hometown of Burlington, Vt. He’s hoping to attract an army of left-leaning Democrats who aren’t happy about Hillary Clinton’s past coziness with Wall Street and her Senate vote to authorize the Iraq War.

“I know what I believe,” said Senator Sanders in a fundraising e-mail issued prior to the event. “That’s why today marks the beginning of our political revolution.”

But how many voters share his beliefs and might be receptive to his message of income redistribution, expanded social benefits, and government-sponsored jobs and infrastructure efforts? How many liberals are there in America, and is their number on the increase?

First, a caveat: “liberal” has long been a loaded word in US political discourse. Decades of Republican campaign ads have denigrated liberals as profligate spenders, and perhaps soft on crime. Thus polls about what voters call themselves might not be, ideologically speaking, completely accurate....

[Norm Lenhart]

To a point, yes I agree. But remember that many of the old guard now sing in the choir invisible. A lot of them are simply not here to fight the good fight anymore.

[al_c]

True that.

[elcid1970]

“Individually, zombies are weak....it’s just that there are so many of them!”

- from “The Last Man on Earth”, 1964

[clearcarbon]

"If he wants to raise an army, he’ll need about 150,000,000 powerful hydraulic jacks to pry their fat backsides off the couch...to say nothing of trying to distract them from their Obamaphones."