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The President?

9/30/2015

5 Comments

 
Wow, we have Donald Trump on one side, and Bernie Sanders on the other.  What we did to Congress, we're doing to the executive branch - going for the ends of the political spectrum, rather than the middle.  There are practically no moderates left in Congress these days.
The conventional wisdom has always been:  You can't win the presidency unless you capture the middle.  So candidates who are nominated tend to soften their rhetoric to appeal to voters who are "in the middle" or moderates in both parties.
But there has been another strategy being practiced for quite some time now.  That is to alienate the voters in the middle.  Convince them that voting is useless.  To do this, run negative campaign ads to smear your opponent, make outrageous statements to convince them that all hope of reasonable debate is lost, and at the same time rile up as many extremists as possible to vote for you.
And it seems to be working.  The moderate voters feel lost, disgusted, and unable to support such extreme candidates or positions.  More and more, it all looks like trying to decide between the lesser of two evils that are more evil than ever.  So, eventually, many of them give up on the whole process, leaving our democracy in the hands of the extremists.  Meanwhile, well meaning groups, such as the League of Women Voters, Common Cause, etc., keep shaming voters for being 'apathetic' and try to get them to vote anyway.  I say they are not apathetic (for the most part) but more likely disgusted!  Not voting is actually a protest, a message that "The System Stinks" and they want no part of it.
OK, not all candidates behave this badly.  But when the race gets really ugly, what do you do?  This is the dilemma faced by moderate candidates who don't wish to sling mud, or bring the debate down to the lowest levels.  Their voices are drowned out while the press runs off to capture the latest outrageous statements made by the extreme candidates.  This is why Congress is devoid of moderates.
I'll say more on where this goes in the future, in a subsequent post.
5 Comments
jayne moye
10/1/2015 12:03:17 am

Glenn, I would certainly not describe Bernie Sanders as an extremist... he is quite the opposite.

He has refused to take any corporate money... guess maybe not being able to be bought might seem extreme...
He refuses to say anything negative about other candidates in his party or for that matter only tries to state the provable facts about all things political that impact the common man.. maybe that could be considered extreme by those used to typical mud slinging by politicians who could care less about fact checking those "facts"...

Hummmm maybe the fact that he has worked tirelessly for the poor and middle class for the past 40 years and has stayed true to his convictions might seem extreme...to me this is refreshing and as a Vermonter... I am proud to say that Bernie is the one person who might be able to bring back sanity to politics as we know it. Maybe he is the one who sees more in common with regular folks on both sides of the aisle and might even be able to dialog respectfully with them. Just my opinion ... I have been voting for this man for years and will continue to do so for the good of our nation!!

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tom nickel
10/1/2015 02:37:45 am

I was actually getting pretty irritated with the implication that Bernie Sanders is an extremist, guilty of all the bad behavior Glenn catalogs. I was going to politely disagree, but Jayne did it already. Thanks Jayne.

What's really extreme is the extremely narrow parameters within which we are "free" to exercise our democratic prerogatives. That a down to earth guy like Bernie Sanders who is only saying what everyone knows is true could be considered extreme just shows how skewed things are toward The One Big Party of Rich Guys!

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mgw link
10/10/2015 02:04:15 pm

Good way to go.No surprise. "Not voting is actually a protest, a message that "The System Stinks" and they want no part of it" Yes!

Reply
Glenn Koenig
10/14/2015 04:41:01 pm

Jayne - I agree that the virtues Bernie represents and has practiced are laudable. The only reason I say extreme, is because the rest of the one dimensional world of political analysis has already labeled him that because of his "socialist" label. Well, there is one other reason - that is folks on the more conservative end of the spectrum are likely to consider him 'extreme' as well.
So, in this case I don't want extreme to imply 'bad' or 'misguided' Quite the opposite. If anything, I find it fascinating that both Bernie and Donald Trump are appealing to voters as not having had to take any PAC money. For very different reasons, of course. But, still, there seems to be a move afoot, where potential voters are looking at the whole money in politics thing and favoring those who are not supported by big money from hidden interests. Perhaps Donald Trump made his money from things that he himself hid, but for the most part, being obvious is his forte.
I like Bernie's method of fundraising better. He asks for lots of people to get involved. This is exciting and I'm watching closely!

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mgw link
10/14/2015 06:43:42 pm

Perspective on The Democratic "debate".
>>"None of the candidates—including Sanders, the supposed scourge of the “millionaires and billionaires”—made any connection between the grotesque concentration of wealth and privilege at the top of American society and the increasing resort by the US government to military aggression abroad. On the contrary, their common goal was to conceal such connections and block working people from drawing any conclusions about the responsibility of the profit system for the increasing danger of a new world war." <<
FROM
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/10/14/deba-o14.html

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    Glenn Koenig is the manager of this and other web sites, an author, video producer, database designer, and volunteer.

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