Wish it was longer and more detailed but it's the most recent I could find.

I don't know what his plan is, but there is some low hanging fruit he can easily suggest. Making voting days holidays would be an easy one.

maybe he should lay out some of the things he plans to do to accomplish that goal? because right now he sounds a lot like 2008 Obama, and we all know what happened to him.

Some incremental improvements that's about as much as we could have hoped for without first voting out the majority of Republicans?

incremental I can get out of Hilary.

Making people who have never been alive to see an even semi-viable progressive candidate run (so, anyone under 75 or so, at least) engaged enough to vote is a good start, too.

"SolRo
incremental I can get out of Hilary."

So can the republican controlled congress.

And the companies that have prepaid for favors since she left office in 2013:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/05/hillary-clinton-go ldman-sachs-private-equity-white-house-2016


Most presidents at least collect their pay AFTER leaving office (in the form of high paying, low-engagement positions as consultants and advisers for the private interests they did favors for while in office). Taking payment in advance is more brazen.

SolRo
decremental I can get out of Hilary.



Fixed.

Well shit. This is why I never use the "post history" feature.

"he'd be telling them there is no substitute for winning back Congress"

Which he has said plainly and emphatically in nearly every speech and interview in the past six months. That's kind of one of the real core issues he's campaigning on.

You're trolling, right? Any other time I'd have assumed that for a while now, but it's an election year so it's harder to tell.

You're the guy who posted this video where he's talking how to engage with Congress; this would be a prime place to emphasize that we need to win back Congress, and yet he speaks not a word of it.

You say that Bernie brings it up often; we've been through this before, where you claim he's talking about winning back Congress and it turns out that's you reading into what he's saying because you understand the realities. Talk to some of his supporters, though; a yuge number of them think that winning back Congress would be a pleasant formality at best but not really all that important, not when Bernie's got POPULAR SUPPORT.

There might be a microscopic disclaimer on Dr. Bernie's Magical Weight Loss Supplements that says "for best results, engage in a doctor-approved regimen of diet and exercise"; that's not really being honest with his suckers, I mean rubes, I mean customers.

Trying not to turn this into an all-consuming battle that leaves one or both of us in tears -- which sadly I may not be good at resisting -- but before that happens, here's a recent "Achewood" I liked and wanted to share:

http://www.achewood.com/index.php?date=02052016

"You're the guy who posted this video where he's talking how to engage with Congress; this would be a prime place to emphasize that we need to win back Congress, and yet he speaks not a word of it."

But that's exactly what he is talking about in this video.


Don't worry about an all consuming battle, I don't take anything on here - especially political arguments - seriously enough to take any kind of offense, it's all in good fun even when it's substantive, and you can rest assured that I'll be voting for Hillary (again) if it comes to that.

This site is one of the leftovers of a simpler time on the Internet when most people still realized that we're all playing characters on here. Sure they may be based on ourselves in some cases but they're still characters.

Old Zircon is about as real as Karl Pilkington.

That Achewood is great. I kind of feel like I'm both characters in it.

O_Z, please point me to the exact second at which Bernie says anything about voting Republicans out of Congress. You will find he doesn't. All he says is that the people need to tell Congress what to do.

You are inferring he means "via elections" because you understand where the problem is and what is required to fix it. But that's not what Bernie is saying.

This is yet another instance, by the way, where Bernie draws no distinction between Congressional Democrats and Republicans. Fuck Bernie Sanders. He is part of the problem, getting his disciples all mad at Congress on a "they're all the same, maaaaan" basis, which renders his adherents philosophically incapable of actually fixing the problem. Fuck Bernie Sanders, with something big and painful for making things worse.

"Talk to some of his supporters, though;"


In a Sanders vs. Clinton argument this is kind of irrelevant because I guarantee I could match you one for one on uninformed, naive, single-issue, "from the gut" Clinton supporters. That's just playing the odds.

I think it's entirely fair to wonder how many of Bernie's supporters understand that "political revolution", if it is to have any effect at all, simply means "ousting the Republicans in the general elections like Bort has been exhorting the Left to do since 2010".

Because the funny thing is, a "political revolution" like that doesn't require Bernie at all. Maybe as a guy who helps drum up Democratic support on Election Day, that's it. But please notice his lack of specificity in this video about which parts of Congress are unresponsive, and his near complete absence in the 2010 and 2014 elections when he might have done some good. Fuck Bernie Sanders.

"All he says is that the people need to tell Congress what to do."


How do we tell people in congress what to do (theoretically at least)? By voting. Sometimes it even works.



For better or worse, so-called "trigger phrases" are how politics are played out on television. When sanders says "political revolution" it is a quick, soundbite-friendly way to simultaneously make an intellectual appeal to his informed supporters and potential supporters (who don't need a middle school civics class to understand what he means) and an emotional appeal to the uninformed ones (who wouldn't sit through it). More substantial, concrete information is available on the web, in the debates (for a change!) and an MSNBC interview is not the place for spelling it out in detail.

This isn't unique to Sanders, it is how the medium of the TV interview works and every candidate who has any interest in victory does it. It's unfortunate that things work his way but it's reality.



As for literally spelling it out, I've already posted a few clips in the past week where he explicitly says that we need to increase voter turnout for midterm elections, you can find them in my submission history.

"How do we tell people in congress what to do (theoretically at least)? By voting. Sometimes it even works."

And that, once again, is you putting words in Bernie's mouth. It would require no more effort on Bernie's part to say "vote the Republicans out of office" than to say "tell Congress to do what we want", so why doesn't he say it more often?

"As for literally spelling it out, I've already posted a few clips in the past week where he explicitly says that we need to increase voter turnout for midterm elections, you can find them in my submission history."

I'm not taking your word for it any longer, buster. Point me to specific time indexes where he explicitly speaks of voting Republicans out of Congress.

"And that, once again, is you putting words in Bernie's mouth. "



Bort, it's disingenuous to take every single appearance as if it doesn't happen in the broader context of what he has been saying explicitly over and over and over for the entire campaign. Yes, he did not specifically use those ords this time, and if this had happened in a vacuum you'd have a much better point.


The thing about this whole argument that's ridiculous is I don't even particularly disagree with your basic point about the difficulty of getting any of this through congress.

"what he has been saying explicitly over and over and over"

You are The Boy Who Cried Bernie Explicitly Said.

Give me time indexes; I am a very busy man so please point me to the only non-BS parts of Bernie's big plan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66SQKEf7UIs

Bort, I can't keep pointing it out to you, between videos and comments I've linked to specific examples three or four times this weekend. We're not going to agree and that's all there is to it.

Old_Zircon
Bort, from the same transcript:

"I hope by a political revolution we will be substantially increasing voter turnout. Democrats do well, Chuck, when a lot of people vote and Republicans lose."

"The bottom line is, unless turnout becomes much higher, we lose. Unless people are organized and politically conscious in a way that does not exist today, we are not going to transform America the way we have to."


So he is calling for increased voter turnout to put more democrats (and presumably left leaning congresspeople in general) in office in order to break the obstructionist tactics used by the current Republican majority to cripple most of Obama's agenda, with active protest being an important but secondary measure. So what you said, but put in more simple, dramatic, TV friendly terms.

Did you not watch/read all of that interview either, or are you just cherrypicking?

Old_Zircon
If you Google "Bernie Sanders Congress" this is right on the first hit that's hosted on his web site:


"As president, I will be able to accomplish some of these on my own. But others will require agreement of Congress or, in the case of a constitutional amendment, two-thirds of the Congress and three-quarters of the states. We aren’t going to get there just by electing a president who believes in and is committed to restoring our democracy. We’re going to get there by building a movement – a movement with enough power not only to elect a president but to insist that all of our elected representatives return power to the people, a movement that not only identifies the deep corruption of our politics but rejects cynicism and instead insists on solutions, action and accountability."


It's the concluding paragraph, though, so you have to actually read it (or quickly skim, like I did).

https://berniesanders.com/issues/money-in-politics/




http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=150869

Congratulations, you have found a couple times when Bernie has said something that is both explicit and non-stupid. But you also greatly overestimate how often Bernie says that (for example, this very video), and you tend to discount the times Bernie says dumb things (like that bit about summoning millions of droogs to frighten the Republicans).

Actually you found those, and you manage to dismiss any time anyone brings up an example of him saying any of the things you insist he never says.

Fair enough, he doesn't "never" mention it. He simply mentions it far less often than he says "political revolution" in undefined terms, or than he says "we'll make Congress listen" (which is not the same as a call to voting), or than he says he'll use the bully pulpit.

So again, it's like the microscopic advisory about diet and exercise on Dr. Bernie's Magical Weight Loss Snake Oil. You don't even need Dr. Bernie's snake oil to lose weight, you just need to diet and exercise. And we don't even need Bernie to get progressive legislation, we just need to vote Republicans out of Congress; all the other nonsense he talks about (bully pulpits / etc) serves only to mislead his flock on what needs to be done.

You two is adorables.

What about the Republicans that are to the left of some of the right wing Democrats? Can we pick and choose? Is it wise to out left wing Republicans, considering their base? Maybe not. Perhaps to protect them we should only vote out the Democrats to the right of them...

Don't respond, I'm trolling. No one is as partisan as we pretend to be. This is beyond cartoon, it's a logical fallacy encyclopedia.

Multiple recent polls show him essentially tied with Clinton in Nevada and withing a few points nationwide. For what polls are worth.