In 2008 when I joined the Obama bandwagon I had this underlying suspicion that he was more about hype than substance. That he was saying things he knew would arouse me but was mainly saying them to get elected. He, like Bill Clinton and George Bush before him, didn’t really speak the words from his heart. You can’t say that about Bernie.
Sanders has a long track record of doing what he says. He also has a record of accomplishments that proves him to be a pragmatist that I believe this country seriously needs today. He votes based on substance, not party. We have way too much “party” in our politics today.
It seems strange that so many of us are disgusted with the way our current political system operates but are just too fearful of voting for alternatives. Until we vote the IN’s out we will never see any significant progress in our way of doing government.
No, Bernie won’t win any beauty contest. He is not the strapping figures of John Kennedy or even Ronald Reagan. If we really want change then we must vote for it and I am coming to believe that Bernie might be the first step in that process.
It bothers me that Hillary has made millions of dollars making speeches to Wall Street firms and then refuses to release any words she said to them. It should be absolutely clear to anyone who has been paying even the slightest attention that Bernie has no fans on Wall Street and won’t be asked to give a speech there anytime soon.
I love what Mark Shields said on a recent PBS Newshour. I will try to paraphrase it here:
The mortgage crisis was a terrible thing so we must hunt down those people who perpetrated this fraud and give them billions of dollars.
Bernie and Elizabeth Warren seem to be the only two people in congress who are upset as I and many other are by this logic. Billions were given to pull them out of the troubles they caused and not one person was ever indicted for the trillions it cost the American taxpayer! I recognize that partisan politics has just become increasingly extreme since the Reagan years. We HAVE to do something to pull it back to some level of sanity if we hope to even exist.
To close out this post, I just want to be able to vote for a person who I know is true to his word and actually believes what he says. Not a person who says what he thinks will get him elected simply because he/she craves the power of the office. I want to be able to vote for a person with “true” passion for the people.
Right now I am coming to believe that Bernie is the only person currently in this race to meet that objective. Maybe he can’t be elected but we will never know until we try….
I think every one of those GOPers in this new congress need to have the words above tattooed on their foreheads. Ok more realistically written on a Post-It note and stuck on the foreheads. I’m sure that mantra is going to be their reason for every bill they pass in the coming two years as it has been for the last couple of decades. But as usual there is a big difference between rationalization and reality.
“I’m worried a lot about power in the financial services industry and I’m worried about the fact that basically, starting in the ’80s, you know, the cops were taken off the beat in financial services. These guys were allowed to just paint a bull’s-eye on the backside of American families,” Warren said. “They loaded up on risk. They crushed the economy. They got bailed out. What bothers me now, they still strut around Washington, they block regulations that they don’t want, they roll over agencies whenever they can.” 