Perhaps Hillary Clinton isn't as "immortal" as everyone previously thought. http://national.suntimes.com/nation...ernie-sanders-catching-hillary-clinton-polls/
I wouldn't vote for Bernie (even though he's better than Hillary), but Bernie isn't going to have the national pull Hillary does. Bernie polls well in certain areas but as a whole I would bet money that Hillary gets the nomination.
I'm waiting to see his tax plan with marginal rates over 50%. I'm sure that'll go over well with the American public. He's an extremist and I give him no chance. That said, he's likable, because he's authentic where Hillary just modifies her positions to which ever way the wind's blowing. I feel like he's somebody who you can have a respectful debate with and is necessary to bring honesty to American politics, much like Ron Paul.
At some point, Bernie is going to force Hillary to play some offense. Right now, she's playing not to lose. - - - Updated - - - What difference does it make what the rates are as long as one more dollar is ending up in your wallet?
Well hopefully they will know, as those who have followed him, that those tax rates would be only on the rich folks. He isn't an extremist, the extremism is what gave us a hollowed out america, with record poverty, and a vanishing middle class. Neoliberalism is extremism. For me, he is a return to what this nation once was before reagan brought in neoliberalism, which has been embraced by every president since reagan as well as most of the congresses. This is setting this nation up to implode socially as it almost did in the last neoliberal era, that gave us the great depression. When the income and wealth starts concentrating in the top, the suffering begins for average people. We are there again, thanks to neoliberalism. That the people are no longer represented defines neoliberalism. With most of america being against TPP, the fact that this makes no difference is hard evidence. Yet Sanders is being called an extremist? LOL.
Most of America doesn't agree with the rich paying absurd tax rates. Most Americans want flatter and fairer taxes that close loopholes which allow the rich to pay lower rates. Rand Paul's tax plan of a flat tax on all income no matter how it's derived is more where America is. Everybody knows that the super rich aren't paying the 40% rates now much like nobody paid those rates in the 50's. France imposed a ridiculous 75% top tax rate and it was a disaster. Bernie also wants a FTT which would end up destroying parts of the financial industry, lowering GDP. This was tried by Sweden and it was a disaster for their economy's financial sector. Bernie simply doesn't get it. He lives in a blue collared bubble.
That so called blue collar bubble is exactly what gave America the largest middle class the world has ever seen. By the way FDR structured this nation. Reagan destroyed that, and the men that followed him, and you get what we have today. The question is are americans as intelligent today as they were when we elected FDR and moved away from neoliberalism? Apparently you are not, but hopefully America is not brainwashed by neoliberalism as you are, even as what you believe in has given us this failed economic model. I just need some rationality here, but you are not capable.
Is New Hampshire like California that has a lot of radical leftist and socialist ? Just asking. After seeing a community organizer being elected as POTUS it wouldn't surprise me if a pimp from the hood were to win the Democrat Party's nomination.
So if somebody doesn't agree with you they're not intelligent? I believe my background suggests otherwise, but you're in your own bubble. I'm a derivatives trader and the FTT proposed by Bernie would destroy my company's edge. It would hurt a lot of people and do our economy no good. You can't just wipe out part of the economy in envy and pretend that it will make things better. Bernie is a bitter old man who completely ignores the financial community as if we're second class citizens.
Not you sir, it was meant as a generalization, of all of those working americans, who no longer have the ability to know what their own self interests are, as they did once upon a time when this nation was in peril economically, the working people that is. If you understand neoliberalism, you can see when it began. If you understand it, you can see what it yields. And if you look at America today, and are old as dirt like me, you can see it very clearly. The problem is, working people cannot see it, and IMO, it is due to the clever emotion driven propaganda from the right, from the left(the neoliberal left) that has not allowed them to even recognize what their best self interests are. In place of self interests, they believe in some ideology, that insures they will not see their self interests. MSM all of it, including FOX keep the people divided, so they will fight over bull(*)(*)(*)(*) causes, and stay way from seeing what neoliberalism is, where it came from, and what it is doing to working people. Sanders sees it, and he reminds me of the democrats of old, the ones along with moderate republicans, who gave us history's largest middle class, by doing exactly opposite of what neoliberal policy is doing today.
What about working people in the financial community? How come Bernie isn't sticking up for us? He basically wants to send our jobs to Singapore by imposing a FTT. He's going to tax 401k's as well. The truth is he represents a slice of America, but it's not simply billionaires vs. working people like he pretends it is. If his policies were put into place a lot of working people in the financial community would be worse off. Probably other communities too, I'm just focused on my community, because I understand it. He's a divide and conquer candidate who doesn't believe in growing a bigger pie, but pitting factions of the economy against each other. The reason why we were successful after WWII was, because the rest of the world was devastated. We were able to provide goods at a time when the rest of the world was down and didn't have the capacity to create goods. We're never going back to the glory days of the 50's. This is a global economy now. The only way for America to stay on top is for us to maintain a culture of competitiveness and innovation. We need to attract the top talent in the world to come here. No one would want to be here if our tax rates are over 50%. We see countries in Asia killing us now.
We are a consumption based economy. The only way a middle class can be large, and working people will thrive, is only if we make what we consume, and leave trade to what it used to be. That is just a fact. We know that, and we have enough history to know that this works the best. And it is just economic common sense. The financialization of America, doesn't make a damned thing, and the sooner we break up banks, draw those lines back, and allow banking to do its traditional job, and serve its traditional function, the better off we will be. Globalization was a damned choice, made by the elites, for one thing. To max out their own profits, by offshoring production to place in which they could exploit the poor, for their labor, and then have free access to the very markets that they at one time created, by paying living wages that provided disposable income which created our huge consumer market in the first place. The fact of the matter is this. You can use, capitalism in order provide decent living standards for the greatest number of americans, or you can devise it, structure it, to send most of the income to the top. And we have the latter model, by choice, and the turning point came with nafta, which Perot, a smart billionaire tried to tell the American people what that giant sucking sound would be. That choice was made by gov't who with Reagan, allowed neoliberalism to rule this economy again, so that a few might max out their wealth. And, that is exactly what has happened. Facts are facts, reality is reality. If we do not get back to a sane economic model, this (*)(*)(*)(*)(*) is going down, for if history does not teach us what happens to any society in which most of the income goes to the top, then it doesn't teach us anything at all. And this means reversing what has happened in the last 35 years, and rejecting neoliberalism at the ballot box, before it is rejected with the heads rolling of the men who committed treason upon the majority of people in America who have to actually work to live. Yet we have to relearn this lesson over and over. And it will take someone like sanders, who is like FDR, in order to take on these neoliberal scumbags, along with much help from a huge grassroots movement of working people, or we are toast and we end up with a tiny middle class of professionals, a tiny upper class, with most people being working poor. For that is where this neoliberalism is taking us. And this just isn't me saying this, learned men all over this nation are saying it. For it is nothing more than common sense, backed up by history itself.
Of course he's going to have support in NE Yankee states like VT, NH, Maine, etc. Is this news to anyone? Furthermore, he's a populist. His policy is whatever the ignorant masses support (within his niche, of course). People who promise state theft of the property of one group, and redistribution to a second, are likely to gain the support of that second group.
No, New Hampshire is a state with an overwhelming number of civil libertarians. The thing is, that's a group that can't choose between Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders. Which is why both are doing extremely well there despite the fact that they are complete opposites on economic policy. http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/a...-t-decide-between-rand-paul-or-bernie-sanders
A recent gallup poll showed that 47% of Americans said they could/would vote for a socialist for POTUS. The stigma associated with the word socialist is going away in America.
So that means that the support of a group of regular americans, of neoliberalism that led to the top 1 per cent taking at least 60 percent of middle class income and wealth over the last couple decades, was a choice made by that group, to allow this new economic model to do that. Income was redistributed from the middle to the top. That is what the numbers show. But this is not in the interest of the middle, so what is the reason that they voted for men, that allowed this to happen? Ignorance on the part of republican voters? Beginning with Reagan? Then Clinton deserted the middle and working americans and joined in with the corporate/banking led neo feudalistic free trade globalization scheme. When the suffering of the working and what is left of the middle reaches a certain point, populism grow, as it did when it got FDR elected, and we see populism arise about every 80 years. Looks like it is here again. Populism is driven by politicians siding with the rich, who's greed is insatiable. And it is a reaction against that. Which it should be.
We saw great socialist and communist movements during the great depression, which put pressure on FDR, who with his programs to help alleviate some o the suffering, saved capitalism, and then structured the rules of the game so that capitalism benefitted more than just the top dogs. This was eroded away beginning with Reagan, and neoliberalism, to create the disparity in income today, which is even greater than the gilded age that brought on the great depression, that caused populism, which is just working people wanting a better means of surviving, by their work. Sanders is not a pure socialist, as the conservatives would like others to believe. He believes in a mixed economic model, that is still mostly capitalist, but not predatory capitalism which exploits the poor for greater profits, with certain things being socialistic in nature, like health care, education, and wages being high enough so that a man's work can pay the bills. And this is resonating with more and more americans who have seen their jobs sent to exploit the poor overseas, in order that profits be maxed out for the top, as it devastates the middle and creates more poverty.
