Welcome to the Bernie News Roundup. The BNR is a voluntary, non-campaign associated roundup of news, media, & other information related to Bernie Sanders run for President. Visit the group page to join or find past editions.
Visit The Bernie News Roundup Website!
Sign Up, Donate, Volunteer @ Bernie's official page.
More information about Bernie & The Issues @ feelthebern.org
The Democratic Socialist Capitalist:
“I think Bernie Sanders’s use of the word ‘socialism’ is causing much more confusion than it is adding value,” said Lane Kenworthy, a professor of sociology at the University of California at San Diego. Mr. Kenworthy, who recently wrote a book called “Social Democratic America” and thinks about these sorts of things for a living, offered a suggestion. “He is, if you want to put it this way, a democratic socialist capitalist.”
Ugh. Do we have to put it that way? In addition to being a mouthful, that still seems like it’s going to confuse a lot of people.
After all, Mr. Sanders does not want to nationalize the steel mills or the auto companies or even the banks. Like Mrs. Clinton, he believes in a mixed economy, where capitalist institutions are mediated through taxes and regulation. He just wants more taxes and more regulation than Mrs. Clinton does. He certainly seems like a regular Democrat, only more so.
“It’s not socialism, it’s social democracy, which is a big difference,” said Mike Konczal, an economic policy expert at the left-wing Roosevelt Institute. Social democracy, Mr. Konczal noted, “implies a very active role for capitalism in the framework.”
Sanders Maintains A Post Debate Lead:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) leads former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, according to a new poll conducted after last week's Democratic presidential debate.
Sanders holds an 8 point lead over Clinton, 38 percent to 30 percent, in the Granite State, according to the Franklin Pierce University/Boston Herald poll released Monday.
Vice President Biden, who is reportedly on the verge of a decision about entering the Democratic race, draws 19 percent support in the poll.
Without Biden in the mix, both major declared candidates would see an uptick in support, but Sanders would lead Clinton by a slightly wider margin, 48 percent to 38 percent, according to the poll.
Sanders has led Clinton in the Granite State in a series of polls conducted since early August. Just one poll out of 11, released Friday from the Boston Globe/Suffolk University, found Clinton leading, though by just 2 points, 37 percent to 35 percent, following last week's first Democratic debate.
College Students Are Abuzz About Bernie:
It’s no surprise Bernie Sanders is leading in the latest poll. All you have to do is talk to anybody on my college campus to understand why.
He has some radical ideas that excite people that are college-aged. The free tuition idea, in particular, seems to appeal to 18- to 24-year-olds.
People my age are thinking about their futures and the high cost of education is something we’re dealing with now. We worry our children won’t be able to afford college.
Sanders gets it. He has hit on what this generation wants and needs.
...
If Sanders can pull young people to the polls, he’ll head out of New Hampshire on a wave of support.
Bernie In Iowa:
Sanders spoke for about an hour before about 300 people, many college students. He delivered brief remarks before asking people in the audience to tell them the issues important to them.
Among their concerns:
The inability to refinance student loan debt. Sanders wants to change that. He didn't offer specifics, but in the past, has recommended a cap of two percent (loans can top four times that much now.)
A former homeless veteran, who said he got medically discharged without educational help from the government. Sanders wants free college tuition at public universities.
A woman who survived breast cancer, said she received much cheaper care while visiting family in Australia. Sanders has backed a single-payer health care system.
Sanders repeatedly criticized wealth inequality and the inflated power given to big business and the extremely wealthy. He urged the crowd to help him changed the system. "No President of the United States can do this alone," he told them, "That is why what I call our campaign...which is unique in american history....I call it a political revolution."
Bernies Appeals Shows Cultural Attitudes Are Changing:
It should come as no surprise that Sanders is increasingly becoming the candidate for millennials, rather than for an older demographic. A decade ago, his campaign would probably not only meet with failure, but also result in many Americans writing him off as a "crazy commie." While millennials weren't alive during the Cold War and have almost no recollection of how deeply international tensions influenced our outlooks on different economic systems, Baby Boomers and Generation X'ers lived while our cultural understanding of socialism was marred by the failures of the Soviet Union.
As The Washington Post points out, the success of Sanders' campaign despite his openness as a socialist is "due to a mix of good politics and great timing." More than two decades following the conclusion of the Cold War, ingrained paranoia regarding anything anti-capitalist has largely disappeared from society, and historians have also increasingly recognized that the Soviet economy was just one of multiple models of socialism. The low poverty rates in European social democracies like Sweden (nine percent) and Denmark (5.4 percent) which Sanders frequently references are also to his advantage.
Arguably Sanders' strongest appeal to millennials rests in his stance on free public higher education. His socialist platform also entails free national health care, but as 18-to-34-year-olds have watched tuition dramatically increase over the past few years and have come to fear impending student loans and debt, Sanders' stance on free education is more enticing for obvious reasons.
Ultimately, another reason Sanders' brand of socialism is appealing is that he focuses on health care and education while refraining from delving into the historical values of "pure socialism." Sanders does not talk about the government taking over private industries. Nor does he develop stances on workers' cooperatives and limiting investor control of corporations. Instead, he focuses on developing a moderate model of socialism favorable to Americans who have had limited exposure to anything but capitalism. Sanders primarily emphasizes free health care and education, a fair and balanced distribution of wealth, and making the top one percent pay its fair share.
The Next Phase Of The Campaign:
What do you get when an unapologetic Democratic Socialist from Vermont does the Nae Nae on the Ellen Degeneres Show, just hours before bringing down the house at a Hollywood nightclub packed with 1,100 screaming fans, and then embraces a spot-on impersonation of him by comedian Larry David during this weekend's Saturday Night Live?
You have the next phase of Sen. Bernie Sanders' insurgent campaign for president.
Coming out of a strong debate performance that his fans, if not the pundits, deemed a resounding win, Sanders is planning to shift gears. He'll be a little looser, like he was when he danced his way onto the set of Ellen's show last week and reassured reporters in Iowa this weekend that he has "an ample supply of underwear," a riff on David's impersonation.
He'll focus more on policy specifics and substance with a series of speeches, including one, he promised Sunday, explaining what Democratic Socialism means to him.
Some Are Working Hard To Limit Endorsements Of Sanders:
The head of the powerful city teachers union is trying to quell talk by some in the labor-backed Working Families Party about backing Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in the presidential primary, insiders say.
United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew has been contacting heads of the building trade unions who help make up the Working Families Party, a source said. He’s “complaining and bitching” about the party and the discussions on whether to endorse Sanders, the self-proclaimed socialist US senator from Vermont, the source said.
Mulgrew, who declined comment through a spokeswoman, is also a vice president of the American Federation of Teachers, which already has endorsed Clinton.
..
WFP state Director Bill Lipton in June told the New York Observer that Sanders is “justifiably generating a lot of enthusiasm” for his “willingness to speak the truth about inequality and the concentration of economic power.”
The WFP, which was already feuding with Gov. Cuomo, isn’t doing its doing itself any favors alienating a major party player like Mulgrew and the potential Democratic nominee in Clinton, one source said.
Larry David Is Not The Only One With A Sanders Impression:
It is hard to find anyone in this small city in northern Vermont who does not have a story about meeting Mr. Sanders for the first time in person, and many will offer their own take on the man without much urging.
As they share their stories, the tone of their voices sometimes drops an octave or two, the occasional “billionaire” becomes a “billion-AY-ah,” the consonants punctuated by a slightly harsher cluck, and the leafy pedestrian Church Street starts to sound a little more like Flatbush Avenue.
Indeed, Mr. Sanders’s thick Brooklyn accent, developed as a child growing up in the Flatbush neighborhood and oddly never dissipating despite living for decades in Vermont, is able to be replicated, to varying degrees of accuracy, by most who have called Burlington home for a number of years.
But perhaps most notable in their impressions is the recitation of his message: Mr. Sanders, a politician since his successful run for Burlington mayor in 1981, has often spoken out about the poor and vanishing middle class, railing against income inequality.
Bernie Is Worried About Your Data:
"Virtually every telephone call in this country ends up in a file at the NSA. That is unacceptable to me," Sanders told debate moderator Anderson Cooper. "I think the government is involved in our emails, is involved in our websites."
Then he took it a step further. "But it's not just government surveillance," he said, as (I assume) a dark cloud made up of ones and zeroes gathered over his head slightly out of view of CNN's cameras. "Corporate America is doing it as well."
In an email to VICE this week, a Sanders campaign spokesperson expanded on the 2016 candidate's comments, saying, "In addition to government surveillance, the Senator is concerned about the lack of privacy consumers have, and how their information is often unwittingly collected, shared, and sold." The campaign also pointed to Sanders' vote against the controversial NSA reform bill earlier this year, and to an amendment the Senator attempted to attach to this year's National Defense Authorization Act. The amendment, which did not make it into the final version of the NDAA, would have created a two-year commission to investigate changes in data collection, and the possible impact on privacy rights and surveillance.
"I believe we need to take a look at how the public and private sectors are gathering data on the American people and how we are moving toward an Orwellian society in which your location and movements can be tracked at any time through your smartphones and computers," Sanders said in a June statement announcing his plans to introduce the amendment.
One of the big reasons we've encroached upon an "Orwellian society," as Sanders puts it, is because of data brokers—companies that aggregate, package, and sell people's personal information to advertisers.
Krugman Stands Up For Sanders:
No doubt surprising many of the people watching the Democratic presidential debate, Bernie Sanders cited Denmark as a role model for how to help working people. Hillary Clinton demurred slightly, declaring that “we are not Denmark,” but agreed that Denmark is an inspiring example.
Such an exchange would have been inconceivable among Republicans, who don’t seem able to talk about European welfare states without adding the word “collapsing.” Basically, on Planet G.O.P. all of Europe is just a bigger version of Greece. But how great are the Danes, really?
The answer is that the Danes get a lot of things right, and in so doing refute just about everything U.S. conservatives say about economics. And we can also learn a lot from the things Denmark has gotten wrong.
Denmark maintains a welfare state — a set of government programs designed to provide economic security — that is beyond the wildest dreams of American liberals. Denmark provides universal health care; college education is free, and students receive a stipend; day care is heavily subsidized. Overall, working-age families receive more than three times as much aid, as a share of G.D.P., as their U.S. counterparts.