Democratic Primaries
In reply to the discussion: He is not a liberal, he's the end of liberalism - interesting perspective from... David Brooks [View all]Redleg
(5,814 posts)I am not a supporter of Bernie nor am I on the left-wing of the Democratic party. Having said that, I don't believe that Bernie is an authoritarian in waiting or a revolutionary seeking to overthrow the system. Bernie understands how government works, he understands politics, and believe he knows that if elected, he will not be able to accomplish the most ambitious items in his agenda due to the system we have. I believe he wants to focus our attention on the parts of the "system" that are broken or rigged against working people. Elizabeth Warren has pointed out many of the same issues.
I think all of us Dems can agree that there are parts of our system that are broken, that should be changed for the good of our nation. Example 1 is the Electoral College. This archaic, ill-conceived idea serves no useful purpose today and it is debatable that it ever served a useful purpose, other than as a compromise.
I think most of us Dems can agree that the influence of big money on politics has a net negative impact on us. This was brought to us by the Supreme Court.
Many of us on the left are troubled by un-regulated capitalism and the extreme disparity in wealth and income and the increasingly lower federal taxes paid by the wealthy and big corporations.
Most of us are still concerned about systemic discrimination against minority groups and women.
These are just a few of the "systemic" problems we face. I would like to ask David Brooks how we solve these without changing some aspects of the system. Without changing the system, we simply move back and forth between passing new regulations/higher taxes on corporations and passing deregulation/lower taxes on corporations depending on who is in the White House and who controls Congress.
primary today, I would vote for: Undecided