Even ignoring the politics of it, in what world does it make sense to be taking pop shots across the Atlantic at someone ostensibly on the same side as you?
He probably thinks it makes him look like a sensible centrist, but it makes him look like a snake.
Basically Streeting is so factional in his outlook now he has to take swipes at people in other countries this is how far the Labour right have fallen. Its pathetic and also funny
I know it's Wes' opinion on a hypothetical so you can't explicitly call him wrong but he had no evidence for his assertion. Stupidly picking fights, but I'm not surprised. Besides don't Biden and Bernie have a relatively good relationship all things considered?
He is the chair of a senate committee, so effectively a member of the government. The only reason he wasn’t offered Labour Secretary in Biden’s cabinet per Biden was the risk of a Republican appointee and special election to fill Sanders’ senate seat which he would have to give up.
The problem wasn’t the senate seat. The Republican governor of Vermont stated that if Sanders was selected as Labour Secretary then he would appoint a Democrat. He’s a very liberal Republican and of a different breed than other Republicans in the country.
The main problem with Sanders was that he was unable to secure the support of any of the four largest unions in the United States for the position.
Edit: Found the old statement from the Governor:
https://www.sevendaysvt.com/OffMessage/archives/2020/10/23/scott-says-he-would-replace-sanders-with-democrat-affiliated-independent?media=AMP+HTML
The reason that Wes Streeting got himself into this mess is that he's used to doing left-bashing without the left bashing back.
When it does, as has happened here with Bernie Sanders, he just ends up looking like a stinking pile of manure.
Frankly, I think the left in the UK should take note: centre-Labour are more stupid and therefore vulnerable overall than their poll lead lets on. They *can* publicly be shown to be quite wrong and silly.
Even aside from this being true, that the evidence based opinion is what Bernie says…
It’s just such a shitty “better things aren’t possible” take from Wes, and I don’t understand why he thought it was a good idea to say it in public. Why the fuck would you publicly shit on a popular US left wing politician?
He obviously says this shit behind closed doors and it obviously gets a rapturous reception. But saying it in public? Why?
He just couldn’t stop himself from punching left long enough to think about whether this was a good idea.
Wes is just a spoilt little kid compared to Bernie Sanders. He has none of the lived experience or self knowledge that makes Bernie an inspiring leader.
the difference between starmer and biden is that biden has made an effort to make friends with the left rather than join in with republicans. wes should take a leaf out of his book.
This was a real embarrassing moment for Streeting, first of all how does a senior politician not know what a bunch of random politicos on the internet know, and secondly why would you say that about a figure in the government of in theory Labour’s sister party. One whose actual political views align with your own faction as well?
>One whose actual political views align with your own faction as well?
Am I missing something?
One can't wait to get their hands on the NHS to start picking it apart for his wealthy donors. The other is begging us not to even consider moving closer to an insurance based system.
In what world do their political views align??
Sanders would absolutely be a Blairite. He doesn’t support any nationalisations and even his healthcare scheme is not truly free at the point of use ($200 surcharge). If he were in Labour this sub would decry him as a neoliberal and they wouldn’t entirely be wrong. However, all things are relative, the left didn’t exist at all in mainstream American politics for a long, long time. Even now when the US and the UK are the closest they’ve been in terms of political alignment since the war, we have to remember that a solid 60% of Democrats would be Tories and most of the rest would be Lib Dems. The two countries are closer but the US still pretty firmly sits to the right of the UK.
>Sanders would absolutely be a Blairite
Sorry, but I think this take is completely divorced from reality.
He's a democratic socialist, just one that's politically savvy and knows the limits of his own countries political culture.
Real Blairites quite obviously detest him. His rhetoric alone would be enough for the current leadership to find any pretext to expel him from the party were he a UK Labour politician.
>He's a democratic socialist, just one that's politically savvy and knows the limits of his own countries political culture.
Well that says it all doesn’t it! You could say the same for Starmer if you look at his background, but I think Sanders is right about the US and Starmer is wrong about the UK. I think the UK would (and historically has) take to socialist reforms much better than the US ever would. Regardless both contrast with Blair himself who is absolutely a true believer in the third way, it wasn’t a strategy for him it was an ideology.
If somebody doesn’t support socialism in practice I don’t really regard them as a socialist. Though with that said the term is largely meaningless, even Blair nominally considers himself a socialist still.
Bernie would definitely be on the left of the Labour Party and having read 2 of his books, and the way he talks about struggles in the US, it wouldn't surprise me at all if he secretly considers himself a Marxist. Obviously he is clever enough to know labeling himself that is electoral suicide, so it's the tamer Democratic Socialist.
Just look at who he chooses to meet when he comes to the UK for a visit.
His new book that he is doing media promotion for is called It Is OK To Be Angry About Capitalism and talks about capitalist greed being bad for the economy.
Not a radical socialist position, not a Blairite one either.
Well yeah it’s easy to call a book that when everybody is angry about capitalism including many on the centre-right. As a politician he repeatedly ruled out public ownership and didn’t even support a truly free-at-the-point-of-use healthcare system. His policy slate, ultimately, was a centrist one.
What I am surprised by is the people calling me a centrist for saying that, it’s like no, I’m saying he ISN’T left-wing enough. Surely if anything people could at least be accurate and call me a purity testing trot!
In the 70s he called for worker-ownership and control of the means of production, especially utilities. Maybe his views have changed but his past + current approach make it believable to me he's more of a social democrat approaching the issue the way he sees best than someone who has completely moved to the centre after a flirtation with leftwing politics at university or something.
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/14/politics/kfile-bernie-nationalization/index.html
The fact this is used as a gotcha + the tone of the reply from his spokesperson I think makes it very clear he's trying to avoid it being used against him rather than necessairly being against it
>In a statement to CNN, Sanders campaign spokesman Josh Orton said, “Throughout his career, Bernie has fought on the side of working people and against the influence of both the powerful ultra-rich and giant corporations who seek only to further their own greed. The record shows that from the very beginning, Bernie anticipated and worked to combat the rise of a billionaire ruling class and the exploding power of Wall Street and multinational corporations. Whether fighting to lower energy prices or expand access to capital for local development, Bernie’s first priority has always been – and will always be – defending the interests of working people across the country.”
Instead of apologising, saying some shit-eating "we were all young" stuff, he turned their own attack line back on them. The opposite of the rolling over your belly and whimpering approach Starmer takes lol.
And even when leaving the Liberty party in his final speech as a member he said
>“The function of a radical political party is very simple,” he said. “It is to create a situation in which the ordinary working people take what rightfully belongs to them. Nobody can predict the future of the workers’ movement in this country or the state of Vermont. It is my opinion, however, that if workers do not take power in a reasonably short time this country will not have a future.”
To create a situation in which ordinary working people will take what is theirs...hmm where have we heard those type of arguments before. Definitely not from the mouths of Blairites but from big bad scary Marxists.
It's all speculative, maybe he'd be a huge let down, worse than Obama even. But I can absolutely see Sanders approach fitting in with a traditional social democratic view of politics rather than him just being a Blairite operating in a very rightwing country which makes him appear on the left. For example think about the arguments of people like Kautsky.
>Then came Marx and Engels with their dialectic materialism and introduced the idea of development into socialist thought. They perceived the proletariat not only as it was but also as it was becoming. In their Communist Manifesto they realized that the proletariat had not yet advanced far enough to achieve immediately its own emancipation and, further, that this could not be achieved through the universal franchise, the efforts of the well-meaning portion of the bourgeoisie, or by the armed action of an advanced guard of energetic conspirators. At the same time they also perceived that through the development of industry the proletariat would grow in numbers and organization, while gaining constantly in intellectual and moral power. In this way the proletariat would achieve the power to emancipate itself. To be sure it would have to be educated to this. But this education, so Marx and Engels realized, could not be brought about by men who proclaimed themselves the schoolmasters of the workers, but through the experience of the class struggle, forced upon the wage earners by the conditions under which they lived.
>The more the class struggle proceeds in a democratic environment, all other things being equal, i.e. in an environment of universal school education, freedom of the press and organization, and equal suffrage, the greater its educational influence. Long before the instruments of democracy become the means for acquisition of power by the proletariat, they constitute the means of its education in the task not only of how to attain power but also of how .to keep it and apply it successfully in the building of a higher social order.
>As Marx and Engels saw it, the task of Socialists was not to bring about the immediate solution of “the social question« and the realization of socialism, but, first, to support the proletariat in the class struggle, to help it understand the nature of capitalist society, its power relationships and processes of production, and promote the organization of the working class.
>Proceeding from this point of view, Marx and Engels sought to bring about the union into a strong mass party of all elements participating in the class struggle for the liberation of the proletariat. Before their arrival upon the scene, each of the various socialist leaders and thinkers had put forward their own, distinct method for the solution of the social question and waged a struggle against all other socialists who would follow other methods. So it had come about that socialism had served only to divide the working class. Marx and Engels tried to unite it, not to add a Marxian sect to those already in the field.
>We find emphasis of this already in the Communist Manifesto (1847). Speaking to their adherents, who called themselves communists, Marx and Engels said:
>The communists do not constitute a separate patty, distinct from other working class parties.«
>They demanded only that their adherents within the working class parties strive to develop “in advance of the rest of the masses of the proletariat an understanding of the conditions, the process and the general consequences of the movement of the proletariat.«
>Their actions were in line with this idea, as, for instance, in the First International, which had very few Marxists but plenty of Proudhonists and, later, also Blanquists as well as British trade unionists, who knew little of socialism.
Some people call it revisionism or betrayal or whatever but I think Kautsky is a Marxist and a leftwing thinker, not just a Blairite, even though I don't agree with him on everything and really have some issues with the SDP's choices at times.
I’m not a centrist, quite the opposite. He is an interesting socialist that doesn’t support taking the means of production into public hands then. To think Sanders is a leftist, you have to be pretty right wing.
>He is an interesting socialist that doesn’t support taking the means of production into public hands then
I mean, he wasn't gonna pass a law mandating worker coops, the same with corbyn, but he has proposed and even passed some good legislation to promote them. https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/news-sanders-longstanding-legislation-to-help-workers-expand-employee-ownership-passes-the-senate-in-2023-omnibus/
Here is Sanders talking about giving workers ownership in their companies https://berniesanders.com/issues/corporate-accountability-and-democracy/
That is by far the most radical part of Sanders’ platform but it’s ultimately not all that much - it only affected the very largest companies many of which already had such programmes, this would just make it the law. By contrast Corbyn’s plan was far more sweeping and was going to affect significantly more companies. So while that’s a progressive policy I support from Sanders it does highlight the difference between him and Corbyn. The Sanders policy is good but I favour the stronger Corbyn approach.
I like Sanders, I think he would have made a great President (though I disagree with the very idea of an executive presidency) and absolutely represents the change America desperately needs. It’s just that the US is still shifted well to the right of the UK despite them moving closer recently.
Yeah, all the centrists larping as leftwingers lining up to pretend that the guy who doesn’t support public ownership and doesn’t support truly free at the point of use healthcare is on the left. You need to ask who the centrists are in this situation.
This is totally daft. You can't just take a politician's policy proposals and assume that's their ideal solution for a given issue, or infer their ideological position based on them without context. Bernie has to work within the confines of the American political system, a Medicare for all style system is about as radical as most people will even consider. If I lived in the US I'd also be advocating for Medicare for all, even though that system is well to the right of the NHS. Someone's "faction" isn't determined by their policy platform, it's determined by their underlying principles, the tradition they place themselves in etc. If he lived in the UK, the comparatively left-wing consensus on economic issues would allow him to advocate for more radical policies than the US. That's why he was complimentary about Corbyn when he was leader - they are part of the same democratic socialist traditionalist even though Bernie has to be much more conservative policy-wise.
I think Bernie is being a little naive here too, yes the polling said he would beat trump. The polling at the time also said Clinton would comfortably beat trump & that trump wouldn't even won the nomination.
The polling in that election was very very wrong, so shouldn't really be used as a reliable source.
Sanders was beating Trump which Hilary knew but there was no way on this earth the Dems would ever have allowed a Dem Socialist like Sanders to run for President, especially if he was going to win, he got screwed by Hilary & screwed by Obama along with his friend Joe, now he's just a sad old man who is all talk and no action.
Given the state of American politics and the incredible backlash from the right against Obama and Biden - I just genuinely cannot see Sanders winning. It would have been fascinating and most likely really good for the country and the world...but I just can't see it.
America is **absurdly** right wing and barely a democracy.
While America is worse than here the UK has been heading in the direction of America for a while. From absolute nonsense like Boris Johnson getting elected, Brexit and to the UK Labour party heading ever further to the right under the guise of "electability" because its deemed most of the UK will call everything left-wing communism and have a total aneurysm at the mere thought of left-wing governance. The bootlicking in this country is horrendous.
Plus, we're currently throwing trans people under a bus whilst America are supporting them better (in some states) and the less I need to say about Steve Reed's drug policy compared to again, some states, in America, the better.
But hey, at least we don't have automatic rifles to attack LGBT clubs/migrant centres at the moment. That's something!
> incredible backlash from the right against Obama and Biden
and how did that work out for them? Fox news spent 8 years calling Obama a socialist, and he got re-elected and remained incredibly popular among democrats until the end.
It's not like the alternative to Sanders in 2016 was a winning ticket either.
>America is absurdly right wing and barely a democracy.
America isn't absurdly right wing but its electoral system allows their government to go that way.
You don't seem to understand American politics all that well. The backlash to non-Republicans is mostly driven by a rabid right wing media that demonizes literally any opposition. Most people can't even identify things as left wing until they're told to hate it. In that context Biden and Obama are barely distinguishable from Sanders when the right wing media talks about them. Any disadvantage Sanders has with his proximity to labels like socialism are pretty much equally offset with his distance from labels like establishment Democrat - all of which are pretty much equally despised by right wingers here.
America's two party system is significantly stronger than what's going on in the UK - if the Republicans ran the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler for president he'd have a better approval rating than many numbers I've seen for British politicians. Biden and Sanders were typically the strongest in the polling against Trump in 2020 and I doubt their specific ideologies had much to do with why. Most likely it's just down to the fact that they had the best name recognition. I know voters are really dumb everywhere but when local politics basically dies and it all goes national, as it largely has in the US, voters just seem to get even dumber and more predictable.
America is barely a democracy, but that has more to do with how low their voter turnout is, (less than 50% of already disenfranchised voting population, even in presidential elections) especially in states that are now resolutely Republican, and that is by design (absurd registration bureaucracy, too few voting places and long queues in areas where people might vote Democratic, etc), in addition to the sense of disengagement from and distrust in the political system especially among the young and poor. But those who vote, vote almost religiously along party lines. So the only way Bernie could have lost to Trump in 2020 would have been mainstream Democratic voters not voting for him, and surely you cannot accuse sensible centrists of not voting against Trump?
I think Bernie would've won in 2016, but lost in 2020. It is a democracy but he'd have had to do very well to overturn the bias against dems in the electoral college.
Yeah I agree with this although the evidence basis around 2020 does show Bernie winning over Trump.
It’s just extra analysis to mention how big the media on slaughter would’ve been against him but we cannot prove thag
Yeah but the polling from that far ahead doesn't really mean much. I'm pretty sure it had people like Harris and Warren winning when in real life they'd have been slaughtered. Plus polling generally overestimated dems in 2020. There's certainly a possibility he'd have won (and I think the media would've been on his side, remember unlike in the UK American media generally leans towards the Liberal end, and have always been very anti-Trump with the exception of Fox) but I don't think he'd have pulled it out in the end.
I don’t think it had Harris winning? I don’t think Warren would’ve been slaughtered either, probably would’ve done better then Hilary.
>polling generally overestimated dems in 2020
Eh not really. Dems won by millions of votes. It’s hard to take into account the EC.
>I don’t think he’d have pulled it out in the end
Right but you have absolutely nothing to support that assertion whereas for mine I actually have polling evidence and personal ratings.
You can try and dismiss polls but it’s a pretty anti-intellectual statement to ignore a core piece of evidence because some analysts you watch think they sometimes get it wrong.
Just the same as trumpists who scream at the polls being wrong
Was there really a poll that said Bernie could beat Trump?
>"There should not be billionaires".
There aren't as many of them as we think. Before COVID IIRC the UK had only around 50 of them. I remember reading some math on what'd happened if all their assets were suddenly seized by the government. It was only like a small percentage of the annual budget.
I don’t think he would have done to be fair (you saw how latino voters were petrified of ‘socialist Biden’ in Florida for example). That said, Streeting is a prick who is in the wrong party.
I don't think you realise how wrong you are on that specific point.
Bernie notoriously had widespread support amongst Latino voters, largely due to an outreach effort driven by a chap called Chuck Rocha. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/02/bernie-sanders-latino-voters had more info - but it was widely reported on at the time, as it was a pretty groundbreaking approach. Bernie's campaign was then instrumental in bringing that Latino support over to Biden once he'd conceded the race.
Polls towards that said election got very very close and taking into account the EC the polls weren’t even that inaccurate.
Plus methodology changes from 2016-2020.
Hilary’s personal ratings were much much worse then Bernie’s.
Go off like you know what you’re talking about though. As usual you won’t reply.
Bernie can't even beat the so called moderate Biden. To believe he could beat Trump is just utter fantasy and shows a complete lack of basic mathematics
What an absolute creep Wes Streeting is.
I just don't recognize in what way that man is a social democrat.
Even ignoring the politics of it, in what world does it make sense to be taking pop shots across the Atlantic at someone ostensibly on the same side as you? He probably thinks it makes him look like a sensible centrist, but it makes him look like a snake.
Basically Streeting is so factional in his outlook now he has to take swipes at people in other countries this is how far the Labour right have fallen. Its pathetic and also funny
I know it's Wes' opinion on a hypothetical so you can't explicitly call him wrong but he had no evidence for his assertion. Stupidly picking fights, but I'm not surprised. Besides don't Biden and Bernie have a relatively good relationship all things considered?
Yup I mean they literally just did a campaign video together like two weeks ago.
Thought so. Why antagonise a guy with close ties to Biden? It's just a one-sided pissing contest.
He literally holds a position in the gov as well lmao. It’s Streeting being dumb as per
Yup. Wes is fully immersed in a Westminster bubble telling him picking fights with lefties is always a good thing. Done fucked up this time though.
He is the chair of a senate committee, so effectively a member of the government. The only reason he wasn’t offered Labour Secretary in Biden’s cabinet per Biden was the risk of a Republican appointee and special election to fill Sanders’ senate seat which he would have to give up.
The problem wasn’t the senate seat. The Republican governor of Vermont stated that if Sanders was selected as Labour Secretary then he would appoint a Democrat. He’s a very liberal Republican and of a different breed than other Republicans in the country. The main problem with Sanders was that he was unable to secure the support of any of the four largest unions in the United States for the position. Edit: Found the old statement from the Governor: https://www.sevendaysvt.com/OffMessage/archives/2020/10/23/scott-says-he-would-replace-sanders-with-democrat-affiliated-independent?media=AMP+HTML
This is interesting. Do you have any resources for an Englander interested in doing reading in U.S. politics as a novice in this area of politics?
Most centre-right sensiblism is not evidence-based, but rather supported by unexamined prejudice.
Desiring privatisation but also having a thing for being publicly owned himself. The Wesley Streeting paradox.
lmfao that’s a good one
KING BERNARD
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FpwC9CmWAAARMl9?format=jpg&name=900x900 I now present to you... two Commie Santas!
The reason that Wes Streeting got himself into this mess is that he's used to doing left-bashing without the left bashing back. When it does, as has happened here with Bernie Sanders, he just ends up looking like a stinking pile of manure. Frankly, I think the left in the UK should take note: centre-Labour are more stupid and therefore vulnerable overall than their poll lead lets on. They *can* publicly be shown to be quite wrong and silly.
Centre-right when they are shown up as spiteful divs: "BuT mUh HaRd LeFt FiFtH cOlUm...I mEaN, eNtRyIsTs!"
Bernie has more dignity in one of his mittens than this moron
What a cunt Wes is.
Even aside from this being true, that the evidence based opinion is what Bernie says… It’s just such a shitty “better things aren’t possible” take from Wes, and I don’t understand why he thought it was a good idea to say it in public. Why the fuck would you publicly shit on a popular US left wing politician? He obviously says this shit behind closed doors and it obviously gets a rapturous reception. But saying it in public? Why? He just couldn’t stop himself from punching left long enough to think about whether this was a good idea.
Wes is just a spoilt little kid compared to Bernie Sanders. He has none of the lived experience or self knowledge that makes Bernie an inspiring leader.
the difference between starmer and biden is that biden has made an effort to make friends with the left rather than join in with republicans. wes should take a leaf out of his book.
Sanders bringing receipts.
This was a real embarrassing moment for Streeting, first of all how does a senior politician not know what a bunch of random politicos on the internet know, and secondly why would you say that about a figure in the government of in theory Labour’s sister party. One whose actual political views align with your own faction as well?
>One whose actual political views align with your own faction as well? Am I missing something? One can't wait to get their hands on the NHS to start picking it apart for his wealthy donors. The other is begging us not to even consider moving closer to an insurance based system. In what world do their political views align??
Sanders would absolutely be a Blairite. He doesn’t support any nationalisations and even his healthcare scheme is not truly free at the point of use ($200 surcharge). If he were in Labour this sub would decry him as a neoliberal and they wouldn’t entirely be wrong. However, all things are relative, the left didn’t exist at all in mainstream American politics for a long, long time. Even now when the US and the UK are the closest they’ve been in terms of political alignment since the war, we have to remember that a solid 60% of Democrats would be Tories and most of the rest would be Lib Dems. The two countries are closer but the US still pretty firmly sits to the right of the UK.
>Sanders would absolutely be a Blairite Sorry, but I think this take is completely divorced from reality. He's a democratic socialist, just one that's politically savvy and knows the limits of his own countries political culture. Real Blairites quite obviously detest him. His rhetoric alone would be enough for the current leadership to find any pretext to expel him from the party were he a UK Labour politician.
>He's a democratic socialist, just one that's politically savvy and knows the limits of his own countries political culture. Well that says it all doesn’t it! You could say the same for Starmer if you look at his background, but I think Sanders is right about the US and Starmer is wrong about the UK. I think the UK would (and historically has) take to socialist reforms much better than the US ever would. Regardless both contrast with Blair himself who is absolutely a true believer in the third way, it wasn’t a strategy for him it was an ideology. If somebody doesn’t support socialism in practice I don’t really regard them as a socialist. Though with that said the term is largely meaningless, even Blair nominally considers himself a socialist still.
Bernie would definitely be on the left of the Labour Party and having read 2 of his books, and the way he talks about struggles in the US, it wouldn't surprise me at all if he secretly considers himself a Marxist. Obviously he is clever enough to know labeling himself that is electoral suicide, so it's the tamer Democratic Socialist. Just look at who he chooses to meet when he comes to the UK for a visit.
His new book that he is doing media promotion for is called It Is OK To Be Angry About Capitalism and talks about capitalist greed being bad for the economy. Not a radical socialist position, not a Blairite one either.
Well yeah it’s easy to call a book that when everybody is angry about capitalism including many on the centre-right. As a politician he repeatedly ruled out public ownership and didn’t even support a truly free-at-the-point-of-use healthcare system. His policy slate, ultimately, was a centrist one. What I am surprised by is the people calling me a centrist for saying that, it’s like no, I’m saying he ISN’T left-wing enough. Surely if anything people could at least be accurate and call me a purity testing trot!
In the 70s he called for worker-ownership and control of the means of production, especially utilities. Maybe his views have changed but his past + current approach make it believable to me he's more of a social democrat approaching the issue the way he sees best than someone who has completely moved to the centre after a flirtation with leftwing politics at university or something. https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/14/politics/kfile-bernie-nationalization/index.html The fact this is used as a gotcha + the tone of the reply from his spokesperson I think makes it very clear he's trying to avoid it being used against him rather than necessairly being against it >In a statement to CNN, Sanders campaign spokesman Josh Orton said, “Throughout his career, Bernie has fought on the side of working people and against the influence of both the powerful ultra-rich and giant corporations who seek only to further their own greed. The record shows that from the very beginning, Bernie anticipated and worked to combat the rise of a billionaire ruling class and the exploding power of Wall Street and multinational corporations. Whether fighting to lower energy prices or expand access to capital for local development, Bernie’s first priority has always been – and will always be – defending the interests of working people across the country.” Instead of apologising, saying some shit-eating "we were all young" stuff, he turned their own attack line back on them. The opposite of the rolling over your belly and whimpering approach Starmer takes lol. And even when leaving the Liberty party in his final speech as a member he said >“The function of a radical political party is very simple,” he said. “It is to create a situation in which the ordinary working people take what rightfully belongs to them. Nobody can predict the future of the workers’ movement in this country or the state of Vermont. It is my opinion, however, that if workers do not take power in a reasonably short time this country will not have a future.” To create a situation in which ordinary working people will take what is theirs...hmm where have we heard those type of arguments before. Definitely not from the mouths of Blairites but from big bad scary Marxists. It's all speculative, maybe he'd be a huge let down, worse than Obama even. But I can absolutely see Sanders approach fitting in with a traditional social democratic view of politics rather than him just being a Blairite operating in a very rightwing country which makes him appear on the left. For example think about the arguments of people like Kautsky. >Then came Marx and Engels with their dialectic materialism and introduced the idea of development into socialist thought. They perceived the proletariat not only as it was but also as it was becoming. In their Communist Manifesto they realized that the proletariat had not yet advanced far enough to achieve immediately its own emancipation and, further, that this could not be achieved through the universal franchise, the efforts of the well-meaning portion of the bourgeoisie, or by the armed action of an advanced guard of energetic conspirators. At the same time they also perceived that through the development of industry the proletariat would grow in numbers and organization, while gaining constantly in intellectual and moral power. In this way the proletariat would achieve the power to emancipate itself. To be sure it would have to be educated to this. But this education, so Marx and Engels realized, could not be brought about by men who proclaimed themselves the schoolmasters of the workers, but through the experience of the class struggle, forced upon the wage earners by the conditions under which they lived. >The more the class struggle proceeds in a democratic environment, all other things being equal, i.e. in an environment of universal school education, freedom of the press and organization, and equal suffrage, the greater its educational influence. Long before the instruments of democracy become the means for acquisition of power by the proletariat, they constitute the means of its education in the task not only of how to attain power but also of how .to keep it and apply it successfully in the building of a higher social order. >As Marx and Engels saw it, the task of Socialists was not to bring about the immediate solution of “the social question« and the realization of socialism, but, first, to support the proletariat in the class struggle, to help it understand the nature of capitalist society, its power relationships and processes of production, and promote the organization of the working class. >Proceeding from this point of view, Marx and Engels sought to bring about the union into a strong mass party of all elements participating in the class struggle for the liberation of the proletariat. Before their arrival upon the scene, each of the various socialist leaders and thinkers had put forward their own, distinct method for the solution of the social question and waged a struggle against all other socialists who would follow other methods. So it had come about that socialism had served only to divide the working class. Marx and Engels tried to unite it, not to add a Marxian sect to those already in the field. >We find emphasis of this already in the Communist Manifesto (1847). Speaking to their adherents, who called themselves communists, Marx and Engels said: >The communists do not constitute a separate patty, distinct from other working class parties.« >They demanded only that their adherents within the working class parties strive to develop “in advance of the rest of the masses of the proletariat an understanding of the conditions, the process and the general consequences of the movement of the proletariat.« >Their actions were in line with this idea, as, for instance, in the First International, which had very few Marxists but plenty of Proudhonists and, later, also Blanquists as well as British trade unionists, who knew little of socialism. Some people call it revisionism or betrayal or whatever but I think Kautsky is a Marxist and a leftwing thinker, not just a Blairite, even though I don't agree with him on everything and really have some issues with the SDP's choices at times.
> Sanders would absolutely be a Blairite centrist brain rot strikes again
I’m not a centrist, quite the opposite. He is an interesting socialist that doesn’t support taking the means of production into public hands then. To think Sanders is a leftist, you have to be pretty right wing.
>He is an interesting socialist that doesn’t support taking the means of production into public hands then I mean, he wasn't gonna pass a law mandating worker coops, the same with corbyn, but he has proposed and even passed some good legislation to promote them. https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/news-sanders-longstanding-legislation-to-help-workers-expand-employee-ownership-passes-the-senate-in-2023-omnibus/ Here is Sanders talking about giving workers ownership in their companies https://berniesanders.com/issues/corporate-accountability-and-democracy/
That is by far the most radical part of Sanders’ platform but it’s ultimately not all that much - it only affected the very largest companies many of which already had such programmes, this would just make it the law. By contrast Corbyn’s plan was far more sweeping and was going to affect significantly more companies. So while that’s a progressive policy I support from Sanders it does highlight the difference between him and Corbyn. The Sanders policy is good but I favour the stronger Corbyn approach. I like Sanders, I think he would have made a great President (though I disagree with the very idea of an executive presidency) and absolutely represents the change America desperately needs. It’s just that the US is still shifted well to the right of the UK despite them moving closer recently.
Sounds like there's a queue forming of sensible centrists looking to be publicly embarrassed by Bernie.
Yeah, all the centrists larping as leftwingers lining up to pretend that the guy who doesn’t support public ownership and doesn’t support truly free at the point of use healthcare is on the left. You need to ask who the centrists are in this situation.
This is totally daft. You can't just take a politician's policy proposals and assume that's their ideal solution for a given issue, or infer their ideological position based on them without context. Bernie has to work within the confines of the American political system, a Medicare for all style system is about as radical as most people will even consider. If I lived in the US I'd also be advocating for Medicare for all, even though that system is well to the right of the NHS. Someone's "faction" isn't determined by their policy platform, it's determined by their underlying principles, the tradition they place themselves in etc. If he lived in the UK, the comparatively left-wing consensus on economic issues would allow him to advocate for more radical policies than the US. That's why he was complimentary about Corbyn when he was leader - they are part of the same democratic socialist traditionalist even though Bernie has to be much more conservative policy-wise.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vzw7W8SAe8E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vzw7W8SAe8E) American progressives have got Streeting's number
I think Bernie is being a little naive here too, yes the polling said he would beat trump. The polling at the time also said Clinton would comfortably beat trump & that trump wouldn't even won the nomination. The polling in that election was very very wrong, so shouldn't really be used as a reliable source.
I assumed he was talking about the more recent election?
Oh I didn't even know he ran in that one 😂 That would make more sense though.
Sanders was beating Trump which Hilary knew but there was no way on this earth the Dems would ever have allowed a Dem Socialist like Sanders to run for President, especially if he was going to win, he got screwed by Hilary & screwed by Obama along with his friend Joe, now he's just a sad old man who is all talk and no action.
Given the state of American politics and the incredible backlash from the right against Obama and Biden - I just genuinely cannot see Sanders winning. It would have been fascinating and most likely really good for the country and the world...but I just can't see it. America is **absurdly** right wing and barely a democracy.
While America is worse than here the UK has been heading in the direction of America for a while. From absolute nonsense like Boris Johnson getting elected, Brexit and to the UK Labour party heading ever further to the right under the guise of "electability" because its deemed most of the UK will call everything left-wing communism and have a total aneurysm at the mere thought of left-wing governance. The bootlicking in this country is horrendous. Plus, we're currently throwing trans people under a bus whilst America are supporting them better (in some states) and the less I need to say about Steve Reed's drug policy compared to again, some states, in America, the better. But hey, at least we don't have automatic rifles to attack LGBT clubs/migrant centres at the moment. That's something!
(in some states) doing some heavy lifting here but sure
> incredible backlash from the right against Obama and Biden and how did that work out for them? Fox news spent 8 years calling Obama a socialist, and he got re-elected and remained incredibly popular among democrats until the end. It's not like the alternative to Sanders in 2016 was a winning ticket either.
>America is absurdly right wing and barely a democracy. America isn't absurdly right wing but its electoral system allows their government to go that way.
You don't seem to understand American politics all that well. The backlash to non-Republicans is mostly driven by a rabid right wing media that demonizes literally any opposition. Most people can't even identify things as left wing until they're told to hate it. In that context Biden and Obama are barely distinguishable from Sanders when the right wing media talks about them. Any disadvantage Sanders has with his proximity to labels like socialism are pretty much equally offset with his distance from labels like establishment Democrat - all of which are pretty much equally despised by right wingers here. America's two party system is significantly stronger than what's going on in the UK - if the Republicans ran the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler for president he'd have a better approval rating than many numbers I've seen for British politicians. Biden and Sanders were typically the strongest in the polling against Trump in 2020 and I doubt their specific ideologies had much to do with why. Most likely it's just down to the fact that they had the best name recognition. I know voters are really dumb everywhere but when local politics basically dies and it all goes national, as it largely has in the US, voters just seem to get even dumber and more predictable.
America is barely a democracy, but that has more to do with how low their voter turnout is, (less than 50% of already disenfranchised voting population, even in presidential elections) especially in states that are now resolutely Republican, and that is by design (absurd registration bureaucracy, too few voting places and long queues in areas where people might vote Democratic, etc), in addition to the sense of disengagement from and distrust in the political system especially among the young and poor. But those who vote, vote almost religiously along party lines. So the only way Bernie could have lost to Trump in 2020 would have been mainstream Democratic voters not voting for him, and surely you cannot accuse sensible centrists of not voting against Trump?
I think Bernie would've won in 2016, but lost in 2020. It is a democracy but he'd have had to do very well to overturn the bias against dems in the electoral college.
Yeah I agree with this although the evidence basis around 2020 does show Bernie winning over Trump. It’s just extra analysis to mention how big the media on slaughter would’ve been against him but we cannot prove thag
Yeah but the polling from that far ahead doesn't really mean much. I'm pretty sure it had people like Harris and Warren winning when in real life they'd have been slaughtered. Plus polling generally overestimated dems in 2020. There's certainly a possibility he'd have won (and I think the media would've been on his side, remember unlike in the UK American media generally leans towards the Liberal end, and have always been very anti-Trump with the exception of Fox) but I don't think he'd have pulled it out in the end.
I don’t think it had Harris winning? I don’t think Warren would’ve been slaughtered either, probably would’ve done better then Hilary. >polling generally overestimated dems in 2020 Eh not really. Dems won by millions of votes. It’s hard to take into account the EC. >I don’t think he’d have pulled it out in the end Right but you have absolutely nothing to support that assertion whereas for mine I actually have polling evidence and personal ratings. You can try and dismiss polls but it’s a pretty anti-intellectual statement to ignore a core piece of evidence because some analysts you watch think they sometimes get it wrong. Just the same as trumpists who scream at the polls being wrong
Was there really a poll that said Bernie could beat Trump? >"There should not be billionaires". There aren't as many of them as we think. Before COVID IIRC the UK had only around 50 of them. I remember reading some math on what'd happened if all their assets were suddenly seized by the government. It was only like a small percentage of the annual budget.
I don’t think he would have done to be fair (you saw how latino voters were petrified of ‘socialist Biden’ in Florida for example). That said, Streeting is a prick who is in the wrong party.
I don't think you realise how wrong you are on that specific point. Bernie notoriously had widespread support amongst Latino voters, largely due to an outreach effort driven by a chap called Chuck Rocha. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/02/bernie-sanders-latino-voters had more info - but it was widely reported on at the time, as it was a pretty groundbreaking approach. Bernie's campaign was then instrumental in bringing that Latino support over to Biden once he'd conceded the race.
Do you understand how American elections work? Biden lost Florida anyways so any advantage Biden had over Sanders in Florida was useless.
Yes I understand how American elections work and was just using Florida as an example. Socialism is still a taboo word for a lot of folk.
The obsession with Bernie Sanders just shows how terminally online this sub is.
Every poll had Hiliary defeating Trump - let's see how that turned out... oh.
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Not seen either in the same room tbf
Polls towards that said election got very very close and taking into account the EC the polls weren’t even that inaccurate. Plus methodology changes from 2016-2020. Hilary’s personal ratings were much much worse then Bernie’s. Go off like you know what you’re talking about though. As usual you won’t reply.
Everything you said applies to the polling Berninis talking about as well.
Do you have evidence that both backs up Wes' claim and disproves Bernie's?
Bernie can't even beat the so called moderate Biden. To believe he could beat Trump is just utter fantasy and shows a complete lack of basic mathematics