Change comes from mass movements which (a) educate themselves through their own practice and reflection on that practice and (b) force those in power to choose between serious change on the one hand and (b) ruling purely through force. (And as Barbara Jeanne Fields has pointed out, when only force remains, nothing remains.) The power of such politicians as Sanders resides in their capacity to perusaude the "raghus" of the world that they need only to give away their power to some savior such as Sanders or . . . .)
Your belief in Sanders is constitutes The Fundamental Power of Neoliberalism. Carrol Carrol -----Original Message----- From: pen-l-boun...@lists.csuchico.edu [mailto:pen-l-boun...@lists.csuchico.edu] On Behalf Of raghu Sent: Tuesday, October 20, 2015 1:33 PM To: Progressive Economics Subject: [Pen-l] Bernie Sanders and rust belt populism I don't know quite what to make of this, but if this is even partially true, please explain again how the Sanders campaign is the enemy of the left? http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/why-bernie-sanders-starting-attract-conservative-voters --------------------------snip Nate Silver has the Bernie Sanders campaign figured out. Ignore what happens in Iowa and New Hampshire, the “data-driven” prognostication wizard wrote back in July, when Sanders was polling a healthy 30 percent to Clinton’s 46 percent in both contests. That’s only, Silver says, because “Democratic caucus-goers in Iowa and Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire are liberal and white, and that’s the core of Sanders’ support.” Silver has a chart. It shows that when you multiply the number of liberals and whites among state electorates, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Iowa rank first, second, and third. Texas is near the bottom—a place where Bernie Sanders should feel about as welcome as a La Raza convention at the Alamo, right? I have a new friend who begs to differ. It’s July 20, and my airplane seatmate asks what brought me to Texas. He is a construction company sales executive from Houston. He’s watching Fox News on his cell phone. He tells me he considers himself a conservative. I tell him I’m a political reporter covering the Bernie Sanders campaign. He perks up: “I like what I’ve heard from him. Kind of middle of the road.” Eleven days later, I’m at a Bernie Sanders house party in the depressed steel town of Griffith, Indiana, in a state that places in the bottom quartile on Silver’s chart. I approach a young man in his twenties wearing a thrift store T-shirt. I ask him what brings him here tonight. “I’m just helping out my friends because they asked me to help out,” he tells me. He adds that he’s a conservative: “But I approve of some of the stuff that Bernie stands for. Like appealing to more than just the one percent and just trying to give everybody a leg up who’s needing it these days.” Data-driven analysis is only as good as the categories by which you sift the information. If you’ve already decided that “liberals” are the people who prefer locally sourced arugula to eating at McDonald’s, or are the people who don’t watch Fox News, it is a reasonable conclusion that there aren’t enough “liberals” out there to elect Bernie Sanders. Yet political categories shift. One of the things the best politicians do is work to shift them. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list pen-l@lists.csuchico.edu https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
