https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/bernie-sanders-praise-critic-vote-2020.html
Chait is very often critical of Sanders, but says he decided to make a piece about his strengths to βmaintain perspectiveβ.
His praise essentially boils down to four points:
- Sanders is committed to a humane worldview (namely, issues of poverty) and has been for his entire political career.
- Sanders is pragmatic, and has worked to advance his agenda across the aisle incrementally over his career.
- Sanders treats his opponents with respect despite his supporters.
- Sanders is not an authoritarian and is dedicated to liberal ideals more than other progressives in his view, such as free speech.
He closes the article with this: >There is nothing Sanders would need to do to earn my vote against Donald Trump, and nothing he could do to lose it. All I can hope is that everybody else who opposes Trump and his war on democracy and the rule of law feels the same about every other candidate.
Do you agree, disagree? Anything to add? Any and all thoughts are welcome.
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/corbyn-bernie-sanders-socialism-british-election-2020.html
>the arguments extrapolating from the βsuccessβ enjoyed by Corbyn and Sanders suffered from delusional wishful thinking. Proceeding from the erroneous Marxist view that capitalism is growing more oppressive, and a working-class backlash is therefore inevitable, they glommed onto bits of data and ignored and large and growing array of evidence to the contrary.
>In the U.K., this delusion created a bitter argument between the left and center-left. The former insisted on maintaining Corbyn as Labour leader, based on the idea not only that he could and would win, but in some cases that his Labour critics opposed him precisely because they feared he would. Their moralistic fervor made any sober political calculation impossible.
When Hillary, who alternates between re-running the 2016 elections and threatening to run for the next one, dropped the sage observation that Tulsi is a Russian asset, it led to a giant media circus. Besides the CIA operatives who rushed to support Hillary's claims, several journalists also came to her defence. A distinguished effort was by Jonathan Chait of NY mag, who wrote Tulsi Gabbard Drops a Big Hint About Running a Spoiler Campaign for Trump. If the article is to be believed, the three greatest nightmares of centrists: Russian interference, Republican sympathizer and third-party spoiler candidate, are to be found combined in the person of Tulsi Gabbard.
He also happened to sideswipe the staunchly anti-establishment show Hill TV as Republican-controlled media. They hit back in Jonathan Chait smears Hill TV & Tulsi Gabbard, we respond. Krystal had this to say on centrist criticism:
>I mean frankly I'm keep having trouble keeping track of all my different handlers. Between the Republican ones and the Russian Russians, it's a lot to have to keep straight ... the different, you know, people I'm carrying water for. ...
Chait had been licking his wounds for some time. Meanwhile, Hillary in her Never-ending list of excuses book tour, decided to call Bernie a Russian asset. This added grist to the journalist's mill. He hit upon a more general theory than that of the Russian asset: The Anti-Anti-Trump Left! This is the anti-establishment left that is supposedly again going to help Trump. He expanded upon the idea in a sequel to the previous article: Tulsi Gabbard and the Return of the Anti-Anti-Trump Left.
He is spot on in his description of the anti-establishment left:
>It takes as its starting point a familiar critique that Trump won because liberalism failed. Trump, while bad, is merely a meta-phenomenon of the larger failure of the Democratic Party and the political and economic Establishment. And so, to the extent that investigating Trumpβs scandalous behavior allows Democrats to discredit Trump without undergoing revolutionary internal changes, it is counterproductive.
However, if you look closely, it is the same three nightmares of centrists, but repackaged to include all anti-establishme
... keep reading on reddit β‘