On the first set of issues: President Sanders could reform U.S. trade policy by himself. He could say: from now on, we're not going to do any NAFTA/TPP type agreements. Done. Congress could not stop him from doing that. He could reform U.S. policy at the IMF and World Bank by himself. He could appoint his own people to the Fed. OK, that's not going to completely transform the Fed, but it would certainly have an impact. He can issue an executive order that no company that violates federal labor law can bid on a U.S. government contact for 5 years. He can make aggressive appointments to the NLRB, etc. There's a whole lot of stuff like that, so much. Plus he has a huge bully pulpit to intervene in labor disputes on behalf of labor. Remember the factory occupation at Republic Windows. It just took one word from Obama and the company stood down.
On the second set of issues: Sanders is proposing to pay for free public college tuition by taxing Wall Street speculation. I saw Sanders make the pitch to 2000 people in Cedar Falls last night. The crowd went wild.
OK, so President Sanders sends his bill to Congress for free public college tuition by taxing Wall Street speculation. And Congress says, no way, President Sanders, we're not voting for that, because we have our heads way too far up the butt of Wall Street. And so President Sanders gets on TV, and he says: I demand that Congress get its head out of Wall Street's butt to pass my bill. And, President Sanders says, the most important thing is that *the American people must demand it.* If you want this to happen, you must get off your couch, turn off the TV, call Congress and yell at them.
And then what happens is...
Don't you want to see how this story ends? I sure do.
Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1
On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 11:41 AM, Marv Gandall <marvgand2 at gmail.com> wrote:
> How “realistic" is Bernie Sanders to expect that his single payer
> healthcare and other sweeping reform proposals would ever be adopted by
> Congress if he were elected President?
>
> Critics on both his left and right have assumed this is Sanders’
> expectation, and have scoffed at it. But as John Cassidy of the New Yorker
> notes (see link below), Sanders has on several occasions indicated he is
> under no such illusion, and appears to recognize that only the sustained
> pressure of a powerful mass movement can induce legislation to curb the
> corporations, redistribute wealth, create jobs, provide debt relief and
> expand the welfare state.
>
> Sanders’ program has been rightly compared to FDR’s 1930’s New Deal, and
> he is essentially trying to recreate the mass working class movement which
> underpinned it. Like US social democrats of that period, he is working
> through the Democrat Party to reform rather than replace capitalism.
>
> His aim may have little appeal on the far left, but at the present time
> the process which Sanders has set in motion inside and outside the party is
> drawing millions of Americans into the orbit of the left around the idea
> that the US system is a plutocracy which requires a “political revolution”
> to democratize it.
>
> If he loses, Sanders will undoubtedly endorse Clinton. His supporters are
> likely to follow suit. Most dissident Democrats have remained loyal to the
> party when their efforts to change its direction have been thwarted.
> Whether the latest insurgency endures and fundamentally reshapes American
> politics will depend much less on what Sanders does than it will on a
> continuing decline in living standards and failure of the Democratic Party
> to address US working class needs.
>
>
> http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/bernie-sanders-and-the-realists?mbid=nl_TNY%20Template%20-%20With%20Photo%20(9)&CNDID=39951347&spMailingID=8464149&spUserID=MTE3OTEwOTgxMDc2S0&spJobID=842475623&spReportId=ODQyNDc1NjIzS0
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