On 1/25/2016 10:08 AM, Robert Naiman wrote:
> The President of the United States has tremendous power. It's certainly
> true that President Sanders couldn't do everything he wants by himself. But
> he could do a lot. And, on progressive economic populist issues, if he
> fought with Congress and lost, and people made it a crusade to get rid of
> the Members of Congress who opposed him, a lot of them could be thrown out.
> When Harold Washington was elected mayor of Chicago, his opponents
> controlled a majority of the Chicago City Council. After the next election,
> Washington supporters controlled a majority of the council.
>
> 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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