Chris Matthews had a fairly aggressive interview with Sanders last night, and Sanders did ok, but I was disappointed that Sanders had an opportunity to answer an important question, and he really didn't, at least in terms that didn't come across as wishful thinking: How is he going to do a better job than Obama in mobilizing his support into pressure that will effect real change?
Sanders stays on a theoretical level in his answers about how change happens. He's right when he says that real change is bottom up, not top down, but why then should electing him president matter? People like Matthews and other Sanders skeptics are right that he won't be able to get anything done with the existing arrangements in congress. He has to make a robust case that electing him president will somehow be different from having elected Obama president, and he seems unwilling to make that case. He just asserts it supporting it without any evidence beyond hoping that it will be so.
I'd like to believe that Sanders could be the Lech Walesa of American politics, the unlikely guy who takes on the big powers and succeeds because the timing is right and the grass-roots support for him is viral. I fear that unless a sane, decent, constructive populist alternative is presented to the American electorate, it will move toward the indecent, destructive alternative represented by Trump. America needs somebody like Sanders to succeed. Nominating HRC is rear-view mirror, complacent thinking. It's the safe, timid choice of those who think that things will continue to plod on the way they are plodding now. I don't think they will. I think we are at a critical juncture, and something has to give.
I agree with Sanders that you need viral, bottom-up pressure on entrenched power to get real change, but the 'viral' thing has yet to happen for Sanders, and he won't get nominated and elected unless it does. Sanders has some energy, but he has to take it to the next level, and it's not clear to me that he will be able to do that. His campaign, at this moment anyway, seems to be stalling. But maybe it would go viral if he explained how he would channel all that viral energy once he's elected. I think more people would be attracted to his campaign if he gave them a reason to think that there was more to it than wishful thinking. He needs to get more concrete, not about what policies he wants to see enacted, but about how he would mobilize the American people to enact them.
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