Elizabeth Warren: "I’m still cheering Bernie on"

[kstewart33]

33. JDP, there are several reasons.

Let me preface it with the point that I fully support Bernie's ideas and platform. I admire him for his consistency - he has advocated on the issue of income inequality and the poor for decades. Also, with the point I know a little bit about politics. In my twenties, I was a paid consultant to two Congressional campaigns and have been active for many years. However, today the dynamics have certainly changed.

First, I've done a good bit of research on Bernie's platform, and none of the planks have a chance of being realized. Mostly, it's the math in Congress. We could win a majority in the Senate. But the Repubs have an historic 58-seat majority in the House and it will require an unprecedented sea change in the election to overcome that majority. The right win caucus there has a stranglehold on the House, and they are not likely to lose members because of extreme gerrymandering that the Repubs has established in many Congressional districts.

But let's assume that the near impossible happens. We win both Houses. However, the Repubs control most of the state legislatures and I don't think that will change. State control matters with Bernie's platform. For example, his free college tuition program. According to Bernie, the states must pay one third of the total bill. That is many billions of $$$. There is no way that the Repub legislatures will pass it because they will see it as an abhorrent overreach by the federal govt. That is essentially what today's Republican ideology is all about.

There are other concerns. Bernie has no experience in foreign policy, and given the threats from abroad that we face today, that is a serious limitation. However, you could argue that Obama didn't have any either. But there's a difference. Bernie has no interest in foreign affairs; Obama did and was a quick study. In today's international climate, we need a president who is at least interested in the goings-on abroad. Bernie is strictly a domestic-driven public servant.

Bernie also has limited experience in working with people to get things done. If you put his and Hillary's vitas side by side, it is obvious that Hillary has a record of results. Bernie is a wonderfully talented advocate. He is an agitator. He does that best. However, he is not one to lead teams, or even join a team. It's not in his makeup. However, they call the president a chief executive for a reason. The president must execute a strategy to get things done. For all of her faults and I am clearly aware of them, Hillary has a record of getting things done. And a record of working across the aisle when necessary. Many Bernie supporters see this as corruption. I see it as an ability to actually execute and realize an agenda.

I also have ethical problems with Bernie selling an agenda to young people that he knows will not be achieved. He's been in Congress for 25 years. He knows the game. Most young people don't know much about the impossibility of his platform. They're young and full of hope. However, Bernie knows it. I've concluded that either he knows it's impossible and he is bluntly conning all of those young people sending him whatever $$$ they have, or he is blinded by his own ideology and he cannot see the reality of it. Either way, those aren't characteristics that I'd like to see in my president.

Also, I have to say that I have a problem with Jane. Do you wonder why Bernie has not released all of his tax returns going back even 8 years as Hillary has? I'd wager that it is because when Jane was fired by the Board of Trustees as president of Burlington College, she negotiated a $200,000 severance (commonly called in corporate America, a 'golden parachute'). Nice if you can get it, but she received the money as the college she led was struggling to stay alive. Taking that much money from a college with less than 300 students and many hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt? That's not exactly consistent with Bernie's message, and something that really rubs me the wrong way. That $200,000 payment is in their income tax returns.

Lastly, I do not think Bernie is electable. I've dug into Bernie's biography. There's too much for the Republicans to use against him in the general election campaign - relationships with Communists and Marxists, support for Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega, and honeymooning in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and much, much more. Now that may not matter to you or me, but it will with the many millions of voters who remember the Cold War, and many who have a problem seeing a conscientious objector as commander in chief of our military.

The Republican assassination squad will eviserate him and there will be little that Bernie can do about it. Consider that the Republicans have been quiet as a church mouse about Bernie throughout the primary season while their super pacs are spending millions on anti-Hillary ads in the primary states. Common sense dictates that they want Bernie in the general and they are keeping their powder dry just in case.

Wow, that's a post-full. Please don't reply that I'm an idiot or a member of the corporate cult class. Neither is true. I've just thought it through and come to a conclusion. I'll vote for Bernie in the general if he makes it, but my head is with Hillary.