In 2016, @mollyesque had a sharp observation on why Trump was winning.
“All the other candidates say ‘Americans are angry, and I understand,’” she wrote. “Trump says, ‘I’M angry.’”
Sanders, too, is angry. vox.com/2020/2/24/2114…
“All the other candidates say ‘Americans are angry, and I understand,’” she wrote. “Trump says, ‘I’M angry.’”
Sanders, too, is angry. vox.com/2020/2/24/2114…
There is a natural psychological tendency, when working inside a system, to defend your accomplishments in a way that slowly turns you into a defender of the system. That hasn’t happened to Sanders.
Democrats who believe in, and in some cases built, the political and economic system balance a celebration of its successes — think of Biden repeating the Obama administration’s accomplishments during each and every debate — with an ongoing recognition of its failures.
Sanders helped build parts of that political and economic system, too, but he doesn’t spend time celebrating its successes. His politics is rooted in fury over its failures.
As I argue in this piece, Sanders's is running on what @NathanJRobinson calls "a socialist ethic" — what sets him apart from other liberal Democrats is less his policy platform than his moral platform, and his political positioning.
Sanders’s longtime insistence that he is a democratic socialist, not just a Democrat, is a way of holding himself apart from the political system, and even the party, he's worked with for 30 years.
In some ways, Sanders's socialism has a lot in common with Tea Party conservatism. Critics may say it's not as new as it claims to be, but there are lots of liberals tired of defending the compromises and concessions past Democrats have made.
