I am a progressive. I want the things Bernie promises for this country. I want universal health care, and free higher education, and reduced incarceration, and an end to the artificial redistribution of wealth into the pockets of the filthy rich.
But I also understand basic civics, and I read the news, so I know that the Republican party is simultaneously in shambles and completely entrenched in Congress.
Bernie Sanders has no plan for enacting his ambitious, domestic, legislative agenda other than “political revolution.” Vote for me, he says, and we’ll get the money out of politics and thereby forceCongress to listen to the American people.
Putting aside the questionable idea that campaign finance reform is the only thing standing between the United States and truly representative politics (our politics was morally bankrupt long before Citizens United), we are not going to have a revolution in 2016. We are going to have a new president.
I know what a revolution looks like, and this election—using the complicated system of party delegates and the electoral college to choose the leader of one of the three branches of the government of the most powerful empire in the world—is not it. This is politics.
And if Sanders tries to force this Congress to do something like raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour nationally, the likely political result will be a government shutdown.
READ FULL ARTICLE => On Hillary and Bernie – bottlemagazine