I'm sorry, did Obama not win in 2008?
What is up with with his "grassroots campaign" nonsense. Sanders can't even gather a fraction of the old Obama coalition, and his strength lies in liberal college students (who are overwhelming white) and disaffected working class whites. Some grassroots movement. A first term Senator did better than he did.
I feel you're downplaying Sanders campaign here. The legitimacy of his grassroots campaigns come from the fact that it is has gotten here without SuperPACs. If you go back to the old threads from a year ago about Sanders, it was mostly about people laughing at him. It's impossible to win without raising hundreds of millions through corporate institutions.
My point was that nobody has independently through small donations raised as much money and gotten so far.
If Sanders had taken goldman sachs money and the like, he wouldn't have been authentic. He would have died at the cross at the same the other democratic candidates. They say their little thing at one or two of the debates, and then it's over.
Everybody know who Hillary Clinton is, and in politics that is the entire name of the game.
Nobody knew who Bernie was. He wasn't a household name, he wasn't liked among the dems. Between 4 and 08 the democratic base did a lot to rally behind Obama, and it was indeed a historic campaign, for different reasons. Particularly now that it is a post-citizen united world.
If you look at how far other campaigns have gotten with no corporate pacs, you'd see nobody has even gotten close to Bernies. It's the largest of its kind and has mobilized a lot of people into contributing.
The numbers thus far reflect an insidious campaign-spending trend that began long before the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision allowed individuals, corporations and unions to give unlimited amounts of cash to super PACs. Every election since 1998 has outspent the previous corresponding one: The 2012 presidential race cost more than $2.6 billion, the 2008 presidential race cost more than $1 billion, the 2004 presidential race cost more than $717.9 million and so on.
This surging tide of reported contributions - plus the hidden current of undisclosed dark money flooding in beneath the surface from a few billionaires - is so thoroughly dominating the electoral process, it has effectively created an undertow that is drowning out the value of the non-affluent vote, argues campaign finance activist John Bonifaz.
Bonifaz is cofounder and president of Free Speech For People, a group advocating for campaign finance reforms and a 28th Amendment to the US Constitution that would not only overturn the Citizens United ruling, but establish that corporations are not people under the law. Bonifaz and Jamin Raskin first articulated the idea of the "wealth primary" in the Yale Law & Policy Review in 1993, writing:
The "wealth primary" ... sets up an economic gauntlet that, in every practical sense, prevents less affluent candidates - potential office seekers lacking both personal wealth and affluent backers - from competing for office. This system sharply reduces voter choice and falls with unequal weight on voters, as well as candidates, according to their economic status ... This effect denies huge numbers of people meaningful electoral choice and unlawfully degrades their influence on the political process as a whole.
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http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/...chine-is-defying-the-2016-billionaire-primary )
It's pretty clear that elections have gotten increasingly less democratic, making what Sanders has done even more amazing.
I think that it is inspiring what he has done, because money corrupts the political process. I've said this before, but we've seen in other countries a similar thing. It's the rich and wealth who can just insert themselves into the political life because they have millions and people know who they are.
The campaign finance system, should in effect work more like this;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaekogALkFM&feature=youtu.be&list=PLJ8cMiYb3G5ffS2uCSKeH_b9fIqZWxBDR < a 100 dollar tax credit for every us citizen.
Not only that but I'd argue it was Clinton and not Sanders who effectively used grassroots tactics.
While Sanders was holding and bragging about giant rallies on giant stages separated from the people, Clinton was going into communities meeting with community leaders, talking directly with people on a more intimate basis.
While Sanders was off on his campaign funded family trip to the Vatican, Clinton was in Harlem playing dominoes with folks and talking to them directly.
You're being unreasonable here. Sanders is not well known at all. Nobody knew who he was. He had to fill up conventions and speak his message. Everybody knows who Hillary Clinton is which allowed her platform to being run differently.
I don't think doing speeches around the country is being removed from the people. The fact that he did manage to fill up so many rallies speaks to that he did connect to a certain energy with some people.
