Wow. Obama will really go down as one of the truly great, transformative presidents. From Rachel Maddow:
When President Obama took office, gay and lesbian soldiers were prohibited from serving openly, transgender Americans were banned altogether, and women were excluded from combat units. Now, as Obama gets ready to leave office, DADT a thing of the past; there's no prohibition on transgender Americans serving in uniform; the Pentagon has made women eligible for combat roles; and the Secretary of the Army is an openly gay man.
Also:
I can't remember his name or the name of his organization but there's a guy who's trying to organize what's essentially a presidential election... during the midterms. He's going to run 400 similar candidates at the same time all across the country on the same progressive platform Sanders is running on. And he wants to give it the same attention that a presidential campaign would have, with the same kind of donations and the same kind of energy.
In my opinion, that's very smart! There's all this underutilized energy right now in the Democratic party which needs to be realized during the midterms. My only issue: if he's running 400 candidates, then that means he either needs to run against Democrats during the general or he needs to run them during the primary. If he runs against Democrats, that's doomed to fail. If he runs during the primary, then they become Democrats... and are more or less trapped into the cycle of Democratic politics.
Seems hard to pull off for the sake that a local platform that sells in one state WON'T sell in another. Seems hard to get 400 candidates on all the same page. Also trying to rely only on small donations, avoid "career politicians" and the nebulousness of their vetting process I think will all lead to problems. It's still an interesting thing to try.
Right, it is interesting. It's interesting because it's unique. It sounds like a party... but it's not quite one, because this is a) meant to be a one time takeover and b) could still happen within the Democratic party, like a sect or caucus or something. Presidential elections get all the attention, and it's so it's very hard for individual candidates in house elections to get attention, but if you run a platform, and not a single person, then suddenly people get very excited (I mean, they ARE already excited, just look at the crazy Bernie fans everywhere) and ask "Ok, who's the platform candidate in my area?" So it ends up working just like a political party is supposed to but it manages to avoid officially being tied to the party (which anti-establishment yuckos would never abide) while seeming fresh, new, and not to mention officially supported by Bernie Sanders (he would support something like this, absolutely).
Some people tried this before. You might remember them as the American Reform Party. Donald Trump was actually a part of this party! They also had a spirit animal in the form of Ross Perot (or was it Ralph Nader?). Clearly they didn't get very far. But I think Bernie Sanders as a spirit animal has a lot more appeal than Ross Perot (or Ralph Vader).
