Thursday, April 07, 2016

To my point yesterday...

the other pole to Bernie Sanders' current surge is his unrelenting focus on breaking up The Big Banks, that has potent resonance across the board even with nominal republicans.
A bit of background is required here, American psychology is weighed towards a profound animus towards anyone who is perceived as "Getting Away With It". We easily reconcile with Big Business, Private Initiative, the Myths and Realities of Rugged Individualism, but if you abuse power to game the system the citizenry generally turns on you plenty quick.
The abiding exception is anyone perceived as an "UnderDog" then the view of the abuse of power gets more nuanced at least in terms of mass psychology.
The Banks and Investment Houses are pretty much seen as "Having Gotten Away with Murder", the Middle class has been defrauded and personal savings have vanished...and the plain people, clearly blame the Moneylenders.
The constitutionality of what Sanders' proposes can be debated but once again he has skillfully seized a powerful issue that almost everyone else has fearfully ignored.
People don't like it when the powerful skip out on consequences, Bernie gets that.
As democrats going forward I think we ignore the larger issues of student debt and financial malfeasance at our peril. To built a coalition this fall we are gonna need to make some bold and practical proposals and push them hard come the fall.
You can debate Sanders proposals but but they are extracted of issues that have been ignored up until now.

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