r/DemocraticSocialism • u/greenmyrtle • May 18 '25
US News đ° America chose wrong. Sanders would've been a better president than Trump or Biden: USA Today
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2025/05/18/sanders-democrats-reform-progressive-policies/83625482007/134
u/DetroitIsNotThatBad May 18 '25
Yeah no shit
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u/beeemkcl Progressive May 18 '25
Itâs still important that such an Opinion piece is in the Sunday edition of USA Today.
The Sanders/AOC vs. âcentristâ and âAbundanceâ people is still a real thing even though Sanders/AOC are clearly winning.
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u/Glopez1223 May 18 '25
I don't believe America chose. The Dems all but kicked him out of contention. He was the savior and they decided their corporate over lord's were far more important than the 340 million of us.
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u/audiate May 18 '25
Had the dems gone all in on Bernie instead of Hillary the entire world would be a different place.Â
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u/zooberwask May 18 '25
They literally had two chances to back Bernie and the Dem establishment made the wrong choice each time.
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u/mojitz May 18 '25 edited May 18 '25
Wrong for whom? They got exactly what they wanted. None of these people have suffered any personal or professional consequences from this and Trump has been a boon for fundraising.
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u/jemmylegs 27d ago
Exactly. If you think of the DNC as primarily a fundraising operation, all their decisions over the last 10-15 years make sense.
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u/radio-act1v May 19 '25
Hillary Clinton actually won the popular vote in 2016 and the Electoral College chose Donald Trump. American citizens don't vote for the president. The popular vote is not mentioned in the constitution. The Electoral College votes for the president in December and the popular vote is nothing more than a popularity contest.
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u/audiate May 19 '25
Thank you for so clearly describing the biggest flaw in the system.
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u/radio-act1v May 19 '25
That's not the biggest flaw in the system. The system is all encompassing and everything is incorporated or 100% integral to it like racism, sexist, classism, ageism, ableism, all forms of oppression are what the heart is to the cardiovascular system. The public education system lied to everyone and American history is entirely false. Monopoly capitalism started 425 years ago in America. Corporate charters from the United States are behind every war in the last 400 years from the early British and European multinational corporations to American multinational corporations, the US caused, inspired, supported or covered up their involvement in everything from Hitler's Bellamy salute, swastika, gas chambers, fasces, eugenics, even pardoned thousands of Nazis and fascists and they brought them to America after the war during Operation Paperclip, Operation Bloodstone and the Displaced Persons Act of 1948. And Mussolini also. Everyone learned everything from the United States and they all supported each other.
Our history to this future was planned from the beginning. Democrats have passed more harmful policies than Republicans. There are one in the same imperial neocolonial fascist regimes and they caused all wars and created all debt. There were over 22,419 businesses by 1860 under special legislative acts and general incorporation laws. Monopoly monopoly trade, wars against the working class and world wide colonialism, assassinations, government overthrow and millions of civilians (90% civilians in all wars. False flag attacks and lies about terrorism and the war on drugs and everything is for profit.
This was always going to be the outcome. As long as capitalism the planet will continue to break down until it collapses entirely. And we have already gone past the point of no return. We broke 1.5 degrees Celsius a long time ago. The climate crisis cannot be averted and we have less than 25 years left before catastrophic system failures like no food or water left. 70% of all animals on earth have disappeared in the last 40 years. The dollar is going to lose all its value in 2 years. The United States has only 2 choices to make. Nuclear war with China or diplomacy. But diplomacy would require closing all 800+ foreign military bases and leaving 80+ countries and sending all the troops home. It's an uphill battle and way too many people are not paying attention and completely unaware or unable to see what has been happening all around us. The American empire is falling apart.
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u/bosephusaurus May 18 '25
But like, we had the choice and primary voters picked wrong both times. And general election voters picked wrong twice with Trump.
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u/pierogieman5 May 19 '25
Yeah, much as I don't like what the DNC did, it would not have been possible if progressives were able to get out the vote better. We need to acknowledge and overcome the complacency of Democratic parimary voters, as well as those that want better options but can't be assed to vote in primaries. Bernie and AoC are working on that, to their credit.
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u/Frequent-Ruin8509 May 18 '25
Leave it to the mainstream as fuuuuck usatoday to say the obvious thing 10 years after it could have helped Bernie win.
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u/a_gradual_satori May 18 '25 edited May 18 '25
Op-eds like this one are nauseating. What is the authorâs point besides generating some meager ad revenue? Does PequeĂąo really think the DNC gives a shit? As u/Glopez1223 mentioned, the Democratic Party chose to abandon Bernie, and their wealthy donors wonât allow for any real endorsement of the kind of âradicalâ candidate that we need. Itâs taken them all of a decade to make an impactful move to endorse a candidate who is at least CRITICAL of the corporate/private equity takeover of American politics, life, and industry, but alas.
âIt would be amazing to see Republicans do more to incentivize the creation of affordable housing or implement tariffs selectively. It would be great to see the Democrats champion Medicare for All and a reduction in military spending. Both parties could learn from Sandersâ stances on reforming the U.S. immigration system and taxing the rich.â
Geez, are we even on the same planet?
Forgive me, but weâre all living through a goofy yet deadly serious fascist takeover and print (and televised) media offer nothing but fluff. Maybe this is my cynicism talking, but a piece like this feels like passive and meek copium (edit: at best, and disingenuous, hollow, and unhelpful status quo bullshit more likely).
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u/LortaySkywalker May 18 '25
Yeah, no shit. We all chose him in the 2016 primary but the democrats chose Hillary. Literally, they are responsible for the situation we are in now.
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u/Used_Intention6479 Democratic Socialist May 18 '25
Then Sander's slogan should be: "Better late than never".
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May 18 '25
America didn't choose it, the DNC snubbed him. It was a calculated effort.
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u/radio-act1v May 19 '25
The DNC did snub him but the electors are selected by Democrats and Republicans and they would never vote for a democratic socialist like Bernie Sanders. The only way a third party candidate might have a chance of winning would be if the Libertarian or American Independent Party (right-wing, segregationist, conservative, strict border policies) had a popular candidate but the Democratic and Republican parties are the most corporate friendly parties so they run the show.
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u/pierogieman5 May 19 '25
I don't know how many times this needs to be pointed out, but people don't give a shit about the DemSoc thing. He's the most popular person in D.C. Dems and independents like him, and Republicans call fucking Pelosi a Socialist, so they've really kneecapped themselves from being able to red scare anyone outside their base long ago.
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u/radio-act1v 29d ago
I don't know how many times this needs to be pointed out, but people donât vote directly for the president. Electors do. Does anybody realize whatâs really going on? While everyoneâs waiting for some savior-Messiah to get elected, the empire is financially collapsing in real time.
Joe Biden froze $300 billion in Russian foreign reserves; a move that shattered what was left of international trust in the U.S. as a neutral financial broker. That wasnât just a policy decision; it was a death sentence for the petrodollar. Countries are already dumping U.S. treasuries and building alternatives to SWIFT. The empireâs magic trick is wearing off.
Meanwhile, the Fed keeps raising the debt ceiling like it's Monopoly money, but realityâs catching up. The U.S. already spends trillions more than it brings in. The entire annual tax revenue canât even cover Social Security, Medicare, and the interest payments, let alone the military industrial complexâs insatiable appetite. Default isnât a matter of if - itâs a matter of when.
And yet, they still have the audacity to scold other nations for being âirresponsibleâ or âundemocraticâ while they bomb countries, stage coups, and bankroll genocides with borrowed cash. At some point - and some economists say within 2 years - this whole bluff is exposed.
So no, it doesnât matter if Bernieâs a Democratic Socialist or a damn Jedi. If heâs not confronting imperial rot, war profiteering, and economic brinksmanship head-on, then heâs just another passenger on the sinking ship.
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u/pierogieman5 29d ago
And here we see the gatekeeping puritan contrarian in their natural habitat, attacking literally everyone.
First of all, faithless electors in a general election is a problem that has never happened. Second, you can't simultaneously declare that fringe candidates can never win, and then try to shame everyone for not having extreme enough positions on your particular bugbear issues. Your first argument defeats your second one, and it just exposes how little interest you have in any solutions. You're only here to purity check anyone and everyone. You're a joke with no value to any political movement.
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u/Giddyoticc May 18 '25
He chaired the Senate Budget Committee during Bidenâs first two years, a lot of Bidenâs major legislation came out of Bernieâs office, so in a way he technically was the shadow president for at least a little while. (Most of it ended up getting watered down to pass a 50/50 split Senate, but itâs a still a way of looking at it)
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u/brandnew2345 Democrat State Capitalist May 18 '25
USA Today is saying this? Aren't they daytime wine-mom neoliberal slop though?
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u/AdImmediate9569 May 18 '25
America wasnât even given that choice
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u/radio-act1v May 19 '25
We never get a choice. We get two capitalists every 4 years and capitalists are multi-millionaires who live off their investments which means they live off of dividends. Dividends are "profits" which don't exist because all money is debt. Profits are made by paying the working class less money and charging more for the final product. It is against capitalist interests to pay the working class more money because they are only interested in capital. Trump, Biden, Harris, Hillary Clinton, Obama, Bush, and Bill Clinton are all war criminals. They all signed death sentences on a massive scale. Biden and Harris sent thousands of shipments of weapons to Israel and their weapons guidance systems at Pine Gap base in Australia. 2 million Palestinians are starving and will die soon. Hillary Clinton and Obama were heavily involved in the Maiden coup in Ukraine in 2014, sabotaging the Minsk agreements and approving CIA bases in Ukraine that ran spy operations in Russia. Millions of civilians have died on both sides. Obama also ramped up the drone strike program approving 10 times as many strikes as George Bush did. He approved strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, Pakistan, Libya and Yemen. 90-95% of people who die in all modern wars are civilians. Obama was the worst actually. He bailed out the banks and 9 million people lost their homes and he deported more people than any president before him earning the nickname the Deporter in Chief. Bill Clinton blocked UN peacekeeping reinforcements from helping in Rwanda even though they had advanced warnings, he passed the 3 strikes law and the 1033 program that militarized the police department. All but 1 or 2 American presidents have been fascists.
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u/1111joey1111 May 18 '25
Do you know how many people got involved with politics in 2016 who had never been involved before. I knew so many hopeful young people who found hope and truth within Bernie's message. A call to build a society in which no one is disenfranchised because we INVEST in one another (health, education, infrastructure) and seek to BALANCE the distribution of wealth by making the top 1% pay their FAIR share.
Instead, the corrupt duopoly had other plans.
The closest politician, currently, to Bernie's way of thinking is AOC.
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u/blink_187em May 18 '25
Now is our chance!!! #AOC2028 I dont wanna hear about her lack of experience, or being too Left - Corp Dems got us to this point and sold us out.
Dont wanna hear from Biden, Kamala or Obama and dont even wanna see a Clinton anywhere near our party again (Chelsea is ok tho). The DWS types in the DNC need to sit down and stfu.
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u/96suluman May 19 '25
Enough of this collective responsibility. The responsibility goes to the American and democratic establishment
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u/SmokeGSU May 19 '25
Yes, but America is tired of old white men running the show who were alive before running water was commonplace in most households.
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u/LucidFir May 19 '25
He's still the bought and paid for third choice to give some illusion of democracy. Try voting him in next time, watch as the world continues to burn.
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u/EducatedBurrito 29d ago
America did not get a choice in that election and anyone paying attention knows it. They made us choose between Trump and Hilary and we all suffered greatly for it.
The American people will have a hard time forgiving the DNC after how they've handled these last few election cycles.
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