Bernie is really fucking old. He can't leave the door open forever.

[betsuni]

42. Not populist. FDR was a top 1% elite establishment wealthy capitalist, not a populist or democratic socialist.

He "won the presidency with a campaign that was about one-quarter financed by Wall Street bankers and stockbrokers. ... You can't get any deeper into the 'establishment' than that. ... People should not be judged by wealth or social position ... . To do so is prejudice. People should be judged as individuals, by their words and by their actions. If we were to accept the rantings ... against the 1% and the 'entire political establishment' right down to the 'local party leaders,' we would have to condemn Franklin Roosevelt to the lowest circle of political hell. This is not a path toward progress but a throwback to a darker age."

Was FDR the liberal Democrat more progressive than today's liberal Democrats? No. There has been no "shifting to the Right" of the Democratic Party.

"... suppose a Great Depression had started in 2005 and Obama had done what FDR did. Here's what that might look like: "A couple of years into the Great Depression of 2005, Obama decided to run for president on a platform promising 'a federal budget annually balanced.' And he personally promised that when he took office he would implement 'an immediate and drastic reduction of governmental expenditures.' But Obama quickly fixed the bank panic with free deposit insurance for the banks, and the economy began to recover, with unemployment dropping from 25% to 17%. But as Keynes had to remind him, he had not increased government spending, so unemployment shot back up to 22%. After two and a half years, Obama passed Obamacare (similar to Social Security), but it only took in money for the first few years while providing no healthcare, and it was deliberately sexist and racist.

"Early in his second term, Obama got the unemployment rate down to 11%, so he decided the economy no longer needed much support and cut government spending. That sent unemployment back up to 20%. At the start of his third term, America was attacked by Iran, so he put 110,000 Muslims -- whole families -- in concentration camps for three years. .... Obviously, Obama did nothing like this and was a vastly more progressive president than Roosevelt. ... He was on the side of the common man, but he was more of a politician than a radical, and the times were different. That's how you get things done."

Steven Stoft