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this is a work-in-progress page. i plan to add sources, citations, and hopefully spoiler tags. the lettering and ordering may change.


baab-A: bernie is a socialist/communist/marxist/maoist.

An example of equivocation - acting like Democratic Socialism is the same as Marxist Communism because they have the word "socialism" in common. The cherry-picked example is always a terrible place like communist Venezeula rather than Democratic Socialist countries like Denmark, Norway, Australia, or Canada, which are pleasant places to live.


Oh, and the US; roads are socialist. Trash collectors are socialist. See the blue image at left to realize you're silly for screaming against socialism.

No one made it "all on their own." Try starting a successful tech business in developing nations that don't have police forces or taxpayer-funded roads, or an electric power grid. it's probably difficult, right? If you built your profitable company in the US, leveraging our taxpayer-funded infrastructure (and educational system to get your smart employees) it only makes sense that you should then have to pay your fair share of taxes so that all those who come after you have the same or better opportunities than what you had. Imagine how many starving African or Asian kids could be spending their time as adults curing cancer or solving pollution problems if only they'd had the kinds of social safety net and infrastructure we've had, thanks to our tax dollars - when instead they are suffering from curable illnesses and starving. We're all in this together, and socialism used well is about leveling the playing field and maximizing the potential of each individual to contribute meaningfully to our nation and world.


The key thing to understand is that when YOUR family is healthy and educated, I am better off. When YOUR family is healthy and educated, it lifts ALL of us up, both culturally and economically, and in terms of the personal potential we can help each other realize that will in turn improve the quality of life for EVERYONE.


We have lots of socialist programs that HELP us and make life better for us all. Don't get so scared of the label "socialist" that you ignore the content and nuance. Some systems work best when privatized. Some work best when socialized. Every modern nation is a balance between socialism and capitalism. But for some reason if we add healthcare and college education to the list of programs we socialize, the world will explode? No, don't fall for it. The only people who stand to suffer from making healthcare and education more affordable are those who want you dumb, scared, sick, and apathetic. In other words, controllable. It's hard to set aside time to protest unfair policies or corrupt politicians when you're desperately trying to find money to pay for your last doctor's visit or pay off your student loans, or if you lack the education to know HOW you can speak up and have your grievances redressed.

In the case of education, we should try to incentivize it rather than penalizing it. One European country PAYS people to go to college - because they understand that when every citizen is educated, every other citizen benefits from the fruits of that education. I've seen no good reason against funding college that couldn't also be used against funding high school or elementary school, which we all accept (well, those of us with sense) as a standard, necessary part of building a stronger nation.

The problem right now is that we give billions in dollars to the richest, most profitable corporations instead of helping our people. We have corporate welfare that DWARFS any help we give to working people.


a better explanation than mine: https://www.quora.com/Did-Bernie-Sanders-ever-praise-Hugo-Chavez


baab-B: bernie should not run again because he already had a chance!

A couple of things:


1) Bernie didn't have a FAIR chance in 2016. He didn't start the race with the same level of clout and name recognition that his opponent had. Try 2016 again, but with Bernie starting off with the name recognition of Hillary Clinton, and without the DNC being practically owned by Hillary Clinton, and see what you end up with.


2) That's not how democracy works. There are not and should not be limits on how many 'attempts' you can give in running for public office. The merit of your ideas doesn't "expire" after losing 5 elections. Even jerks like Ted Cruz should be able to go out there, present their cases, and win or lose based on the merit of that case, not based on "nope, Ted Cruz has already attempted to run for office 9 times and lost, so therefore he's automatically disqualified from running again." This is a vapid, counter-democratic objection to Bernie running again.


baab-C: bernie divided the democratic party during an important election

you're shooting the messenger. Bernie exposed the corruption and in-authenticity of the Democratic Party simply by contrast: by being an authentic and honest person who clearly cared about helping Americans. If your candidate (Clinton) can't tolerate standing next to an honest person, that's your candidate's problem, not the problem of the honest person standing next to them. If honestly assessing the situation hurts your party, then your party earned being hurt. It's cynical victim-blaming to blame the people who have integrity because they won't bow to the people who DON'T have integrity.

A lot of this argument is cynicism and often comes down to "we know the DNC is messed up, but just shut your mouth about it because Trump is worse." If you ran GOOD candidates, then politicians like Trump would be CRUSHED. The fact that these elections are close at all--in an era where Bernie is the most popular politician in the country and in an era where the country is overwhelmingly liberal and progressive if you poll according to policy positions, is an indictment of the terrible state of the DNC.


You HAVE to admit there are problems if you want to correct them. The DNC has lost 1000 seats since 2010, and have now lost the House, the Supreme Court, the Presidency, the Senate, the majority of state governorships, and the majority of state legislatures. Sanders didn't do that. The DNC did. He simply pointed out that it will CONTINUE to happen if the DNC keeps representing their corporate donors to the exclusion of the American people. You can't get mad at Democratic voters for not getting excited to vote for Republican Lite politicians like Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton wasn't ESPECIALLY corrupt (maybe) but she was more of the same corporate BS in a time when Americans need politicians to ACTUALLY represent them for a change. You can get mad at the messenger, and democratic voters who have optimism and integrity, OR you can actually solve the problems the DNC has by getting corporate and lobbyist money out of our elections through methods like wolf-pac.com and justicedemocrats.com and ending gerrymandering and getting instant run-off voting in every election. You decide.


baab-D: bernie hasn't gotten anything accomplished in his 30 years in Congress

Bernie is known as the Amendment King. He's gotten more roll-call amendments on bills than any other senator from 1995 to 2007. He's been preaching the same, correct message for decades, and now Americans are becoming aware and agreeing with him. America is finally catching up to Sanders because he was right all along. A tiny example is WHY he voted against the Iraq war (we wast money and lives and make things worse in Iraq) and history has unfortunately shown him to be right. it's a GOOD thing to preach the same thing for 30 years if you were RIGHT to begin with. info here.


baab-E: bernie followers are a cult

or....he hammers on policy positions in every speech, and we have looked into those policy positions and support them. maybe? this is an empty smear. the cult of personality thing is something corporate media and corporate democrats and republicans do (I've seen it with Clinton and Trump supporters sometimes - supporting the PERSON instead of the POLICIES). But this doesn't ring true of Sanders supporters to me. if bernie stopped supporting progressive goals, he'd lose us as supporters. likewise, any politician who adopts a progressive platform like Bernie's will get our support as quickly as we gave it to Bernie. it's that simple. you can't get less cult-like than that. on the other hand, a recent poll showed that 62 percent of trump supporters claim there is NOTHING Trump can do to lose their support.

baab-F: Bernie proposed Medicare-for-All with no way to pay for it!

Here ya go, lazy ditto head. Try checking Sanders' OWN site first before parroting corporate right-wing talking points: https://t.co/XbedGgBr21


baab-G: bernie promises free stuff he can't pay for.

we always have money for more corporate wars around the world (Iraq and Afghanistan are worse off since we started those 2 trillion dollar wars), but when it comes to something that actually helps our people like education or healthcare, suddenly we have no money to do anything. We always have money to give giant tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations, but not to feed the hungry children in our own country. that's GOP logic. every other modern nation has figured out how to provide universal healthcare to its citizens, but we, the richest country the world has ever seen, can't afford it, and we're not smart enough to figure it out? Of course we can.

Single payer countries have issues with wait times for elective procedures (we have to wait weeks or months for appointments in the US, or did you forget?) and those nations have to make tough decisions about whether taxpayers can afford to spend lots of money on one person who needs expensive experimental treatments, but their problems are WAY better than our "wallet biopsy" that gets done in our hospitals. If politicians manage taxpayer dollars poorly, we can boot them out of office. but the death panels in the united states - the health insurance company board rooms that decide whether you live or die? we can't fire them for being greedy or selfish. none of the dozens of modern nations that have adopted single-payer systems have EVER gotten rid of them. And in America, Medicare (socialized healthcare) is the top rated government program. Americans LOVE it. Americans pay more for healthcare than other modern nations, pay more for prescriptions than ANY other modern nation, and our health outcomes are WORSE. Single payer systems solve all those problems, and in single payer systems the wealthy can still pay for insurance if they want better than average care, but no one goes WITHOUT.


We can fund things like universal healthcare and tuition-free college by (gasp) raising taxes on the wealthy, eliminating loopholes and offshore tax havens for corporations, eliminating subsidies for polluting corporations, cutting our military spending (we have 900 military bases and a military budget bigger than the next 8 nations combined, most of which are our allies), re-instituting an uptick on short-selling stocks, and putting a tax on Wall Street speculations (which other countries already do).


And, yes, taxpayers would pay more in taxes but ultimately SAVE money because they would not have to pay insurance premiums or copays. Americans wouldn't any longer have to fund the yachts of insurance company CEOs. The number one cause of bankruptcy in the US is medical bills. No one should die just because they are broke. That's not America. Or it is, but it shouldn't be.
















baab-H: bernie's not even a democrat.

You're right. Bernie is what the democratic party is SUPPOSED to be, what it was before corporate donor money turned liberals into neoliberals around 1970 and continued to worsen under Bill Clinton and even Obama. The Democratic party is fine with using Bernie as their poster boy (polling shows Bernie is the most popular politician in the country by far, and that his agenda is super popular even among republican voters - and the DNC knows it) but the DNC would rather lose to terrible GOP candidates than be run by someone like bernie who doesn't take the big donor money and would not be beholden to corporate interests.


baab-I: bernie loves Venezuelan dictators.

bernie once acknowledged that even some dictators have universal healthcare programs. it's a fallacy to say "you are wrong about issue X, so therefore you are automatically wrong about issue Y as well." every issue must be examined on its own merits, and expressing support for one GOOD program, does not mean you support BAD programs, too. again, here: https://www.quora.com/Did-Bernie-Sanders-ever-praise-Hugo-Chavez


baab-J: bernie's too old to be president.

he looks old because he has shit to do instead of spending his time looking pretty. Trump and Hillary Clinton are about 4 years younger than Bernie, and Joe Biden, who corporate DNC leaders want to run in 2020, is only 1 year younger than Bernie. The age thing is just a BS talking point smear that corporate media and corporate dems are happy to throw out as soon as it benefits them.

Bernie's health is just fine. FDR was in a wheelchair with polio when he won World War II and got us out of the Great Depression. Oh, he didn't do that alone, you say? Exactly. The point is - it's your vision for the country that must be good, and getting good people to help you execute it. Physical age is almost totally irrelevant. I'd also rather vote for Bernie's corpse than a monster like Donald Trump.


baab-K: bernie's wife committed bank fraud.

Those allegations that surfaced in early 2017 were quickly debunked as hearsay, even by Bernie's political opponents. There's nothing to it.

baab-L: Bernie and wife own three homes, so they are hypocrites.

Every congressmen owns two houses - one in Washington, and one in their home state. bernie and jane were able to save up/inherit money for a vacation home. good for them. It’s not hypocrisy because Sanders doesn’t fight for CHARITY, but for PUBLIC POLICY. you know, the REAL solution to these problems.  the good you do by raising awareness and voting and fighting for good policies VASTLY outweighs any tiny harm your house or jet could do. The same applies to Al Gore flying a jet around everywhere to spread the info about climate change; even if Al Gore's house has no solar panels (he DOES now), the good done by raising awareness to millions of people, VASTLY outweighs it. Don't be silly. These smears are desperate.


baab-M: bernie supporters are violent/racist/sexist

Bernie has repeatedly verbally denounced violence, racism, and bigotry and ALL of his policy proposals fight for the exact opposite of a violent agenda. Bernie chained himself to black protestors in the 1960s to aid in the Civil Rights movement. bernie has a 100% pro choice voting record. bernie was pro trans rights in 1972. The most liberal, progressive, anti-violence politician in the country is racist/sexist/violent? A vapid smear that only works if you know NOTHING about Bernie Sanders. bernie DARED to run against a woman (Hillary Clinton) and some irrational people think that automatically makes you sexist, too. No, it doesn't.

When shown a few random tweets from assholes who later became called 'bernie bro's" bernie denounced them publicly. "We don't want that crap." Bernie is massively popular with millennials and with women and with minorities. A recent poll showed Bernie is the most popular politician among 80% of black americans, too. If you care about actual polling data, that is. More about how some Bernie Bros were paid russian trolls: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHqp6ar2HD4

The story of the chair being thrown by a Bernie supporter during the Nevada primary in 2016...has no evidence to back it up but was spread by corporate media like CNN for awhile based on a video of a guy "brandishing a chair." There's a video of one guy raising a chair, then someone comes and hugs him and he puts it down. Bernie was hardly responsible for that. But the media use that smear to avoid talking about WHY bernie supporters were upset; the Nevada DNC had just altered the rules to screw Bernie supporters out of delegates in the primary. A vapid distraction.


baab-N: he's buying sports cars with small donor money.

Based on a random photo of a guy who looked like Bernie driving a fancy car near a Bernie Sanders tour bus during the Democratic Primary, taken from the side. Vapid. To demonstrate this, you'd need to 1) demonstrate that is actually Bernie, and 2) demonstrate he looted his campaign funds to buy it, instead of spending his own money. Senators make over $250,000 per year, you know. They ain't broke.

And here's something worth noting that applies to all this stuff: being a HYPOCRITE, doesn't automatically make you WRONG about your position. Let's say Bernie Sanders murders babies secretly...how does that make universal healthcare a bad idea? or a green infrastructure deal? It doesn't, which makes this a fallacy. "you are wrong about issue X, so therefore you are automatically wrong about issue Y." It's an ad hominem fallacy. And if you told someone "before you hear Bernie speak, keep in mind that he is a thief," then you'd be committing a poisoning of the well fallacy. Look up logical fallacies if you don't want to keep looking silly. Each idea must be measured on its on merits, regardless of the character or habits of the person presenting it.


But again, this smear has no merit.

baab-O: Bernie is an anti-Semite who hates Israel.

Bernie's Jewish (I actually think he's an atheist, though he's never said it explicitly, and I'm fine with it). He supports Palestine's right to be a nation and expresses concern for the economic struggle of the Palestinians. Criticizing specific policies of the right-wing government of Isreal, doesn't make you an anti-semite. Again, a vapid smear.


baab-P: Bernie couldn't even beat Clinton.

In less than one year, a no-name politician made up a 60 point lead against Clinton, the biggest political machine in modern America, and almost won, even though the corporate media and democratic establishment manipulated the primary against him and put their thumb on the scales (the evidence for that needs its own page). If the votes were taken now, considering Bernie's now the most popular politician in the country and has much better name recognition, he'd stomp Clinton.


baab-Q: Bernie would have been stomped by trump.

Every poll showed bernie was beating Trump by double digits on election day, beating him by far wider margins than Clinton. Bernie does great with independents, who can vote in the general election. Polling data has a margin of error, but it's not hugely off if done well, and it's better than "my gut tells me Trump would have beat him."


Clinton lost the Rust belt. Who won the rust belt? Bernie in the primary. Clinton lost states Obama won in 2008. Who won many of them? Bernie. Bernie also has massive crossover appeal with Republican voters who are simply tired of getting screwed over by the corporate status quo. Many Trump supporters voted for Trump because he APPEARED like an honest populist alternative to a corporate war hawk owned by Wall Street. They were CONNED, and now they're starting to realize it (except maybe the 60% of Trump supporters who when polled said they would NEVER stop supporting him no matter what). An election with a fake right-wing populist and a left-wing corporatist will lead to the right-winger winning. But a LEFT-wing populist would stomp both of them.


50 percent of new voters between 18-36 are independents. 8 out of 10 of them identify as progressive. It's just a matter of time. Bernie is currently the most popular politician in the country. his agenda is popular even among independents and conservatives. and trump is hovering in the 30s. Trump and Clinton were the most disliked politicians in American history. the DNC had to try HARD to lose to that guy.