this is why i get to vote for bernie sanders. i am the woman living in poverty who will live 12 years less because i am poor. well i don't want that. i want bernie to help me live those 12 years that teh wealthier people get. i have too much work to do to drop dead early.
so no one can say to me that i will lose the race for hillary. that i will throw the race ot the gop. no one gets to say that because i am fighting for my life and my candidate fights for me too.
you think this is a joke or exaggeration? i assure you it is not. if you are not in poverty, then you just don't understand. and you don't get to criticize my choice and my vote. i love my choice and i love that there is someone out there who wants to fight for MY life.
https://www.facebook.com/DUH4All/
Standing By Bernie
By Sue Saltmarsh
It’s been a little over a week since the Healthcare Justice March. As I consciously review and archive the lessons learned on the journey of the HJM, a relentless drumbeat thumps in the background – what’s next, what’s next, what’s next?
The local PDA people here in Springfield have called about joining the Bernie Sanders effort and, indeed, I am excited by his candidacy and the prospect of the power of people like me winning out over the influence of money, maneuvering, and mayhem. But my experience with single-payer organizations has
taught me that I don’t play well with others who want to follow Robert’s Rules of Order. I have no patience for the consensus model and while I’m perfectly willing to follow a leader who is action-oriented and clear in his or her objectives, I have trouble following when I see disorganization, little progress, or repeated missteps. Of course, this group may be different and it might be satisfying to work with them. The only way I’m going to know is to give it a try and it might be good to widen my focus.
Healthcare is my issue. Thanks to my own disease, I have much less time to make a difference in achieving single-payer healthcare than I would like. There are currently two presidential candidates who openly identify as single-payer supporters – Jill Stein and Bernie Sanders. I had the pleasure and honor of meeting Dr. Stein as she came to the HJM to speak. I found her to be a woman of vision and great tenacity – to run as presidential candidate for the Green Party is a mountain few would take on once, let alone twice – but I had to wonder how she would govern in the lion’s den of Washington, surrounded by people she and her party have vilified, deserved or not, from day one without a single ally in Congress.
Having just maxed out my own credit cards financing the HJM, I also had to wonder how she can sustain a presidential campaign for a party that has even fewer deep pockets than the Democrats do and no name recognition or governing experience to point to.Senator Sanders, on the other hand, wisely chose to run as a Democrat, giving his candidacy the legitimacy of an established party infrastructure, though the DNC won’t give him a penny or a word of support until he starts winning primaries and even then, the Clinton machine is strong enough that Bernie may find himself unintentionally creating the third party the Greens would like to be – Democratic Socialists. Far left critics condemn him for “voting for the ACA,” but they don’t even think of what he got for that vote. He got the funding for the community health clinics that low income people depend on for the only access to healthcare they have besides the ER. Would they rather he refused to make that deal, cast a meaningless “no” vote, and tell people, “Well, sorry you have no access to healthcare, but at least you have a senator who won’t compromise on his position!” He did his job – he did what was best for the people.
In addition to such proof of his commitment to his constituency and beyond, he is the only elected politician that I know of who consistently states his position and doesn’t “flip-flop.” He has had the courage to bang the single-payer healthcare drum for decades, but as President Obama now knows, no one person can pass a law and get it implemented all on his own. Making deals, compromising, is the only way a democratic government can work because, guess what? Any president, no matter the percentage of the popular vote he or she gets, is everyone’s president, not just their base’s, and there’s no way any president can please all of us all the time.
So to those on the Left who grumble about Bernie not talking “enough” about race or war or even healthcare, I say if we’re not willing to stick with a candidate who makes no attempt to hide his true colors, who has proven time and again his ability to govern while never abandoning his core principles, who reflects our own ideals and yet is not a rigid ideologue – if we’re already bitching about how imperfect he is, what hope do we have of ever having the leader we want and need? Instead, we’ll keep getting the ones we deserve.
Say what you will about the Republicans, the one thing they have hands down over us is loyalty. Just look at the clown car they’re letting Donald Trump drive right now. No matter who wins their
nomination, even if it’s Trump, they will vote for that guy for no other reason than that he’s not a Democrat. They’ll vote in droves for the guy who will make them poorer, sicker, more discriminated
against, in greater danger, and more likely to end up in prison simply because He’s. A. Republican.
Well, we certainly don’t want to be mindless sheep like that! So what will we do? We will stick our noses in the air and either vote pointlessly for Jill Stein or we’ll stay home, spouting the justification that we refuse to vote for the “lesser of two evils” and thus participate in the corrupt oligarchy our government has become. We’ll have Donald Trump as our president and we’ll deserve him. Why can we not find a middle ground? Yes, the lesser may still be evil, but why can’t we see that the greater evil is way worse?
We each have the right to decide for ourselves what we’ll do. If I could decide for everyone, Bernie would be our president, Jill would be vice president, and every obstructive asshole in Congress (Republican or Democrat) would be replaced by a qualified true Democrat, Socialist, Communist, or Green. Citizens United would be overturned and a constitutional amendment put in place enabling the People to fire Supreme Court justices by referendum, and every single corporation doing business in the
U.S. would have to pay a minimum of 15% of their profits in taxes.
But I’m not the one who decides and there’s only one part of that that I have any control over. My vote. I will be voting for Bernie. If he doesn’t make it through the primaries, I’ll grit my teeth and vote for Hillary because yes, she would be the lesser of two evils, though if we thought the racism aimed at President Obama was bad, just wait until we see the misogyny that will make her presidency four years of pointlessness.
I started this wanting to urge my fellow healthcare activists to shut up and give Bernie the freedom to employ his political wisdom. He is and always will be on our side. But our issue is not a national priority for those tens of thousands who show up to see him wherever he goes. He speaks first to the issues that matter most to the most people, but he never fails to include healthcare among his messages. Let’s see if we’re capable of Republicanesque loyalty here, get our heads out of the sand, learn more about his history of governing well (I highly recommend a visit to Vermont!), and elect the guy who has always beat the odds.
Standing By Bernie
By Sue Saltmarsh
It’s been a little over a week since the Healthcare Justice March. As I consciously review and archive the lessons learned on the journey of the HJM, a relentless drumbeat thumps in the background – what’s next, what’s next, what’s next?
The local PDA people here in Springfield have called about joining the Bernie Sanders effort and, indeed, I am excited by his candidacy and the prospect of the power of people like me winning out over the influence of money, maneuvering, and mayhem. But my experience with single-payer organizations has
taught me that I don’t play well with others who want to follow Robert’s Rules of Order. I have no patience for the consensus model and while I’m perfectly willing to follow a leader who is action-oriented and clear in his or her objectives, I have trouble following when I see disorganization, little progress, or repeated missteps. Of course, this group may be different and it might be satisfying to work with them. The only way I’m going to know is to give it a try and it might be good to widen my focus.
Healthcare is my issue. Thanks to my own disease, I have much less time to make a difference in achieving single-payer healthcare than I would like. There are currently two presidential candidates who openly identify as single-payer supporters – Jill Stein and Bernie Sanders. I had the pleasure and honor of meeting Dr. Stein as she came to the HJM to speak. I found her to be a woman of vision and great tenacity – to run as presidential candidate for the Green Party is a mountain few would take on once, let alone twice – but I had to wonder how she would govern in the lion’s den of Washington, surrounded by people she and her party have vilified, deserved or not, from day one without a single ally in Congress.
Having just maxed out my own credit cards financing the HJM, I also had to wonder how she can sustain a presidential campaign for a party that has even fewer deep pockets than the Democrats do and no name recognition or governing experience to point to.Senator Sanders, on the other hand, wisely chose to run as a Democrat, giving his candidacy the legitimacy of an established party infrastructure, though the DNC won’t give him a penny or a word of support until he starts winning primaries and even then, the Clinton machine is strong enough that Bernie may find himself unintentionally creating the third party the Greens would like to be – Democratic Socialists. Far left critics condemn him for “voting for the ACA,” but they don’t even think of what he got for that vote. He got the funding for the community health clinics that low income people depend on for the only access to healthcare they have besides the ER. Would they rather he refused to make that deal, cast a meaningless “no” vote, and tell people, “Well, sorry you have no access to healthcare, but at least you have a senator who won’t compromise on his position!” He did his job – he did what was best for the people.
In addition to such proof of his commitment to his constituency and beyond, he is the only elected politician that I know of who consistently states his position and doesn’t “flip-flop.” He has had the courage to bang the single-payer healthcare drum for decades, but as President Obama now knows, no one person can pass a law and get it implemented all on his own. Making deals, compromising, is the only way a democratic government can work because, guess what? Any president, no matter the percentage of the popular vote he or she gets, is everyone’s president, not just their base’s, and there’s no way any president can please all of us all the time.
So to those on the Left who grumble about Bernie not talking “enough” about race or war or even healthcare, I say if we’re not willing to stick with a candidate who makes no attempt to hide his true colors, who has proven time and again his ability to govern while never abandoning his core principles, who reflects our own ideals and yet is not a rigid ideologue – if we’re already bitching about how imperfect he is, what hope do we have of ever having the leader we want and need? Instead, we’ll keep getting the ones we deserve.
Say what you will about the Republicans, the one thing they have hands down over us is loyalty. Just look at the clown car they’re letting Donald Trump drive right now. No matter who wins their
nomination, even if it’s Trump, they will vote for that guy for no other reason than that he’s not a Democrat. They’ll vote in droves for the guy who will make them poorer, sicker, more discriminated
against, in greater danger, and more likely to end up in prison simply because He’s. A. Republican.
Well, we certainly don’t want to be mindless sheep like that! So what will we do? We will stick our noses in the air and either vote pointlessly for Jill Stein or we’ll stay home, spouting the justification that we refuse to vote for the “lesser of two evils” and thus participate in the corrupt oligarchy our government has become. We’ll have Donald Trump as our president and we’ll deserve him. Why can we not find a middle ground? Yes, the lesser may still be evil, but why can’t we see that the greater evil is way worse?
We each have the right to decide for ourselves what we’ll do. If I could decide for everyone, Bernie would be our president, Jill would be vice president, and every obstructive asshole in Congress (Republican or Democrat) would be replaced by a qualified true Democrat, Socialist, Communist, or Green. Citizens United would be overturned and a constitutional amendment put in place enabling the People to fire Supreme Court justices by referendum, and every single corporation doing business in the
U.S. would have to pay a minimum of 15% of their profits in taxes.
But I’m not the one who decides and there’s only one part of that that I have any control over. My vote. I will be voting for Bernie. If he doesn’t make it through the primaries, I’ll grit my teeth and vote for Hillary because yes, she would be the lesser of two evils, though if we thought the racism aimed at President Obama was bad, just wait until we see the misogyny that will make her presidency four years of pointlessness.
I started this wanting to urge my fellow healthcare activists to shut up and give Bernie the freedom to employ his political wisdom. He is and always will be on our side. But our issue is not a national priority for those tens of thousands who show up to see him wherever he goes. He speaks first to the issues that matter most to the most people, but he never fails to include healthcare among his messages. Let’s see if we’re capable of Republicanesque loyalty here, get our heads out of the sand, learn more about his history of governing well (I highly recommend a visit to Vermont!), and elect the guy who has always beat the odds.
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