The need for compromise

by | Oct 9, 2015 | 2016 Elections, Editor's Blog | 24 comments

Before everybody jumps on me as a shill for Hillary Clinton, let me say that I’m not working for the Clinton campaign. I’m not even enamored with Hillary Clinton and not sure she can win next November. In fact, if Joe Biden got into the race I would have a hard time not supporting him. Somewhere in a drawer, I have a note Biden sent me in 1987 after I wrote him a letter urging him to run for president.

However, I don’t believe Bernie Sanders can win a general election. If he gets the nomination, I believe he will lose on a magnitude not seen since George McGovern in 1972. I come to that conclusion based on years of chasing the votes of swing voters in states like Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio, Virginia, and, yes, North Carolina. If Sanders’ movement becomes so powerful that those people start to join, I’ll jump on board because it means that a force is in place that will shift the entire country hard to the left. I’m not seeing evidence of that now.

Instead, I’m seeing continued polarization in this country that is bad for everybody. The chaos of the GOP Speaker’s race may be fun to watch, but it’s probably not good for people who need government to function. The Republican Party, and, hence, Congress, is being held hostage by the far right of their party who see compromise as weakness and government disfunction as a strategy to get what they want. If we make things bad enough, their reasoning goes, we’ll eventually get our way.

I’m afraid that’s the same mentality of many Sanders supporters. Reading the comments on my last post reminded me of reading Republican comments about Boehner and the once-future speaker Kevin McCarthy. A common refrain of both movements is that the establishment leaders compromise too quickly.

To hear activists on the left tell it, Barack Obama sold out the country to Wall Street because his reform plan was too weak and Obamacare isn’t single-payer. To hear the ones on the right, Boehner and company have sold out the future to rising debt and government take-over of the health care system. To the left, Democrats are always the first to cave. To the right, it’s the Republicans.

Somehow, a President Bernie Sanders is going to break through this log jam and push through a more progressive agenda than any president since Johnson. Nobody has explained how he will bring the House along with him.

I believe we’re at a time in history when we need leaders who are willing to compromise, not dig in. We face big challenges and the establishments of both parties should realize the source of the resentment driving both the right and left. Neither side trusts the traditional institutions that have sustained the nation. They don’t trust the government and they don’t trust corporations.

Much of the distrust is fueled by the very real perception that people with wealth and power are benefiting disproportionally from both our economic system and our political system. While the pressure to change both needs to, and is, coming from the grassroots outside of the system, the actual change will necessarily come from people who are very much inside the system.

Like only Nixon, who built his career as an anti-communist warrior, could go to China, only an insider can make the changes that will fix our broken institutions. Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden would have a far greater chance of reforming Wall Street or our campaign finance system than Bernie Sanders. If he were president, I don’t think Sanders would have either the temperament or the connections to cut the deals necessary to get our government working again. It’s up to the activists to make sure a Clinton or Biden would.

24 Comments

  1. Lucia Messina

    Good discussion , from many people….on all points. We shall see how the debate goes, if there will be a major shift to or away from any candidate. If Biden gets in, Hillary does poorly, or Bernie is too liberal …all of these are questions for discussion in the future. It’s a long campaign.

  2. Christopher Lizak

    The analogy to McGovern is pretty poor.

    McGovern was an anti-war candidate, and Nixon stole his thunder by ending the draft and engaging in diplomacy with USSR and China – not to mention his very, very socialist wage and price controls.

    “In 1971, President Nixon’s approval rating fell below 50 percent. Despite his 1968 promises to end the Vietnam War, the conflict was dragging on. At home, inflation and unemployment were rising. Nixon restored his popularity through several actions: he took unprecedented diplomatic trips to China and Russia; stepped up efforts to end the war by ordering the bombing of Hanoi; instituted wage and price controls; and ended the draft, partly because of the recent lowering of the voting age from 21 to 18. Nixon’s opponent, South Dakota Senator George McGovern, who won his party’s nomination with a grassroots campaign sparked by the antiwar movement, called for withdrawal from Vietnam and a significant reduction in military spending. McGovern named as his running mate Missouri Senator Thomas Eagleton, who, shortly after the convention, revealed that he had been hospitalized for depression and had received shock therapy. McGovern dropped him from the ticket and replaced him with former ambassador R. Sargent Shriver. The incident created an impression of ineptitude. McGovern was also unable to convince the public of any connection between the Nixon administration and the June break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex.”

    This time around, NOBODY is reacting to actual events, let alone a politically skillful incumbent President trying to keep his job. All the PTB are playing some sick game that we’re not actually in a depression, and there is some kind of pathway back to prosperity.

    Without radical change, there is no pathway out of the current economic quagmire.

    Only two candidates are offering radical change, and Rand Paul has already been eliminated from consideration.

    As unlikely as his chances are, Sanders represents the only potential force for meaningful change. With Hillary, we’ll get Maggie Thatcher. She has to appear as “tough as the guys” – so she’ll be easily manipulated into whatever wars that Wall Street wants, whenever they want them, and our war-based economy will just continue to march onward to the tune of “Amerika uber alles”. Of course, more women will get to join in the slaughter as Hillary expands their rights to serve.

    Biden is only being brought in as an insurance policy, in case Hillary goes down after being indicted for failure to keep classified information secure (as happened to Gen. Petraeus).

  3. Lucia Messina

    This is far different than, what happened with McGovern, because of communications, the internet and all the information out there on FB, blogs, Twitter and cable. The cause may be the same, but this revolution will include a lot more activists, volunteers, voters and groups. The progressives are not walking away from this , even if Bernie doesn’t get the nomination. Neither is the Daily Kos, 350.org, Movetoamend.com , Moms against Guns, or so many movements. The people lending toward Bernie don’t care about the past, just future. And temperament and his connections don’t have a thing to do with is he electable or would make a good President. Let’s not get into a discussion about Bill Clinton and G. Bush and their personal tribulations. That argument is a joke. The real problem for Bernie is the rules, regulations and process by the Democratic Party, b y which we nominate a Presidential candidate. The DNC is old school, not open to change and control by Hillary supporters. You have be part of the game to play it. Most of Bernie’s supporters are not, there are a few in DC and at the state level. It will be interesting to see what happens if Bernie win Iowa, New Hampshire, makes a good showing in SC….. how will the caucus system work for him, who will be his delegates in an open primary ? One thing for sure, this system needs to change…..organizing precincts is barely working anymore. But if you are for Bernie , you better get in involved in the Party this time, change is not coming that fast.

  4. George Greene

    Your title is self-refutng. If your values are correct then there is never a need to compromise them, and compromising them is just capitulating to evil. People who brag about being compromisers or consensus-builders are their own worst enemies. “I don’t think Bernie can win a general election” is the worst kind of abuse of the verb “think” — you ARE NOT *thinking* if you say that!! Nothing is constant BUT CHANGE, and IN CASE YOU HADN’T NOTICED, things ARE changing, RAPIDLY. Nobody would’ve thought a clown like Donald Trump could be viable, yet here he is. I had been paying attention to politics in Dixie since 1968 when my father first ran, and I certainly thought that 40 years of observation entitled me to the opinion that the country wasn’t going to elect a black President. In 2007 and early 2008, I supported John Edwards. He even had surrogates TELLING people that he was “more electable”. As a black person myself, I didn’t favor that language, but I believed it. And it turned out TO BE RIDICULOUS. As all-white a state AS IOWA gave Obama his first victory. There was a bandwagon-effect of people wanting to be part of some IMPORTANT MOMENTOUS change. For anybody to have this-recently-witnessed somebody “unelectable” ACTUALLY GET elected, and KEEP spouting THAT line, IS EMBARRASSING.

    WE DON’T KNOW what is going to happen. OWN your ignorance before you flaunt it.

  5. Dwight Willis

    I love Senator Bernie Sanders. I agree with him on almost every issue. However, I am not a typical NC voter. Should Sanders get the Democratic nomination he would almost certainly lose to almost any GOP nominee. The GOP defamation league would eat him alive. They would surround Senator Sanders with other famous socialists like Marx, Stalin, and Lenin. They would conduct a fear and smear campaign and convince the average voter that he is like all of the other famous socialists. Sanders would lose by a landslide. This means that some Republican would be our next president. Remember how that turned out for us the last time we elected a GOP president. It’s not a risk I’m willing to take. I’ll be voting for Hillary Clinton in the NC Democratic Primary. She’s our best chance for 2016.

    • HunterC

      Just like they slandered Barack Hussein Obama as a Socialist Muslim Kenyan Marxist Whatever-else — he was only elected in an electoral college landslide.

      Seems like we’ve got too many people worried about 1972 and they’ve forgotten about more recent history – like the last presidential election or two.

  6. Avram Friedman

    Clinton and Biden are about the same: representatives of corporate controlled America.
    Doesn’t matter which one you shill for. You’re still not getting it, Thomas. Sanders has the best chance of winning in November because he represents a true revolution in giving back the government to the People. And we are ready for it. This is not just rhetoric. It’s what Jefferson meant when he spoke of the need for a revolution every twenty years or so. Fortunately our system of government provides a peaceful means for accomplishing this. The difference between Sanders and Clinton/Biden is much more than shades of gray. It’s about democracy itself and whether it will survive versus the steady march toward an Orwellian future controlled by Koch brothers and their peers while ignoring climate change, income disparity, criminal injustice and basic human rights.

    Sanders may not be able to accomplish everything he’s advocating for, but, if elected, at least we’ll have one branch of the federal government pulling things back toward the CENTER instead of a continuation of the steady drift to the right Democrats have allowed in the last 30 years.

    Get with the program. We may never again have another candidate as viable as Bernie Sanders to raise these issues and effect real and positive change on a scale necessary to save our planet and a socially acceptable world for our children.

  7. HunterC

    So Biden and Clinton are somehow more career politicians than Sanders?
    And somehow smarter?
    Or something?

    And Sanders supporters who don’t want to shred Social Security — not even expand it, just keep it funded as is by lifting the cap on high earners — are somehow so far crazy to be anti-compromise?

    What?

    When the status quo must be “compromised” away to get along with the “centrists” — you lost yesterday.

    • Matt Phillippi

      Yes. And as another commenter so elliquently put it, its why we have a nation today rather than a collection of independant states today. I have always argued the need for both sides of the table to be heard. We need progressives to push forward new ideas, and conservatives to moderate that change. When the far right controls everything with no check you get Germany in the 30s, when the far left does you get the French Revolution. I think that we can all agree that neither of these options represents an optimal system of government.

    • Cosmic janitor

      HunterC hit the nail square on the head, great post. Clinton and Biden are closet neo-con republikans; both are all about war and continuing the current banker tyranny that profits from military conflict and enslavement of the masses. I am incredulous that some one like Mr. Mills continues to think limiting our options is our best choice, and that re/electing establishment insiders who will say anything to be elected is somehow going to be the change that is mandatory to keep this country from becoming an authoritarian fascist state. Obama, as was Clinton, Bush I and Bush Ii were all establishment phonies that have had a hand in placing us where we are today. It’s going to take a radical paradigm shift to salvage our country from the extreme right – meaning both neo-cons and tea bag crazies, who are the neo-cons brownshirts. US politics is all theater to keep the citizens divided.

  8. Norma

    Refreshing range of views showing serious thinking, a willingness to acknowledge that “compromise” is not automatically a dirty word, and mostly thoughtful re both Bernie and Hillary. I like Bernie, and I believe he would compromise, but I agree with those who say he almost certainly cannot win, though I doubt he would go down as much as McGovern. I see him as a very good legislator, but not so sure about the Executive aspect. However, it might be fascinating to see that energy in the White House, and watch the Tea Party go completely berserk over his budgets.

    I also like Hillary and see her as more able to handle the likes of Putin, and tough enough to push back hard on those who would block support for a host of issues, such as education, environmental needs, immigration, families & children, improving the ACA, etc. Will she compromise sometimes when I would prefer that she not? Sure, but this country was, as pointed out by several others, built on compromise, and frankly without it, we get what we saw yesterday in the House, i.e., utter insanity ultimately very damaging to both our democracy and our economy.

    I have to wonder what it would be like to have Hillary in the White House, and Pelosi as Speaker of the House, and Bernie or Warren as Majority Leader of the Senate!!! On second thought, I have had enough political drama in the past few years to last quite a long time so maybe not.

  9. Lucia Messina

    I will glady write as a guest. give me a day or two, and will have answer to all of Mr. Mills comments. You and Mr. Mills , don’t know me personally, but many people in NC and Raleigh do. I am in SC now and volunteering for Bernie. I have written to Mr. Mills a few times, certainly about the NCDP.

  10. Frank McGuirt

    The reluctance to compromose concerns me most. This nation was built on compromise, the Constitution is filled with it. Now the Republican extremists are being totally unreasonable. This Tea Party of no compromise hurts us all.

  11. Preposte

    I’m in my mid-thirties, so I can’t fully empathize with the trauma that was McGovern, 43 years ago. From what I can tell though, it was so painful that the democratic base has been running from genuinely progressive candidates ever since. As if McGovern proved that America can’t put a progressive in the White House. That being said, most voters seemed to be under the impression that Obama was a progressive when they voted him in, but I’ll admit that were mitigating factors that Sanders can’t claim to have (I generally approve of Obama as POTUS, but I believe he was less progressive than his campaign implied).

    If we were looking purely at his policies, most polls have him on the side of the majority, if not vastly so. Even ideas that seem scary (like a 90% marginal tax rate on income over $400k) turn out to be less so when you look at historical data: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_history_of_the_United_States#/media/File:Historical_Mariginal_Tax_Rate_for_Highest_and_Lowest_Income_Earners.jpg

    Let’s say that Sanders got his message out to 100% of the people (currently his biggest obstacle, presumably because people who support Clinton or Biden don’t want his message to force their candidate to publicly lean further left), and let’s say that he can motivate historically low turnout voters in the democratic party to turn out on election day (motivating youth to get politically involved doesn’t appear to be his problem). If those two things, he could conceivably win the general election. Then what?

    Sanders, as an independent without Democrat support, saw plenty of success in Congress. While he often comes across as an ideologue, he’s behaved more like a pragmatist, attaching incremental improvements to other bills. So many attachments that he became known as the “amendment king”. While many describe him as difficult to work with, he also led bipartisan efforts, such as his work with McCain in passing a VA reform bill last year. One that seemed destined for failure, voted in overwhelmingly.

    However, ff there’s one thing that he doesn’t do well as a politician, it’s curry favors. You could say that, when it comes to political currency, Bernie Sanders is broke. If you don’t support his issue, he won’t “throw you a bone” that he disagrees with to get you on board. Compromise to get part of what he wants instead of none? Sure, but I don’t see him making concessions simply because someone has political leverage.

    When it comes down to it, there are arguments for and against each of the nominees. If someone is Pro-Hillary or Pro-Biden, that is their decision, but most of the arguments that are Pro-Hillary/Biden seem to go back to the same ideas that it is better to win at what you don’t want than to lose as what you do want. Maybe that’s true, but you can still fail at what you don’t want. After all, Hillary or Biden are not locks for the general. Neither of them excite people enough to expect significant differences from the latest voter turnouts that saw immense gains for the GOP in the House and Senate.

    And, it should be said, you can still win at what you do want.

    Bernie Sanders 2016.

    • Preposte

      On re-reading my comment, I admit the compromise paragraph doesn’t make sense. I should have made clear that I see Sanders as someone who is willing to negotiate on the matter at hand, but won’t cave to riders and fund-raising maneuvers.

  12. Patricia Jordan

    Let’s watch the debate and see how it looks. If Biden runs I will probably support him. However I think Clinton has had a bad rap. McCarthy said it Benghazi did do a job on her and I think the e-mail thing is a joke. Sure she used her own computer. Some of the rest of us have too even if we had a company one on hand. We all have virus protection and even the government has been hacked

  13. Pat Poston

    Thomas, I’m an old moderate Dem who has come reluctantly to the conclusion that there is little to compromise over between the two major parties. it used to be that the left-leaning Republicans and right-leaning Democrats could come together in the middle on things, but it seems to me Republican Party has few except hard-right left.

    Moreover, the big political/social issues of the day don’t have much of a middle ground to compromise over. On matters such as declaring war, signing trade treaties, abortion, immigrant amnesty, etc., the answers are either yes or no.

    Where I see most compromise taking place is within the Democratic party, which quite definitely still has right, center, and left factions. That’s where we should concentrate, I think, and don’t waste time trying to placate extreme GOP absolutists. Better just to work like the dickens to get them voted out of Contress so the country has reasonable governance, for goodness sake.

  14. Progressive Wing

    Has any Bernie supporter asked for the mic? Have you? By your twitter site, looks like you could be the guy, or certainly would know of a well-spoken Sanders backer who would pen a guest blog. I doubt Mr. Mills would say no…..

    • Max Socol (@mbsocol)

      I’ve asked a couple of times for Thomas to invite someone to make the case. I don’t think I should be that person, but I can think of at least one local writer who Thomas and I both know who would be a good choice.

  15. Marion

    Me too Max. Go for it! I agree with some of this, Thomas, especially the need to be able to compromise and collaborate. Don’t like All or Nothing’s on any side and don’t find them effective. But let’s see what Bernie can do first, who he can win over, how he does in the debates. HRC certainly has things going against her too. Sometimes I think we’re too “pragmatic” and compromise out of hand, not daring to want what we really want and Ever believe we can get it. What used to be radical can become mainstream, though, I agree, that does not seem the way our country is going nowadays, and if so, it’s Slow Going.

  16. Max Socol (@mbsocol)

    I’m still waiting for you to give a Bernie supporter a chance at the mic. I always enjoy guest contributions here and I’m sure you must know someone who could explain why they support his candidacy. Packaging comments on the internet (including this one, I suppose) as the voice of rational support for his campaign leaves something to be desired, to say the least.

    • Will

      Max, Although I agree with this article, I would be interested in hearing your argument here

    • Pat Wang

      Bernie Sanders is the most exciting candidate we have had for years. Someone needs to stand up for average folks. Too many talking heads discount him because he is nt one of them. I am so fed up with wall street, guns, being screwed at every turn by the NCGA. I am tired of being silent! We can’t afford the meds my husband needs for Alzheimers and we have medicare and insurance. Where is the justice??

      • TY Thompson

        Perhaps you’ve not heard of the Affordable Care Act, just go to the exchange’s web site and enroll in a plan.

Related Posts

GET UPDATES

Get the latest posts from PoliticsNC delivered right to your inbox!

You have Successfully Subscribed!