That Bernie. All he talks about is the same issue, and a few aspects of it. Inequality, inequality, inequality. He’s like a broken record!
In the late 1960’s, Ronald Reagan, having been a corporate spokesman and then the hired national spokesman for the AMA to oppose JFK’s Medicaire policy, ran for governor of California.
It was the state’s ‘golden age’, under the excellent governor Pat Brown, in the Democratic era. Reagan wasn’t exactly getting a lot of traction.
At his campaign stops, he would strongly demonize the young people who were demonstrating in the state, as the Vietnam War protests grew. It wasn’t having a big impact.
His campaign staff told him, what are you doing? Our polls show the voters don’t care about that.
“They will”, he said.
And he was right. By his choosing to talk about that made-up issue a lot, and it being covered, voters came to adopt it and support his position.
As a corporate spokesman, he knew something about shaping public opinion, and making the election about the issues he wanted. And it worked.
That’s what elections are largely about: not ‘the issues’, but which issues the voters care about.
That’s why Republicans can be on the opposite side of voters on issue after issue and still win.
What Bernie understands is that for Democrats to win, Democrats need to make the election about THEIR issues, rather than letting Republicans decide the issues. Because it’s not about ‘the issues’— it’s about whether voters based on issues Democrats win on, or issues Republicans win on.
Bernie has discussed how in his state of Vermont, many rural voters tell him how they disagree with him on issue after issue — but they’ll vote for him because of what they agree on.
And he understands that, nationally, the issue of inequality is not only the most important issue for the country — the one that affects every other issue, including changing our elections — but that it is also the issue Democrats will win on. If Democrats are running on the issues of foreign policy, or challenging the Republicans’ call to abolish federal agencies, or countless other issues Republicans raise — the Democrat may or may not win, tending to win Democratic areas, but it’s not that strong.
The more the country can be a one-issue electorate recognizing the huge threat of record inequality, the more they’ll turn to progressive Democrats to solve the problem, despite other issues.
It’s a pretty critical issue to Democrats’ success. Or, we can have the vacuum filled by the media nonsense of ‘issues’, like Hillary’s e-mail. Or voters can not care about the damn e-mails.
It’s the right political message for Democrats to run and win on. It’s the one that tells those middle class voters who is on their side.
It really is a travesty that trillions of dollars have been redistributed from the people to the top few, while our national debt has reached $20 trillion because of cutting their taxes and it’s not the issue dominating our politics — or the media coverage of our politics. So, Bernie is doing the right thing — no one doubts what his issue is.