Regi Metcalf
Aug 25, 2017 · 2 min read

well, i haven’t read all the comments and maybe i’m late to the party, but i’m finding it hard to believe that we would be facing the same “deconstruction of the administrative state” under a Sanders admin that we are facing now. if nothing else, sessions, mnuchin, bannon, miller, gorka, pruitt, carson, devos, etc would have gotten nowhere near the levers of power that they have today. you MAY be write that on some foreign policy issues, Sanders would have continued the same policies of the Obama admin. Frankly, i’m not sure you’re wrong about that (although, i’m pretty sure we wouldn’t have the same pushback on russia sanctions that Herr Cheeto is mounting). And you’re certainly right that elections and voting ALONE will not change the country in all the ways it needs changing. But do you really think we’d have a Neil Gorsuch on the SC if Sanders were president? Not to mention the 2–3 seats Herr Cheeto (or Pencehead) will get to nominate over the next few years. (imho, that alone would be worth the change.) Do you really think that the ACA would be hanging by the thread that it is today and that Medicare-for-all would still only be a distant dream? That the Keystone and XL pipelines would have been approved? That we wouldn’t have been moving to make more clean energy a priority? (By the way, you don’t follow out your thought experiment anywhere near far enough, imo. After all, there’s no way in hell Sanders would have won the general without a seachange further down the ticket: there would have at least been one house of congress, if not both, now controlled by democrats, as well.) Do you really think there would be NO difference in how the gov’t actually works, or, more to the point, doesn’t work on a day to day basis today?

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