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On Colbert’s Late Show, Bernie Sanders responds to Hillary Clinton, tries to say something nice on Trump

On Thursday’s Late Show, Stephen Colbert asked Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) if he missed the cheers from crowds, now that he’s no longer campaigning for president. He said yes, but he is promoting a book, Bernie Sanders Guide to Political Revolution. Instead of talking about it, Colbert asked about the book coming out from Hillary Clinton, who will be on The Late Show Sept. 19. He read Sanders some of Clinton’s comments about him and the lasting damage she said Sanders did to her campaign, making it harder to unify progressives.

Sanders disagreed with that assessment, saying “the progressive movement today and grassroots activism is stronger than it has been in many, many years,” and crediting his campaign for getting younger people to vote and run for office. “We have got to stand together against [President] Trump’s efforts to divide us up, take on the billionaire class, and make that political revolution,” Sanders said. Then he took a stab at unity: “Look, you know, Secretary Clinton ran against the most unpopular candidate in the history of this country, and she lost, and she was upset about it, and I understand that. But our job now is really not to go backwards. It is to go forward.”

Colbert agreed, then turned back to 2016 with a wink, asking about Clinton’s line about Sanders promising ponies. Sanders said none of his promises were “pipe dreams.” His campaign “broke through a box” and “helped transform politics in America,” he said. Colbert asked Sanders for some suggestions on what he should ask Clinton about those ponies, and Sanders said she should join the progressive crusade. “We need her help to go forward, let’s not keep arguing about 2016,” he said. “Let’s get together, take on Trump’s desire to divide us up, let’s go forward with a progressive agenda. Ask her if she’ll do that.”

Heres have another chuckle after watching Sanders on Colbert…

Bernie backers’ attacks on Democrats infuriate the party

Prominent Democrats are increasingly riled by attacks from Bernie Sanders’ supporters, whose demands for ideological purity are hurting the party ahead of the 2018 midterms and 2020 presidential election, they say.

But it’s not just the outside agitators that Democratic lawmakers, operatives, and activists are annoyed with: They’re tired of what they see as the senator’s hesitance to confront his own backers, either in public or through back channels.

Tensions boiled over recently when a handful of Sanders loyalists bashed freshman Sen. Kamala Harris — a rising star in the party and potential 2020 hopeful — as an establishment tool. Democrats were also rankled that other prominent Sanders allies said support for single-payer health care should be a litmus test for candidates.

In response, Democratic senators and outside groups have begun telling Sanders and friendly intermediaries that if he wants to be a leading figure for Democrats ahead of 2020’s presidential election, he needs to get his supporters in line — or at least publicly disavow their more incendiary statements.

The confrontations, they insist, threaten party unity ahead of a critical midterm election cycle, when Democrats have a shot at winning the House and several governor’s offices.

“The Democratic Party has treated Senator Sanders exceptionally well. We collectively let him run in our primaries when he declared he wasn’t a Democrat — I count that as a great favor, and an opportunity almost no one else has ever received,” said former Democratic National Committee chairman Don Fowler, who has called for the independent Sanders to formally join the party.

Bernie Sanders’ revolution is still alive — but is democratic socialism a realistic goal?

Since Bernie Sanders’ historic presidential run ended last year, the senator from Vermont has attempted to keep his “political revolution” alive in order to bring about lasting change. Though he lost his Democratic primary run against Hillary Clinton more than a year ago, today Sanders is the undisputed face of progressive politics in America, and consistently ranks as the most popular politician in the country. He is in a very good position, then, to promote his cause and continue his political revolution.

Yet even as Sanders has become a household name in America, some uncertainty has lingered about his political revolution and what it truly represents. Is, for example, Sanders a democratic socialist — as he calls himself — or is he more of a social democrat? And just how radical — and revolutionary — is his political revolution? The word revolution does, after all, historically denote the abrupt and often violent overthrow of a government and/or social system.

In one interview with Rolling Stone last year, Sanders was explicitly asked by Tim Dickinson whether he supported an “overthrow of the capitalist system” like one of his political heroes, five-time Socialist Party presidential candidate Eugene Debs. The senator’s response was unequivocal. “No, no, no. Now you’re being provocative,” said Sanders, who went on to lay out what he actually meant by political revolution:

What we have got to do is not only overturn Citizens United, but we have got to move, in my view, to public funding of elections. We have to pass universal legislation that makes everybody in this country who is 18 or older eligible to vote, so we do away with the Republican voter suppression around the country.

This, of course, is what one would call a reformist agenda rather than a revolutionary one — which is essentially what the Sanders campaign was all about. Though Sanders identified as a “democratic socialist” and advocated a “political revolution,” in reality the Vermont senator was more of a social democrat who espoused a bold though decidedly moderate agenda. Sanders did not advocate an overthrow of the government or the collective ownership of the means of production, but a nonviolent popular movement fighting for progressive reforms akin to the New Deal legislation of the 1930s.

Bernie Sanders Wants You

Gabbard Leads OFF Act to End Reliance on Fossil Fuels

Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard introduced legislation seeking an end to the nation’s reliance on Fossil Fuels, and a transition to a clean energy economy by 2035.

HR 3671, also known as the OFF Act, short for Off Fossil Fuels for a Better Future, puts the US on a pathway to replace fossil fuels with 100% clean energy generation and use within 18 years.

The legislation eliminates tax giveaways to the fossil fuel industry, and provides support to transitioning workers who would be impacted by the generational change.

Rep. Gabbard said the measure builds on progress made in Hawaiʻi and other states that have committed to address climate change while improving the health and well being of the public from toxic pollutants, asthma and environmental degradation.

The bill is currently supported by environmental advocates and co-sponsors including Rep. Jamie Raskin (MD-08), Rep. Barbara Lee (CA-13), Rep. Nanette Barragán (CA-44), Rep. Ted Lieu (CA-33), Jan Schakowsky (IL-9), and Keith Ellison (MN-05) and has been endorsed by over 100 clean energy, climate change, and environmental justice organizations.

https://youtu.be/UCqAuo-Hs74

Chris Murphy’s stealthy single-payer pitch

While Bernie Sanders readies a single-payer health care bill that the GOP is itching to attack, one of his Democratic colleagues is proposing a step toward that goal that could give cover to the party’s vulnerable incumbents.

Sen. Chris Murphy, a potential presidential contender, is working on legislation expected this fall that would let every individual and business buy into Medicare as part of Obamacare’s exchanges. As Sanders and other potential challengers to President Donald Trump flock to “Medicare for all,” embracing a top liberal priority before 2020, Murphy is taking a conspicuously more pragmatic approach designed to get Democrats closer to that lofty but potentially unobtainable goal.

In the process, it could give vulnerable Democrats loath to attach themselves to Sanders a more politically palatable alternative that still satisfies the party’s base.

The first-term senator is also raising his national profile by wading into the hot-button single-payer debate — though the Connecticut Democrat has tamped down talk that he might take on Trump in 2020. It’s not about competing with Sanders, Murphy says, but rather offering a complementary path toward the creation of a single-payer system.

“Bernie is setting a really important marker for where he and many people in our party think the health care system needs to be,” Murphy — one of the Affordable Care Act’s staunchest defenders since its earliest days — told POLITICO.

Centrist Dem: Maybe we should look at single-payer health care

Sen Jon. Tester (D-Mont.) on Wednesday said Congress should perhaps take a “solid look” at a single-payer health care system.

Tester’s comments during a bipartisan hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee come at a time when more Democrats are getting on board with the idea of government-funded health care.

Tester, a centrist, spoke about how his parents lived without health insurance for most of their life, until they went on Medicare.

“My folks never had health insurance on the farm. They retired in 1970. Never had health insurance ever.”

“Their first insurance they had was Medicare. There’s a reason for that: In the mid-60s when that happened, it was $400,” said Tester, who is up for reelection in what is likely to be one of the most competitive Senate races in 2018.
“So the question is, there’s been a lot of debate, there’s been amendments offered on single payer for political purposes, but maybe not. Maybe it’s something we should, quite frankly, take a solid look at.”

Baucus backs single-payer health system

It’s time for America to consider seriously a single-payer, government-run health system, says Max Baucus, Montana’s longest serving U.S. senator, former ambassador to China and one of the chief architects of Obamacare.

“My personal view is we’ve got to start looking at single-payer,” Baucus said Thursday night at Montana State University. “I think we should have hearings…. We’re getting there. It’s going to happen.”

It was a startling turnaround for Baucus, who eight years ago was chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee and a key Democratic leader in the political battles that ultimately passed the Affordable Care Act.

Back then, Baucus said, he felt adamantly that Congress wouldn’t pass a government-run system like Canada’s. So it was the one alternative he refused to put “on the table” for consideration.

But you can see the difference, Baucus said, when you visit hospitals on either side of the border. In Montana, half a rural hospital will be dedicated to processing medical insurance claims. In Canada, he said, just one small room is needed to verify that patients are residents.

And Americans pay much higher drug prices, he said, because the government can’t negotiate better prices with the drug industry, so U.S. patients end up subsidizing drug prices for the rest of the world.

As Planet Rages With Fires and Storms, Ire Aimed at Murderous Climate Denialism

As Houston begins its long recovery from Hurricane Harvey, epic wildfires burn throughout the western U.S., and Irma charges toward Florida after devastating several Caribbean islands, while two other storms build strength in the Atlantic basin, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh is among those helping to expose the deadly consequences of climate change denialism by claiming threats posed by such global warming-related events are being exaggerated.

And so while climate activist Bill McKibben on Thursday morning warned that “we’ve never had anything quite like” the current fires and storms now being experienced, it was The Nation’s Mark Hertsgaard who argues, in a piece titled “Climate Denialism Is Literally Killing Us,” that those who have made it public policy to downplay the threat of man-made climate change should be held to account for the deaths that such denialism is now causing.

During his show on Tuesday, Limbaugh told his listeners: “There is a desire to advance this climate change agenda, and hurricanes are one of the fastest and best ways to do it…. All you need is to create the fear and panic accompanied by talk that climate change is causing hurricanes to become more frequent and bigger and dangerous, and it’s mission accomplished, agenda advanced.”

He also alleged that reporting about hurricanes results from a “symbiotic relationship between retailers and local media” that “revolves around money,” adding: “The media benefits with the panic with increased eyeballs, and the retailers benefit from the panic with increased sales, and the TV companies benefit because they’re getting advertising dollars from the businesses that are seeing all this attention from customers.”

But these comments—which arrived as people in the Caribbean made emergency preparations for landfall and officials in Florida began announcing mandatory evacuations—were immediately decried as irresponsible.