Portside

There's a perverse form of American exceptionalism circulating around the Clinton camp: just because things work in other countries doesn't mean they can work here. As Hillary herself put it, "We are not Denmark. I love Denmark, but we are the United States of America." True enough, but that has no bearing on why single-payer couldn't work here. The only obstacles are political -- elites, which include Hillary and Starr, don't want it.

When you dare to do big things, big results should be expected. The Sanders program is big, and when you run it through a standard model, you get a big result. - James K. Galbraith (former Executive Director of the Joint Economic Committee - the congressional counterpart to the CEA). Paul Krugman in The New York Times has attacked Sanders' economics. Here a number of prominent economists respond, showing how big a change the proposals actually are. They are HUUUGE.

I knew Friedan and I know she believed the system wasn't just about men and women, either. The author recounts her hours long conversation with Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique, Labor Day weekend 2005, five months before her death. Betty was thoughtful. Finally, she commented: 'We didn't challenge the system enough.'

Reader Comments: Times Invents 'Left' Economists to Attack Sanders; Trump - Most Dangerous Face in GOP Field; Bernie and the Movement; Why America Is Moving Left; Fania and Angela Davis - New Kind of Civil Rights Activism; Teachers Walk-In in 30 Cities; Sanitizing Socialism and Needing to Create a New Kind of Capitalism With a Conscience; Announcements: Life Is Waiting - Film Banned in UAE, Lebanon, Belgium; New York Faculty Unions Supports India Students and Faculty

Spike Lee endorsed the Vermont senator on Tuesday. He is the latest in a series of black intellectual heavy-weights to have come out in support of him.

Bernie Sanders is a boon to progressive politics. But we need a movement that rebuilds the networks and organizations of the Left.

Republicans may have a lock on Congress and the nation's statehouses - and could well win the presidency - but the liberal era ushered in by Barack Obama is only just beginning. The need to win the votes of Millennials and minorities, who lean left not just on cultural issues but on economic ones, will shape how whoever wins in the general election, and governs once in office.

The Vermont senator's success so far demonstrates the end of the politico-ideological cycle opened by the victory of Ronald Reagan at the 1980 elections. Piketty's doesn't see Sanders as following in the footsteps of Europe's social democratic models, but rather leading the United States toward a possible return to the nation's pioneering 20th century experiments with extremely progressive taxation and social spending.

All the news that's fit...well, it seems the NYT news story has been tailored to fit the editorial views of the paper. There are undoubtedly many left of center economists who have serious objections to the proposals Sanders has put forward, there are also many who have publicly indicated support for them. He has not given a fully worked out proposal for many of his ideas, nor is it reasonable to expect a fully worked out proposal from a candidate for the presidency.

Reader Comments: How Social Change Happens; Bernie, Hillary, Kissinger and Scalia; AFL-CIO Election Survey; DNC Lets Lobbyists Back In; Bernie as the Peace Candidate and Remembering 1972; Teaching - With Protest Music; Obama's Military Aid to Israel; Announcements - 50 Years After the Mississippi Summer Project; Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism; Labor for Bernie and Beyond - National Meeting;