Would a President Sanders actually be able to change anything?

This.

The US got in this situation via decades of rhetoric that slowly took power from the middle and lower classes. That's probably not going to change overnight. But it can change slowly. The trend can reverse.

I believe the reason Sanders is so popular is because Obama primed a generation to believe they COULD make a difference. Those people, a little older, a little wiser, see in Sanders someone who not only talks the talk, but has decades of experience to back it up. (If you go to Catholics 4 Bernie on YouTube, you can see decades on decades of him fighting for his beliefs. It's incredibly powerful--and telling--to see him talking to entirely empty rooms.)

So I believe the movement for Sanders started with Obama. With Obama you began to see how powerful grassroots can be. With Sanders, that experience is confirmed for the Millennial generation. If Sanders is also a success with continuing his movement among local government (state and city government), you'll have a generation that is engaged instead of apathetic with the political process. This means even if Bernie is not able to get everything done that he would like to get done, due to Congress getting in his way, there should still be a shift in how a generation engages with the political system. And hopefully that engagement will cause the rhetoric of politics to change.

Let me back this up with an anecdote on my life...I'm almost 33, and I've always been pretty progressive/liberal. I grew up reading sci-fi and fantasy books, which have always been about a decade ahead of TV and movies in terms of being progressive (and terms of tech...even if we don't have our flying cars yet!). Due to my interests here, I've pretty much been a LGTBQ ally my entire adult life. BUT. When I was in high school, in the late 90s, it didn't even occur to me that gay people wanted to get married. My thoughts were that you should be able to love anyone without being persecuted or bullied (or hurt, jailed, or killed).

But marriage? Wasn't on my radar. But then in my mid-twenties, people started pushing for gay marriage. Not civil unions, marriage. And at first? I sort of panicked in my head--I was convinced that bringing "marriage" to the national stage, and pushing it hard, would doom the entire movement. Well, it's a good thing I wasn't in charge because somewhere when I wasn't looking, general opinion shifted enough that it had jumped ahead of me--I had been stagnant in my thinking, and media and other discussions by advocates putting the idea on center stage politically had progressed beyond what I had even thought was possible. And then just recently, gay marriage is now recognized federally. Took me by surprise...I was convinced the older generations would fight to the death against it, and while obviously people are still opposed, it still made its way through. Despite my doubts.

So I look at what's happening with Bernie and I think that even if he doesn't get everything he wants to get done done, his movement will essentially prime the nation for the next steps in implementing change, just like Obama's wins showed us that there's power in grassroots movements. So maybe he doesn't get concrete things done in 4 or 8 years because he's blocked at every turn, but someone after him does, or change starts to happen at the state or local levels. Because the whole Millennial generation will be like, "Dude, we've seen progress is possible. Let's go find some new leaders who will help us progress."

What also is very powerful for me is how people who say they are Republicans or Independents respect Bernie, will even vote for him. Most of my adult life the political rhetoric has been "us vs. them", ramping up to insane levels as politics utilizes wedge issues to divide and conquer. If Bernie wins, partly due to non-Democrats switching sides, actually UNITING both parties...that's also an incredibly powerful message, and incredibly heartening. I don't want to hate "Republicans" or "Conservatives" just because they identify that way. And I don't want them to hate me. We both live in the same nation, and we both want the nation to be healthy. Obama was supposed to stand for hope, but Bernie bringing together people from different walks of life, different sides of the political spectrum, is, again, a powerful message that I hope will resound through the political landscape for years to come.

The "narrative" drives what people think it is possible to do. People are more apt to attempt the "possible" than the "impossible", even if "impossible" is made up of words and air, and not fact. If the narrative changes from "we can't win no matter what we do" to "let's come together, and things CAN change", that will be an important shift that will affect things. Perhaps on a more subtle level than anyone who is hoping that universal or single-payer healthcare DOES get passed, or that prison reform DOES happen, but subtle, long-term change is how we got in this mess in the first place, and I won't stick my nose up at a slow reversal, as long as we start progressing from a nation that's heavily divided to one that's more balanced and responsible.

/r/SandersForPresident Thread Parent