Hillary's "Establishment Politics" Has Already Delivered Some of the Paid Leave Sanders Promises

[Rose Siding]

The negative reviews of and cascading events from Bernie Sanders’ less-than-deft Q&A with the New York Daily News earlier this week continue. But there is one additional passage from that interview that deserves, but has largely escaped, notice (emphasis mine):

Alright, I believe that in the midst of the kinds of crises that we face with a disappearing middle class and massive levels of income and wealth inequality, the only major country on earth not guarantee to healthcare to all people, only major country not to provide paid family and medical leave, it is time to get beyond establishment politics. So to put your question in maybe a simpler way, is she a candidate of the establishment? The answer is, of course she is.

This is an astonishing thing for Sanders to say for a couple of reasons. First because, as he surely knows, it was the “establishment” Bill Clinton who, as one of his first acts as president in 1993, signed the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) after it had twice been vetoed by his predecessor. Second (and maybe Sanders doesn’t know this; few do), having signed the FMLA providing up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to workers to care for a newborn or a sick family member, Clinton, with the active help of his wife, became the first president to use federal power to provide paid leave to American workers.
....
So the “establishment” politician Hillary Clinton can rightly claim a share of the credit for the paid leave programs that exist in the United States. They’re far from universal, but they’re real, up-and-running programs that seem to be working as advertised. And the reason they’re not more wide spread is not “establishment politics”—they are in fact the result of establishment politics—but Republican resistance.

Both Clinton and Sanders sponsored bills in the Senate to expand family leave that didn’t pass, and each has put forward plans to do so if they’re elected president (though the plans differ in how they’re financed). So both are, for progressives, on the “right side” of the issue. But only one of them has actually accomplished anything on this, and it isn’t Bernie Sanders.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2016_04/hillarys_establishment_politic060205.php

This practically says it all about the disconnect Sanders has with Democrats: The reason progressive policies and programs aren't more abundant "is not “establishment politics”—they are in fact the result of establishment politics—but Republican resistance."

[riversedge]

1. Sanders always dissing and labeling is just plain divisive!

[DURHAM D]

2. True. I see him as being simplistic and shallow on policy.

His preference is to complain not fix. It is his entire shtick.

For 50 years all that he has accomplished is this - "Look at me" Look at me"

[sarae]

6. He reminds me

of a petulant child who refuses to do anything unless you fulfill all his demands. His "ideological purity" seems to get him nowhere.

[Lucinda]

3. And there is already some financial reform in place to control

the excesses that he implies are still unchecked. It needs improvement, but there have been changes made.

[SunSeeker]

4. Hillary knows how to get things done. Sanders knows how to complain. nt

[stopbush]

5. Sanders calls for a socialist revolution,

yet the two socialist programs he constantly cites as examples of the benefits of socialism - Medicare and Social Security - were the product of the establishment Democratic Party, not any revolution.

So why do we need a revolution?