My family was brought from Cuba to the US as slaves well before 1959. Our personal, family history is an example of how severe inequality always existed for Afro-Cubans. In the US, for too long, the narrative regarding Cuba has been wholly written by Miami Cubans. Typically they were white, landowning, elites. While I denounce the dictatorship that the revolution has become, a more nuanced view of Cuba is finally emerging with Sanders. In 2020, I think we can acknowledge the history of the island in its entirety including all of its people.
26
It is nothing BUT boomer panic.
Bernie is the most peaceful, pro-democracy candidate in the race.
Bernie' vision is to rebuild MLK's movement for the 21st century backed up by an FDR like popular mandate. That is what he means by political revolution.
Bernie is the farthest removed from authoritarianism of any candidate.
24
Ok Boomer, the whole pacifist thing was a 1960’s thing. Russia and China literally announce, every five years they don’t want peace, look at what they prioritize in their plans, we don’t get a choice in the matter. Luckily my generation won’t be returning to the failed ideas of the 1960’s, where Sander’s belongs.
Sanders is delusional, the only candidate who has gotten less done, than the current occupant of the Oval Office. Has Sanders ever cast a vote that really mattered?
2
@CDP: “Boomer panic”? Thanks so much for the ageist stereotype. Signed, a then-65–year-old Bernie delegate from Maine in 2016.
2
@CDP: “Boomer panic”? Thanks for the ageist stereotype. Signed, a then-65–year-old Bernie delegate from Maine in 2016.
2
Trump won 2016 by razor thin margins in key electoral states. The false associations and aspersions on Bernie with communism are so Republicans can win states like Florida, where anti-Castro Cuban immigrants are a significant minority.
6
Remember where Mandela visited upon his release from prison? Before even visiting the U.S. he went to Cuba, via the little Caribbean nation of Trinidad. When the press questioned him about this, he responded, "We remember who our true friends (friends in the struggle against apartheid) are."
In places like Mozambique and Angola the bloodied nose received at the hands of the African resistance, ably supported by Cuba convinced South Africa that the negotiation table was a viable option as it faced the demise of its evil policy of apartheid.
Closer to home, Cuban doctors, educators and other professionals are known throughout the Caribbean for their services in alleviating the standard of living for many poor people, in Grenada, Jamaica and Trinidad . . . Cuba's health system has long been viewed as a port of redoubt for many seeking affordable dependable medical attention.
This is the 21st century. This dumb one-sided condemnation of Castro is today even more hypocritical that it was fifty years ago. Castro was a dictator, but he was very much a figment of his era. We cannot criticize Castro without condemning the equally oppressive and destructive imprint of American gunboat-diplomacy imperialism across Latin America! The legacy of those backward policies live on in modern day crises such as the immigration issue. The same forces that shaped icons like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Kenyatta, Gandhi, Lumumba, Ali and others were responsible for forging the man Fidel.
15
When I was an undergraduate (1970s and 80s) it was fairly routine to strongly criticize Cuba's totalitarian system, but also recognize the strides Cuba made in extending health care and literacy. Even Castro had a constituency he had to please. I don't get what the problem is about what I was taught then. It is also true that Soviet Union's economic growth rate, mostly supported by a focus on heavy industries, exceeded that of the West for an extended period (it wasn't a particularly free or fair system). Then, of course, the Soviet system collapsed. In fact, it was that Soviet economic /scientific success that alarmed Eisenhower and Kennedy. Is is wrong to say that there was a strong growth phase in Soviet history? Am I a Stalinist? Not that I'm aware of.
32
@Sam
Nor do I. It's clearly part of the hysteria around the fact that Bernie's ideas are popular and that the establishment fears a nation with greater economic balance. We won't get that because the punditry here does nothing but cherry-pick out of context and foment false stories.
4
Now that is is clear the Russians are supporting Bernie Sanders, financially through anonymous Internet donations below the $50 maximum and through social media trolls and bots, this "support" must be taken with a grain of salt.
Castro was a murderous dictator to any dissent.
He systematically cracked down on LGBT Cubans, incarcerated them in labor camps, and declared there were no LGBT people in Cuba. He followed the lead of the Russians, who are anti-LGBT to this day.
How can Sanders criticize Trump's love of dictators given his own record?
Sanders gets much more online support from his aggressive and insulting Bernie Bros than votes.
This is similar to Trump's Potemkin village army of support on Twitter, while he is booed at any public event around the country.
Russia is supporting Sanders to split the majority opposition against Trump, and supporting Trump's re-election.
Sanders won't just lose the election, he will lose the House Democratic majority and the potential for a Senate Democratic majority.
Democrats won 6 of the last 7 popular votes. But Republicans cheated by voter purging in Florida in 2000, and through direct assistance from Putin and the GRU in 2016.
Extremists don't win - see 1972 McGovern.
But Sanders doesn't care. He isn't a Democrat. He isn't a Republican. Just like Donald Trump. He cares about his own ego.
Sanders was even going to primary President Barack Obama in 2012.
It truly does make one wonder where his loyalty is.
3
@David Parsons
Uh, no it doesn't, his loyalty is to We the People.
Sanders was thinking of primarying (no proof) Pres. O. because he was putting Soc. Sec. et al up for negotiations. Sanders would have been correct to do so.
Most of America aren't Repubs, or Dems., do you still want our/my vote?
A Self declared moderate didn't win in '16, so...
Please provide a proof that Sanders is being helped with under $50$ donations. He isn't and that isn't what the intelligence agency said. You are now lying unless proof is provided.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/23/politics/intelligence-briefer-russian-interference-trump-sanders/index.html
We do know that our intelligence agency's et al were watching and monitoring Russian, Israeli, Saudis, Iranian, Chinese etc. etc. all meddling in our elections and online.
Russia would know they would be connected to Sanders (how, when, why, where, how often etc. we've not been told or even if it happened).
NOW...Russia knows they will be caught as we all knew they would...HOW is this a "help" to the Sanders Campaign? Please explain David; because...
It isn't.
People such as yourself have latched upon it using it as a cudgel to beat over the frontrunning Dem. candidate. One who has beaten Trump for over 5yrs., in over 100 polls.
When you begin repeating and telling lies, you've lost integrity.
4
@David Parsons
The Russians are aiding Bernie because they think he cannot beat Trump. There is nothing extreme about a national health plan or moving toward a green economy.
This is the USA and he would have to work with congress. If he were wise he would only use Canada, Scandanavia etc. as examples, not hammer & sickle countries.
I would prefer him to Trump who seems to admire Putin etc. But he really doesn't have a shot because the DNC will derail him.
1
Anyone who has studied anything about history and authoritarian governments knows that they share certain things in common. And one of those things is that they try to prevent the people from being educated. An educated populace is the most dangerous thing to tyrants. With that in mind, I find it interesting that Cuba was looking to educate its people, meanwhile, here in the U.S. we're cutting funding for education, making it almost impossible for people to get advanced education and training.
22
Was Cuba trying to "educate" it's people by denying them access to the high speed internet for the last three decades, while most of the rest of the free world cooperated to connect their citizens to that massive storehouse of knowledge?
What exactly is it that the Castro family does not want it's citizens to see on an open internet?
3
the United States has always supported dictators and authoritarian governments around the world when it was in their best interests. Cubans are a lovely people who have suffered but no worse than African Americans have in this country. Just as you cannot erase the history of Castro, you can't just ignore what happened to millions of African Americans because lynching is no longer possible. Discrimination and hate is still rampant and has no signs of abetting. The President and his cronies have given their not so tacit approval to discriminate so let's get real. Some of those indignant folks cheer loudly when the discrimination hate that they support rears its ugly head.
4
Well if you think that $20 week wages, now, as the standard from the Cuban government is how "African Americans" suffer in the USA, then you really have bought into another one of Bernie's lies. Come to Key West, to a community dinner of Cuban Democrats and learn reality. The reality is Bernie's support of Castro will cost the Democrats Florida and has already cast the party in a horrible light.
2
imagine we are debating a dead dictator and our current president said we exchanged letters and we fell in love . with a living thug in North Korea who killed an American students for stealing a poster in a hotel #NotMeUs
1
Young people see thru their parents hypocrisy. Cuba is an island with a small population and yet the granddaddy of communism....Communist China..Trump..Wall St...big business are ON Their Knees pleasing Xi and the CCP.
The Sandinistas said they were aiming for a Scandinavian type socialism when they overthrew the US backed dictator Somosa. But we may never know for sure after Ronald Reagan's State Department under the neocon head of the Latin American desk, Eliot Abrams, fomented a civil war against them.
1
As usual the NYT posts this heading out of context while not mentioning his harsh criticism of Cuba's authoritarianism! Why does the "liberal" NYT as do most other "liberal" media try so hard to dishonestly undermine Sanders? Because he is winning, of course. https://fair.org/home/bernie-sanders-plunges-to-first-place/
2
If it wasn’t for the Electoral College, we would have made peace with Cuba a long time ago like we did with Communist countries like China and Viet Nam.
Our stupid Cuba policy is yet an other example of how our refusal to embrace full democracy warps everything.
I’m apparently a boomer although I was in 2 nd grade during Woodstock, however, I think the people panicking over Bernie’s statements are idiots. And who is answering these questions? I think it’s journalists assuming that boomers are panicking to make headlines like these. If so, that’s pretty lazy guys.
1
Bernie is unelectable. Unreasonable ideologue. Soviet groupie. Any boob, including Trump, would have a field day. I’ll retire to bedlam.
2
Good to see so many commenters calling out the disingenuous, fear-mongering tactics of the Times.
Really, are we bring back communist boogey-man, again? After the Democratic and Republican Parties sold this nation people out to China for cheap labor and low wages? Are we bring this up with Donald J. Trump in the back pocket of Russia? This would be laughable if it weren't so pathetic.
United States obsession with Cuba compares to this nation obsession with Iran. Both nations humiliated the United Stages and the US doesn't like it when anyone gives them a bloody nose.
The utter disastrous Cuba Bay of Pigs has stuck in US crawl ever since. The US can't get over the humiliation of the nearly two years Iran hostage ordeal and failed military hostage rescue.
United States doesn't given a tickers damn about Democracy or human rights. US policies regarding those countries in "American backyard" has been to hand pick brutal dictators such as Batista to do US bidding. If Castro had been willing to do US bidding, they would have supported him.
Good versus evil is defined by whomever the US government says who's good or bad. It's that simple, the simpler the better because complexity and critical thinking has never been this nation strength. Hence, Americans are continually duped into invading countries based on lies and supporting erroneous policies.
Growing up in Tampa, my parents and I have known many, many people who fled Cuba after 1959 at some point, some after or at Marielito. Close family friends supported Fidel Castro over Batista wholeheartedly, then after a while, left Cuba for Spain, then came to Tampa with their firstborn. They and this son never let most people know that his middle name is Fidel. There was a good reason for the overthrow of Batista, which for some odd reason, no one seems to remember. He was an autocrat who protected the rich and did nothing for the poor. There was hardly a middle-class, and what tiny bit there was supported Castro. Then we didn't help things with our embargo. Of course, Castro turned out to be a horrible authoritarian, as did Ortega, but the reason those revolutions occurred was the inequality of rich vs. poor and the lack of a strong middle class.
I'm quite sick of the Democratic party kowtowing to conservative Cuban-American people in Florida. These are mostly Republican people or Republican-lite people, and many of the Marielito people I know are much more liberal than the people who came soon after 1959.
What Bernie Sanders said about Cuba is completely true -- I have many friends who have visited Cuba who say the same thing. They can buy their prescription eyeglasses for $100 USD vs $800, for example. Cuba has terrible shortcomings in the area of human rights, runs out of meds, etc., but the improvements in literacy were phenomenal, just as Obama said.
150
@Shirley Adams Castro was a tyrant who violently oppressed his own people, imprisoned dissident and brutally violated basic human rights of Cubans. Praising his achievements in healthcare or education is like praising Hitler's achievements in highway building. Politically insane and offensive to millions of freedom loving people.
4
@Shirley Adams that is a myth. Cuba had widespread literacy to begin with and eventually do did all of Latin America. Cubans suffered greatly, which is why many escaped by small boat, by any desperate means to get to Florida.
4
@Shirley Adams What about the food lines/ What about the shoddy goods available in the stores for Cubans? What about the 90% profit earned by tobacco farmers and makes of rum that needs to be turned over to the govenmentment? What about the extreme censoring of speech? What about the corruption of the soldiers and policemen who extort the people fo the tiniest infraction?
We just returned from Cuba and the suffering that has been accumulating since the withdrawal of Russian support is tragic. Cuba reminded me of East Berlin; no groceries, shoddy health care, no medicines, no luxuried, whatsoever, adults in the streets begging us for hard candies as they know Americans frequently have them for the kids, terrible food in the restaurants which the Cuban's cannot even afford, beggars everywhere begging for CUC's, people totally disenchanted with the government bu only when they are sure nobody is listening, spies everywhere...which Cuba did you visit? The nightlife circuit full of music and false bravado?
2
If young people don't care about "Cold War Angst" then they have a lot to learn. Saying "OK, Boomer" to these concerns is like saying Hitler was just misunderstood. It's vile, ignorant, and shameful. Castro's regime murdered hundreds, if not thousands, of political prisoners. and plunged its people into poverty for decades. If young people don't care about this, we are doomed to repeat it.
2
"If you look at Twitter..."
You can stop reading once you finish that part of a sentence.
3
For some reason, we Americans feel entitled to overthrow governments and rig elections the world over, only to react with shock and indignation when we get a taste of our own medicine. If Republicans suspect foreign meddling in support of Sanders, Mitch could certainly bring to the senate floor legislation aimed at strengthening our election security. Maybe then we could all have more confidence in our voting system. It is unproductive for parties to keep pointing the finger at and accusing each other of taking advantage of foreign interference while the senate majority refuses to do anything whatsoever to remedy the situation. As it stands, our only recourse is to conduct one investigation after another--an exercise that Republicans recently condemned as being a waste of time and money. Either do everything possible to proactively fix the problem or stop complaining!
Sorry to have to say this, but the story shows the dangerous naïveté of too many millennials, courtesy of the destruction the US educational system and the indulgence of their parents. Not all millennials, but far too many. Naïveté about socialism has been an error of many generations, largely recanted by all later on. The currently reviled boomers were, like Sanders, formerly reviled hippies, children of a previous generation of pro-Soviet fellow travelers and before that Anarchists. Have I hit all the hot buttons?
But this naïveté seems different. Not so much idealistic as weak, lazy, and entitled. It’s not workers of the world uniting to lose their chains. It’s basket weaving majors with a minor in inability to recognize that the left is equally despotic as the right demanding relief from private university debt that no one in their right mind would have taken on, and “more free stuff” at the expense of the omnipresent “them”. “Them” of course, is everyone who has done better by realistic thinking and action, regardless of generation. The silliest of hippies were a tiny minority for the short time their communes were around, but these naive, greedy immatures are everywhere, with the entire Democratic Party groveling at their feet. And that is dangerous.
1
Communism always appeals to idealistic youth who find political romance with it---then, reality gradually yields its inevitable life-lessons.
1
Good Heavens! A candidate for our presidency has talked about a literacy program in a communist/socialist state. Are those bothered by this also bothered by the long line of right wing dictators that our leaders praised and lavished aid, money and attention upon? From the Shah of Iran through Central and South American human rights violators to Saddam Hussein (before we decided he was no longer an asset but a WMD threat). Hypocrisy reigns on the Right.
If a simple idea, discredited by history, but preached by an appealing prophet, hangs around long enough, a younger generation with no knowledge or respect for history will adopt it. I taught high school in Los Angeles in the 1960s. I have some familiarity with the adolescent mind. The power of peer pressure is all-encompassing. It "trumps" reason. The internet intensifies it. In this context, "Sandersism' is a religion no less than is "Trumpism", and the looming split of the Democratic party will not sway its believers. The hero of the flower children was Robert Kennedy. He, and the hero of blacks, Martin Luther King, often worked together. They were thoughtful men who respected history. Had they lived, the U.S. would be a very different country today. The primitives that killed them left us George McGovern. He was the precursor for Bernie, although less of an autocrat (less of a utopian, and definitely not an ideologue). If Bernie does not get his way at the convention his worshipers will scuttle whoever is nominated, again. They, or disgruntled moderates will form a new party during the four years of Trump that will result. Some day, when the sandersists have grown up and are willing to look back at their own history, they will recognize what they have done. My grandchildren will have made them pariahs by then.
1
Imagine Sander's villainizing business every day of Sander's presidency. Sander's leadership will kill business, innovation, confidence, and jobs. Just like in Venezuela, when unemployment doubles and we go into a recession ... Sander's will blame business... class warfare. His admiration for regimes in Cuban and Venezuela clearly demonstrate what will happen here. No surprise why Russia likes Sanders. Just like Trump, Sanders is a hater and divisive. Democrats will lose both the Senate and the House because we have to protect our democracy and with no innovation, our environment. We can get universal healthcare without Sanders!
Another veiled hit job. Pres Obama started opening up Cuba after 60 years and most people were ( are ) all for it. Our policy there and really every where in the Southern Hemisphere is ridiculous & idiotic. Self defeating
Cold War Zombie Thinking
It was an absolute article of Cold-War faith that capitalism entailed liberal democracy. We now know that NOT to be the case.
There is, accordingly, no reason whatsoever to think that the mild social welfare regimes envisioned by Sanders or Warren will lead to Soviet or Nazi-style totalitarianism.
Which we also know for a fact.
It dismays me that this is an issue...that an authoritarian country had a good educational system and quality healthcare...and the wingnut propagandists grasp onto anything to twist truth.
Bernie has stated throughout his career that he has no love for the authoritarians. That’s trump, who disses all our allies while budding up with the deplorable and brutal authoritarians...but to you misleading propagandists...it’s only about twisting truth to undermine one of our most honest politicians.
What is it about you people to spout hate against the one politician who is working for us...or don’t you care about us...such as the repubs and establishment Dems?
US stooge Batista running a euphemistic “state” , actually a brothel catering to gangsters, international playboys, US tycoons generating transparent revolutionaries Castro brothers, Che Guevara.
1
Well, that's rich.
A party and group of voters that won't even admit that American elections were hacked in 2016 are worrying about the other party being not concerned enough about Russia, China, N Korea, etc.
2
Two points:
1. Standing back and taking a broad sweep of history view, it is very interesting what is happening. We have an older generation in the US that was brainwashed about 'socialism.' The hysteria was a very American thing: nothing like it in Western Europe. This generation is are now slowly dying off. A new generation is taking its place. Eventually what they stand for will be acknowledged and the US will be a very different and better place.
2. Regarding Cuba: People talk about what Castro did for education and health. Absolutely. He also gave people accommodation on a much more equal basis by redistributing shelter. Finally, without Cuban intervention into Southern Africa and the defeat of apartheid South Africa at Cuito Cuanvale in Angola, history might have been very different. At least two cheers for Castro, and particularly given the circumstances of the American blockade under which he and his government had to work.
4
@Kevin Cox
1. And eventually, the "new generation" will come to realize how it has been brainwashed by people like Bernie Sanders.
2. It's good to know that the thousands of Cuban civilians who were imprisoned, tortured, and murdered by Castro's regime were literate and in good health at the time. How about three boos for him? But if you really like his accomplishments, you should try living in Cuba.
1
I'm so glad that 18-year-old Mr. Yok knows how our society should be organized. I definitely want a teenage chemistry major deciding what our societal goals should be.
I saw this in 2016, when people between the ages of 16 and 30 told me that socialism was the natural (indeed, the only) way for America to move forward. The younger generation does have a lot of good and useful things to say about culture and social relations, but it knows nothing about economics or what is politically possible. How could it? Most of these folks have never had to meet a payroll; many of them haven't even had to pay a bill.
I happen to agree with Sanders' foreign policy views. And he is 100% right when he talks about things we did in places like Guatemala and Iran. But when a mature adult praises Castro and Ortega, honeymoons in the Soviet Union, etc., one has to wonder just what sort of person he is.
The hollowness of the Sanders phenomenon will be demonstrated if he gets into power. He's a man without a party who will not command the loyalty of at least half the Democrats in Congress. His programs will blocked, the economy will tank (or not revive if it continues to tank now), and he will react by trying to demagogue his way out of the catastrophe that the Sanders administration will turn into.
2
It's time the United States caught up to Europe, Scandinavia, Japan, and other modern democracies in providing decent health care and affordable higher education for all of it's citizens.
I just turned Bernie's age and back him all the way.
5
@Kaari If you look at how our government is handling the coronavirus situation and think that's the agency that should be managing everyone's health care, you might want to make an appointment with your optometrist.
In a rational world (or country), nothing Sanders said should be sounding alarms. For example, I think that China is truly The Evil Empire, but can it be denied that they have greatly raised the standard of living for millions and millions? And he is certainly right about our own government's history of outrageous interference in the internal affairs of other nations.
However, if I were running for president, I would not be saying ANYTHING particularly nice about China, Cuba or North Korea or sounding like an angry member of the SDS from the 1960's because I know how my neighbor might react. Sanders IS displaying a surprising amount of tone deafness.
1
"No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. As Americans, we find communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity. But we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements--in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture and in acts of courage.
Among the many traits the peoples of our two countries have in common, none is stronger than our mutual abhorrence of war. Almost unique among the major world powers, we have never been at war with each other. And no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union suffered in the course of the Second World War." - President John F. Kennedy, American University Speech, June 10, 1963
Bernie is doing fine. The right wing Cubans in Florida should learn some history.
2
Checks and balances and the rule of law. Bernie is no threat to those, but billionaires are.
Right now the main threat is not too much government power, but billionaires and financial institutions with too much unchecked, irresponsible power being used non productively or worse: for idiotic or dangerous purposes.
We should always fear too much centralized power - and try to distribute it when we can. When concentrated wealth or centralized power is necessary, it should be subject to checks and balances and the rule of law.
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
That means looking beyond mindless slogans and insipid, lazy minded red baiting.
4
To the young progressives for whom technology is so important imagine Mark Zuckerberg as a military dictator and you'll get an idea of what happened in Cuba.
Liberals are funny people. They clutch their pearls if they see a statue of Robert E. Lee, but venerate Fidel Castro.
---
“I was offended by his ignorance,” said Mario Cartaya, a 68-year-old architect in Fort Lauderdale who left Cuba when he was 9 and is on the board of the Florida Democratic Party. “It is hurtful not just to Cubans, but it’s hurtful to every other Latin American who has fled their country because of the tyranny in those countries.”
---
I'm baffled by statements like this, as if these people had no awareness of the current tyrant in the White House.
2
Sanders is not spreading “Cold War angst”. Rather, it is the hysterical centrist liberals, like Chris Matthews of MSNBC—who stoked fears of public executions in Central Park if Sanders won and compared his supporters to Nazis—who are.
The New Red Scare is not a natural reaction to Sanders. Instead, it has been concocted by the establishment to smear him. Centrist liberals have spent months sensationalizing minor Russian propaganda during the 2016 elections as a grave threat to democracy in America. Now, they are openly considering undermining the will of the people in a brokered convention, are welcoming in a Republican billionaire with open arms, and are marring the electoral process, as in Iowa. What shameless hypocrisy!
For establishment Democrats to complain about anti-democratic threats and authoritarianism is comically ridiculous: they are the anti-democratic authoritarians. Like the Republicans, establishment Democrats serve the economic elite. They will say and do anything to undermine a movement that threatens the status quo, their power and the unequal distribution of wealth.
“Democracy” that nurtures and protects utter inequality, exploitation and suffering is false democracy that must be superseded. Material equality, an end to exploitation, and all workers receiving the full fruit of their labor is authentic democracy.
3
All I can say is Viva Fidel and the Cuban Revolution, for all they have done for the people of Cuba and the world! I'm with Mandela in his unstinting praise and support for Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution. Cuba did more to bring down Apartheid than any other government, at great sacrifice. The list of their accomplishments is nearly as long as America's crimes. No one cares what a bunch of crooks, torturers, and their offspring have to say about Cuba. Or Sanders for that matter. Gloria Etsefan's father was a gun thug and enforcer for the Batista family. Those are screamers in Miami. Now the US is imposing terrible economic hardship, even hunger and medical shortages on the people of Cuba. It's a crime against humanity.
3
All the Bernie supporters defending "nuance" are missing the point. What Bernie said was tactless, no matter what way you spin it. If he said that Hitler was a bad guy, but that Germany had a strong economy under him, that also would not have been incorrect, but it would still be tactless.
Yes, we should be able to expect politicians to have tact, as we always have. That's why they're politicians. And no, for most of us, Trump being more tactless than anyone else is not an excuse. If it was, then we would just re-elect him.
I had a great uncle who moved from a country in the English-speaking Caribbean to live and work in Cuba.
After the Revolution, my dad was eager to get him out so that he could visit us in the US and perhaps live here. Other relatives who never lived under Communism were able to travel freely. They visited, immigrated, and became legal residents and U.S. citizens.
This relative was never given permission to leave.
So I will never vote for a politician who admired the Communists in Cuba.
Mr. Sanders was shown an idealistic view of the communist revolution because he was an American government official who was going to paint the regime in a favorable light.
3
Bernie blew an opportunity. Here is how he could have addressed it:
Democratic Presidential Candidate: I'm glad you brought up the issue of Cuba because there is an important distinction to be made here. I support things like universal health care and education. However, if the cost to achieve that is to have one party, authoritarian communist rule in exchange, then it is not worth it. Cuba is still suffering the consequences of that bargain. I am not proposing it on my platform. Nor is it going to happen in my Presidency. We are not creating another Cuba or Venezuela. We want to look at the models we see in Denmark, Norway, Switzerland that are not communist or socialist governments or economies. It is just straightforward that our country join the rest of civilized industrial nations that offer universal health coverage and education to its people. That can be done without turning the US into a socialist country. We can do this.
2
It's an and often repeated phrase, but people who do not understand history are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. And it is completely correct. Too many young people these days are not able to differentiate between the Revolutionary War of the late 1700s, the 1812 War, the Civil War of the early 1860s, the First World War of the early part of the 20th century, the Second World War of 1941 to 1945, the Korean War of the 1950s (which, technically, is still not over), the so-called Cold War of the late 1940s to about 1989, or even the Vietnam War of the 1960s and early 1970s, or why we are still in Afghanistan, etc. All of these wars and conflicts are ancient history for many millennials even though they deeply impacted and shaped our country and its policies and had radically different causes. Mr. Sanders, on the other hand, has a very skewed view of our history and the world and clearly does not understand that his brand of socialism has not worked any where it was tried, and, in many cases, flies in the face of the values of our ancestors and the sacrifices they made the create what is the United States today. Let's go back to the Declaration of Independence which tells us the people derive their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness from their Creator, not from their government, and these right always belong to the people and may not be abrogated by government. Government is not the center of our society. People are.
1
@jpduffy3
The very next line in the D of I. after the "Creator" is;
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,--That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Government IS the people.
We've just given it up to the rich and connected.
Sanders and his millions are here to correct it as dictated in the D. of I. We the People.
2
Goes there is no such a thing as older voters and Cubans of any age dont count. There is nothing Sanders cant do that you wont support.
1
Many small island nations all over the planet have suffered under less than stellar government, or been subjugated by big powers or otherwise victimized by outsiders. Hawaii's ecology was absolutely decimated by the introduction of non native species by Europeans. Fiji lost 1/3rd of it's entire population to measles from Australia. Cuba as we know was a mafioso state under the oligarch Batista, and was liberated by it's native son Fidel Castro.
Whatever you think of communism, that a native people should govern themselves is a fundamental tenet of human rights and natural progress.
The specifics aside, angry Miami octogenarians aside, I have read and must admire any culture where an artist held a higher social status than a lawyer, as is the case in Cuba.
2
@CK In a brutal dictatorship like Castro's, the native people aren't governing themselves. If you admire the culture, you should try living there.
Cuba.. is such an antediluvian, irrelevant example. Much more relevant: Venezuela, where populist redistribution and pandering effected a wholesale collapse of a prosperous country.
1
@Obviously a majority of Venezuelans never felt at all prosperous or they wouldn't have voted in Hugo Chavez.
1
Venezuela--another oil-producing nation that the US has never been able to keep its hands off of.
It is the height of ahistoric silliness to think that Sanders
is somehow more of an ally of Russia than trump. The more
such media babble keeps on intoning this russian socialist
manipulated meme the more we are all distracted from the fact that there is one and only one russian ally currently running for POTUS.
There are many valid objections one can make about the practicality of developing democratic socialist institutions
and practices in this country. This is something Sanders
really ought to try and get out in front of to control the messaging rather than respond to the stupidities of those attacking his ideology without any argumentation. This idiotic meme that democratic socialism means bolshevism on the Potomac could only find fertile soil in a country as woefully
ignorant of the rest of the world and as indifferent, if not
explicitly hostile, to the idea that government's role
is to nurture human, especially child, development to the extent that is possible.
Democratic socialism is not just an ideology that tries to
depress the toxic effects of rapacious greed and corporate
domination within a liberal traditional understanding of the rule of law. It has much to say
and contribute to developing a nurturing society
not the current one where everyone is out for him/herself wherein greed is the only human trait worth
investing in.
Unfortunately this is lost in the made up, ongoing
polemic that has been the standard one heaved at Sanders for years.
3
There is way too much pearl clutching about this subject. I’m standing behind Bernie because of his convictions and devotion to make our lives better. He’s not some Mike come lately trying to buy the election Bernie is fighting for the middle class
5
I have no doubt that what Sanders says is true. However, there are an enormous number of things that, while true, do not need to be said. A politician has to pick his hills to die on. This one is not worth all the expense of energy and outrage, another example of his tone-deafness.
1
@Judith
The man was asked a question about a comment made 40+yrs. ago.
He didn't lie, nor dissemble.
He was honest to a fault.
Seems many would prefer a candidate that will lie to them; or at least waffle and spew lawyerese.
2
Bernie Sanders is frightening. Young people who support him are idealists and are not facing reality. These people like his everything is free policy. Things are not free and someone has to pay. It will be the middle class and those just getting by financially. He must not be elected. He is very dangerous and thankfully he will never step foot into the White House.
3
Yes, here is the ignorant stupidity that has been predicted as a reaction to the politically dangerous praise and support of promoting humanitarian service anywhere because it can trigger ignorant stupidity. The data show, in any case, that once Sanders explains his policies and plans, out of (horror!) respect for the electorate by educating it, most people favor and approve of them. I'm 70 years old and I'm proud to be associated with a younger generation that wants and will have to fight ignorant stupidity (and selfish greed) for a better world. "Not me, Us!"
5
Americans are a funny people ..afraid of Cuba ...deathly fear of N.Korea nukes ... But not too worried about an almost certain disaster that is global warming .
4
The Greatest line in this article deals with "Ignorance" ....and anyone who Votes for Sanders will be a practitioner of such
“I was offended by his ignorance,” said Mario Cartaya, a 68-year-old architect in Fort Lauderdale who left Cuba when he was 9 and is on the board of the Florida Democratic Party. “It is hurtful not just to Cubans, but it’s hurtful to every other Latin American who has fled their country because of the tyranny in those countries.”
Would rather live in Cuba than Puerto Rico.
Fat lot of good the US did for PR.
The rest of the Caribbean is still suffering from US export of weapons of war and the Drug War. Their relationship with the US has made the Caribbean governments weaker and more corrupt.
Good for Castro for chasing those crazy bald heads out of town.
Many American immigrants from the Caribbean and Latin America would agree.
7
Rather than say "Young and Old Voters View It Differently," I think it's more accurate to say informed and uninformed voters view it differently.
Denying any hint of a positive achievement in Cuba is dishonest. Even the USSR police state had the Bolshoi Ballet.
The problem with Bernie's "honesty" is that his recent tactful PC declaration that Castro was a dictator doesn't jibe with his rhetoric throughout decades of his past.
Bernie has long been a Marxist apologist, and those skeletons will be taken from his closet by the Trump camp and displayed daily in TV ads if he's the nominee. And they'll highlight the side of Cuba he routinely downplayed over the years:
'In his memoir of the revolutionary struggle, ''Family Portrait With Fidel'' (1984), Carlos Franqui, the editor of the official revolutionary newspaper, Revolucion, for some years after the Cuban revolution, notes how shocked he was to hear reports of the torture of counterrevolutionary suspects. Bringing news of this to Mr. Castro, Mr. Franqui quickly learned that the torture had the leader's blessings. Mr. Franqui points out that the decision to execute the former Cuban president Fulgencio Batista's worst goons created ''a new repressive power that would be implacable.'' When Mr. Franqui raised the issue of the moral degradation torture implies, Mr. Castro told him that it ''annihilates the enemy,'' and hence was necessary.' - From "SURVIVING CASTRO'S TORTURES"
By Ronald Radosh, The New York Times, June 8, 1986
1
Boomers shouldn’t be allowed to vote. They have been a plague on history. Contributing little. Consuming all. They are the me generation and trump was their parting gift to posterity. Good riddance.
4
@dancingbear
Contributed nothing? So who moved civil rights forward?
Why is that millennials like to go around making discriminatory and disparaging comments about older folks. But if you say anything critical about women or non whites, millennials will come instantly crashing down on you with all their “woke” nonsense. Not very woke, are they after all?
1
The election is probably between someone who is infatuated with a mafioso Russian dedicator who is our enemy and someone who said that Castro had a good education policy.. Are Bernie's comments about Castro even relevant?
2
I'm from New York and grew up with a lot of Italian-Americans, some born here and some in Italy. Never once did I ever hear any of them fondly reminisce that under Mussolini the trains ran on time.
1
Castro’s Cuba is a total wreck. Ask anyone on the street and they would leave for Miami tomorrow. Watch for yourself on you tube (‘bald and bankrupt’). And don’t blame America...Cuba can trade with the entire world, including America’s largest trading partners.
Clearly, it is Castro’s socialism that has failed the Cuban people.
2
I’m a millennial, and I’m a traitor to my generation - one of the only demographics Hillary Clinton carried in 2016, was the working class. Her problem was that she turned off white suburban women, and most older affluent white men. This whole myth that Democratic establishment elites had abandoned the working class and thus the working class abandoned Democratic establishment elites is specious and misleading. Sanders scares bourgeois moms, and you need bourgeois moms to win the general election. Somehow Trump is more appealing to this demographic (bourgeois moms), but then again, they are bourgeois moms and thus amoral blanks.
I do hope Sanders is the Dem candidate this November. I constantly e-mail the White House with my ideas / thoughts to my President if this becomes a reality. For instance; I have Medicare, paid for monthly with my S/Security. Under Bernie, do us Seniors still pay for our Medicare while persons coming across our Borders illegally not pay? This is just a one question among the thousands of nonsense ideas from Bernie. Again, I hope Bernie is their man because Trump will eviscerate him in their debates and be re-elected in a Landslide.
2
@vince williams
I have Medicare and VA that I paid for. I am not worried about me but I do think about the uninsured.
Fat chance of Bernie getting free healthcare for illegals through congress.
Trump's plan for Medicare:
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/healthcare/news/2019/10/11/475646/trumps-plan-privatize-medicare/
Are you OK with it?
@vince williams
You do know that Trump/Republicans are talking of cutting Soc. Sec. and Medicare.; right?!
1
Parliamentary socialism has never wrecked a democracy anywhere. You'd think the Democratic establishment would have more interest in preventing the conditions in which real revolutions arise from happening. But there wealthy are clinging to every penny, even at cost of subverting democracy, as we read in the article from earlier today. The panic is this not only ignorant, but ironic.
5
Can we offer Senator Sanders in exchange for Cuban dissidents, formerly known as classical liberal capitalists?
1
Is anyone surprised? Bernie Sanders has a cult the same way Donald Trump does.
4
An excerpt taken from Jim Jones' "death tape", just before he ordered his followers to commit mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana:
"...you chose your own way to go, and it is your commitment to refuse capitalism and in support of socialism"
Thank you Mr. Bernie Sanders for unwittingly or otherwise choosing a role model like Jim Jones. Nothing more needs to be said.
4
Nothing more needs to be said? So you think you made some sort of point huh?
2
Shame. This is red-baiting nonsense.
Cuba? Sanders noted that Cubans made significant progress in the area of health care and education and they did. Under Batista, Havana was a brothel run by the mob.
Nicaragua? Sanders opposed the US-backed regime of Somoza. If that meant opposing the genocidal murder campaigns of the Contras funded by Reagan most normal people would count that as humanitarian.
Chile? Salvador Allende was a socialist who was elected president in 1970 and overthrown (and murdered) in a coup sponsored by the United States. The murder and torture carried out by Augusto Pinochet were not done at the hands of socialists. Just the opposite. It was done by people trained at the School of the Americas that was run by the US Army's Southern Command in Operation Condor. Graduates included Major "Blowtorch" D'Aubisson of El Salvador.
Guatemala? The democratically elected president, Jacobo Arbenz, was another Latin American leader overthrown by the CIA in 1954 based on his opposition to the looting of the economy by the United Fruit Company.
Iran? Likewise with the democratically elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, in 1953. He opposed the rapacious stripping of Iranian oil resources by British Petroleum. The CIA installed the pliant dictatorship of the Shah. That was the unfortunate origin of Islamic fundamentalism as the US wiped out a democratic alternative to Reza Pahlavi and his torture machine, the Savak.
This is back to don't trust anyone over 30.
11
Boomers actually vote.
1
So do Gen Xers, Millenials, and Gen Z. We need record voter turnout on November 3, 2020 to defeat DJT and elect Senator Sanders president.
Go Bernie!
3
Let's be clear about what is being said. Bernie said not everything Castro did was bad. His example was Castro increased literacy. Yet according to many people, we should think everything Castro did was bad. So clearly literacy is bad according to all those that object to his statement.
I am 75 years old and I do remember the Castro revolution, the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missle crisis, the horrible way Castro treated political prisoners. No not everything Castro did was bad. Not everything the US does is good or bad. But increasing literacy is very good. Given it was so easy to do, why did it take Castro to do it?
6
It’s predictable that you have an article about this issue and quote people who hate Cuban communism. That’s fine. But there isn’t a word about the precise nature of the forces the US supported. The Contras were terrorists, the Salvadoran military murdered 50,000 civilians and the Guatemalan government committed genocide. We supported them all.
Instead, you portray this as young people who simply brush off the history while the older ones who criticize Sanders remember it. Sorry, but there are plenty of people who in fact do remember who the US supported— altogether, hundreds of thousands of civilians were murdered by the US supported forces. This might be worth a mention.
5
Bernie is 100% right.
It's time we got along with Cuba and help pull them to modernity.
Shunning them like democrat have been doing does not make any sense. Except it has preserved our equation in a time capsule that has benefited no one.
Why do old generation liberals think otherwise?
7
I just read that House Republicans introduced a resolution yesterday condemning sanders’ comments supporting Castro, as well as Castro’s human rights abuses including. forced indoctrination, using firing squads, torture, imprisonment, etc. Democrats voted it down, of course. But what a horrible position Sanders put House Democrats in. They are now on record as not condemning human rights abuses of a dictator our country has always opposed. This is terrible—especially since he thumbed his nose at “establishment” Democrats in an abrasive tweet last week. Right at a time when our party needs a unifying candidate the most, he is a divisive non-Democrat interloper who can do irreparable harm to our party. Also why is he so non transparent that none of his followers know what Democratic Socialism is? A five minute search on Wikipedia reveals that the end game of Democratic Socialism is anti-capitalism that ends private ownership of businesses.
1
Trump sends love letters to communist dictators and has special soul bonds to Kim and Putin and his base still thinks he’s great. Trump abandons our allies to their deaths worldwide. Who cares about humanitarianism anymore? A small minority of old democrats? This does not matter to most people anymore.
1
I am listening to a Sanders rally on TV and I am about to turn it off. He is extreme and a menace to America. We do not have to worry though as he will never be elected. He cannot fool the majority of Americans. Only the gullible are believers.
3
The reason I believe Sanders jammed his foot squarely into the political quicksand that is Cuba is as follows:
1) Bernie sees himself as a "progressive populist"
2) Castro saw himself as a "progressive populist"
Thus he was leading directly into the "progressive populist" narrative, where Sanders feels he is strongest with voters (which remains to be seen, until all the votes are in for the primaries).
Problem here is while Castro was a "progressive populist for the poeple" bringing real contrast to prior authoritarian regimes in Cuba ... Castro too.. ended up operating much of Cuba as an authoritarian regime as well.
See.. now.. if we connect Bernies dots here... with his recent Cuba statements, he is actually reinforcing concerns that Bernie is also pretty authoritarian (my way or the highway style) too... and THAT is a political blind spot on Bernies part.. OR.. he is simply showing us all his true colors here.. in which case moderates and independents concerns about him are completely valid.
Sorry, but Bernie cannot have it both ways here.
3
If you're a young person and like Bernie for all the free stuff he promises, why not just vote for Warren? She promises to pay off your student loans and all of the other free stuff that Bernie has promised. The difference between Sanders and Warren is that Warren does not have all of Bernie's baggage. If you really want to see a progressive agenda, Warren would be much better at making it happen. As a Democrat, she would have a better chance of keeping the House and taking the Senate. I don't get it - Sanders and Warren have the same agenda, why not go with the candidate who doesn't provide so many attack targets?
I grew up in Argentina during the Dirty War, so I have experienced first hand the effects of 1970's American foreign policy in the region. I strongly disagree with people like Mr. Cartaya (quoted in the article) and I find it extremely disappointing that the New York Times chooses to legitimize the rantings of those who are either historically uninformed or simply resentful of having lost privilege. Mr. Sanders, who regardless of the condescending comments so often expressed by pundits (including some columnists in this paper) does indeed have a mostly accurate understanding of America's role in the region, is correct in pointing out the unfortunate effects of past interventionism. Before quoting the opinions of his detractors, it will do well to remember that those very vocal Nicaraguans, Cubans and more recently Venezuelans now exiled in the US tend to belong to social classes that experienced loss of power when popular movements overthrew the right wing regimes that evoke their longing, that such voices (still) feel "entitled" to their past privilege, and that the regimes they so often extol were both extremely corrupt and had abominable human rights records.
9
I’m a boomer and could care less about Bernie’s remark regarding Cuba and efforts to educate its people.
4
McGovern like defeat....nothing less. Bernie is the plague.
3
McGovern was totally right about Vietnam - the majority of Americans were wrong.
2
If authoritarian Communist countries are so bad and beyond the pale, why is China our largest trading partner?
2
@John "If authoritarian Communist countries are so bad and beyond the pale, why is China our largest trading partner?" Because the U.S., along with the rest of the smug West, were sure that once China made sufficient economic progress, political progress (i.e. embracing Western liberal ideals). Short-term thinking by profit-seeking enterprises kept the illusion up in order to try to gain access to China's growing consumer market. And now we're stuck. China has inserted itself into the global supply chain, stolen technology, and modernized its military.
1
@John
China is our largest trading partner because American businesses showed them the way and decimated jobs in the USA as a byproduct.
1
If Cuba is better because they have free health care, free education and free housing, then why do many Cubans stay in the US instead of going back to their country?
1
Because America wont trade with them and you cant transfer money there, which are both American policy choices that have nothing to do with Cuba’s actual system of governance and is nothing but economic warfare perpetrated by the US on Cuba:
4
Do you have any integrity left in your profession?
Do you cover news on socialism for the rich. The war's this government wages for the benefit of the military industry or the subsidies for the oil and gas industry.
If you believed in capitalism, you would cheer fair competition. You are defending a system that is an abject failure.
The resume is there for everyone to see
Extreme income inequality
Supporting human governments that abuse human rights all over the planet
The largest incarcerated population on the planet
A broken justice system
A broken and over priced education system
Grow a spine and do your job, inform and educate!
7
And this is why history repeats itself. Nothing to learn vicariously here folks.
1
Sanders is a socialist in name only. Deep down we all know the truth. He’s a communist who honeymooned in the USSR, has repeatedly praised communist regimes including the soviets, and said he wouldn’t mind being called communist.
4
He’s too rich to be a communist. Please try to use logic. Socialism = taxes pay for public services (something rich people with real morals can be OK with). Communism = no private property (nobody with assets is OK with this)
3
Boomer panic?
Here's a thought: Life is hard. It's even harder when you are stupid.
In the last century, Socialist governments (including Castro's Cuba) deliberately murdered more than 100 million of their own citizens who refused to go along with their socialist leader's "plans" to pay for all the "free stuff" they had earlier promised, simply to gain power.
The US government does not have any money. All of the "government's" money comes from taxes, current or future.
The children that support Bernie and his foolish competitor candidates "free stuff" fantasies will be voting for a lifetime of large, permanent, tax hikes on themselves by going along with politicians promises for trillions of dollars of that "free" stuff from the government.
There is no other alternative, as the Nordic countries learned in the 60's and 70's before they began dramatically scaling back their socialist mistakes (look it up - it's actual history, not a politician's fantasy.)
Well after the idiocy of this sort of increased government spending becomes clear, those that voted for all the "free" stuff will be paying for it via a lifetime of much higher and completely unavoidable taxes.
That's the reality that Bernie and his cohort of fantasy spinners won't admit in public.
4
When you elect a socialist as a leader expect fall in economy and unrest in future .
Only a good businessman who is a nationalist can uplift the life of citizen .
2
Hey all, its not Boomers -it's elitists establishment type panic! OK!
2
There were murderous dictatorships in Argentina, Chile, and Brazil only they were right wing regimes and the US government officially never said a bad word about them.
7
@Kaari And then the Cold War ended and the U.S. no longer needed the strongmen to hold back the Soviet-backed communists. Once the Soviet threat was eliminated, liberalization came swiftly. It wasn't peace rallies that ended apartheid in South Africa, it was the end of the Cold War.
2
There was little difference in the way Latin American right wing regimes dealt with their citizens, murdering hundreds of thousands, than than did the Soviets.
Obviously protection of US investments and access to natural resources has been a driving goal of Washington's policy in the region.
1
On the other hand, Trump can say any idiotic thing he wants in the present time, and nobody in his party bats an eye. Democrats, it's time to get over parsing what one of our candidates said 30 years ago. Why should we care about that now? Trump is a much greater threat to our way of life than the Bernie of 30 years ago. Let's apply the Republican standard to our candidates: You don't like something they said once, get over it.
3
Some of us "Boomers" say. "So what?" too.
6
As an older (69 year old) American, I take no offense at Bernie praising 2 efforts of the Castro government’s attempt to improve the lives of Cubans. -healthcare and education. This is not to diminish in any or all of the horrors that Castro put in his country through- especially his enemies. I think that the now grandchildren of the original wealthy extreme anti Castro faction in Miami who still hope to regain their family’s ill gotten wealth in Cuba are being manipulated by republicans for their own gain while not really caring a bit about them or those left behind. They are being “chumped” and have been for decades. And if Bernie does get elected I will cheer at the pier or airport when Marco Rubio leaves our country as he has threatened to do. Adios Marco.
5
I'm an old guy from Florida and I say so what. Bernie can say anything he wants about Cuba. Its about healthcare and it's about the climate crisis.
10
You may be old Mike, but you are also one intelligent old guy, which is what the establishment fears the most.
Me, I'm 70, I suppose that's old, but if Bernie Sanders becomes the nominee and our 46th President, I will do everything to live at least another 30 years just to witness decent Americans take back control of our future.
These last few years of watching and listening to the Narcissist In-Chief and his Republican partners has been a nightmare.
6
@Mel Farrell
I'm 68 and agree with both of you. We have witnessed the struggle and decline of the middle class since Regan and it has accelerated as we moved our manufacturing to China.
2
He never explicitly praised Cuba, just the literacy program that Castro implemented.
6
The age stereotyping that pervades this, and other, such discussions amounts to nothing more than meaningless drivel.
Has anyone noticed that Bernie is in his late 70's? ... Or that the people who invented the Internet are, too? I am slightly north of 60, and I totally endorse what Bernie and Elizabeth Warren seek to accomplish. I yearn for it.
We are not, for the most part, ignorami. The fact is that anyone, of any age, is capable of choosing to become informed. Anyone with half a brain knows that life is nuanced, and that movements founded on legitimate gripes can morph into that which they previously opposed. Is it inconceivable to the hysterical complainants that this *might* have happened in Cuba? ... That despite its later intoxication with absolute power, the regime may have put in place important policies that improved Cubans' lives?
I've completely had it with 1) The silly age stereotyping and 2) The laughable red-baiting. Has anyone besides me noticed that there are no more "Reds" to speak of? Has anyone noticed that those who now threaten Democracy are either mobsters or oligarchs, or both? Anyone who can read a book can learn where Communism (which I do not endorse) came from. Bernie is no Commie.
PS: The Cuban revolution developed in response to egregious economic oppression of the many by the few. The few - interestingly enough - included a large number of mobsters affiliated with US-based casinos. (Quelle coïncidence!)
6
"Many older Democrats were offended when Bernie Sanders praises Cuba."
Oops.
This Boomer stands with Bernie!
10
Via nationalized ownership of production and distribution, Castro promised free healthcare, free education, and free housing. So did Hugo Chavez. Look where it got them. Meanwhile, young US voters lap up the eternal promises, and ignore the actual history.
4
"Many older Cuban-Americans cringed at Mr. Sanders’s remarks, saying he sounded like an apologist for Communist indoctrination."
The older Cuban-Americans are mostly strong Trump fans with little respect for the rights of other immigrants, ranging from indifferent to supportive of his attacks on other immigrant groups:
"Cuban Americans are among President Trump's most reliable supporters and helped him win Florida. A sampling of Cuban American voters in Miami finds most untroubled by his recent racist comments."
https://www.npr.org/2019/07/17/742818924/how-cuban-american-communities-are-reacting-to-trumps-racist-comments
This group belonged to the right wing that clung to right wing torturer authoritarian Batista before Cuba's revolution - they just want a dictatorship of the right for people with money.
They obviously have double standards and don't give a dime about Trump's racism or praise for other authoritarians like North Korea's leader.
9
The Left needs to seize upon this "Emperor's New Clothes" moment, ferociously.
First, the sudden sky-is-falling hysteria this week over Sanders' "socialism" is absurd, and the media owes it to Americans to tell the truth that the entirety of Sanders' proposals would leave us to the right of many modern Western nations, and are absolutely nothing, nada, zilch, zero, like the USSR or China or Cuba, all totalitarian military dictatorships. Try Canada, and Sweden, and F.D.R. America.
Second, Sanders praises Cuba's education and he's practically Fidel himself, but when politician after politician from both parties praises Saudi Arabia, Russia, and too many other America-friendly bloody dictatorships to count, not a peep from the pearl-clutching right. It's phony, and political theater.
The Establishment emperor is naked.
5
Here in my mid 40’s I marvel at the number of really awful boomers who exert so much influence on our society: Trump, obviously, and his adoring fans in the senate, and a couple of guys named Bernie (Madoff and Sanders) both of whom conned a whole lot of folks.
Why the youth are enthralled with this grumpy, hectoring, career politician isn’t just based on his platform/positions. It’s more complex than that and it adds to my anxiety about the future of this country. There are an awful lot of boomers’ kids drinking the Bernie koolaid, and they eventually will be the middle aged (leadership) majority in this country, just as their folks were.
God help us.
1
First...Bernie Sanders did not praise Cuba on 60 Minutes. What he actually praised was Castro's literacy program. Huge difference with your headline for this story. Please watch the video and then you can apologize to your readers. This is a very thinly-veiled and incorrect report of what was actually said. Bernie is not the monster you would like to portray. Shame.
4
There we going again, Florida spoiling the elections just because of some disgruntled right wing Cubans. Many of those folks probably had parents that benefitted from another dictator called Batista. Oh, he certainly was great for his cronies and the cowards who profited from his right wing reign. However he certainly also was not a democrat. So the hypocrites in Miami better check their lineage and history books and be straight up about how great Cuba was before for most poor people. Castro’s revolution there was just a reaction to another dismal regime and those who supported and profited from Batista rightfully had to fear it. To be clear: Cuba basically was a Banana Republic.
4
The idea that you can find some good in Castro's Cuba while decrying the bad is not dangerous, merely pragmatic. And it's interesting that the boomer-dominated media can only think in 20th century rhetoric. For instance, every analysis of Sanders' health care plan begins by asking how to pay for it when, in fact, universal health care SAVES money by removing the blood-sucking insurance industry that operates between patients and providers. How is it even possible that you could spend more money by taking all the profit made by private insurers out of the equation? It is only the rigid mind-set of people believing they have "free" medical care through their employees that maintains this fantasy. Young people recognize this is fantasy.
5
People appear to be largely unaware of labor’s history in the US: Unions, the May Day general strike, the struggle for an 8 hr workday, the Haymarket riot..the 5 day workweek and winning the weekend. Then, the New Deal helping lift us out of the Depression. Public schools, Medicare, and Social Security. This is all “socialism”, the reputation of which was tarnished for nearly a hundred years by Bolshevik Communists- who unlike socialists, did not believe in private property or democratic processes.
2
Personally, I cannot wait to vote against Bernie Sanders in my primary. He's a cult leader, not a president.
2
This article crystalized something for me. Bernie Sanders has finally found the audience he's been looking for for most of his political career -- those with memories short enough to not hold his extreme views around communism and socialism against him. That audience would be millennials, many of whom were nothing but a glimmer in the eyes of their parents when the Berlin Wall came down.
3
But trying to antagonize you, but what point are you trying to make here?
1
Education and literacy? Castro could have easily prepared the Cuban people for a 21st century economy. Where is Cuba’s healthy information technology sector, developing software and skills to implement technology. That requires zero U.S. assistance, and Cuba could offer their IT services to the whole world for export. But for another failure of Cuban socialism.
Cuba does not have access to the American market due to longstanding US policy. We wont let them export anything to us, so arguing that they should be competing for business in the US makes no sense. They specialized in services they needed for themselves: education and healthcare, and were successful.
2
@Andy
They can compete for business with the rest of the world, which is my point.
If you think the Cuban people have been educated to be ready for the 21st century and they are all in good health, you need to pay Cuba a visit...and you may want to bring toilet paper with you as you wait in line 4 hours for gas. Cuba can’t afford that either.
@J House
The US is still putting it's oversized thumb upon the scale...
https://www.euractiv.com/section/economy-jobs/news/eu-threatens-wto-action-after-us-paves-way-for-cuban-property-lawsuits/
https://truthout.org/articles/trump-threatens-a-second-embargo-of-cuba/
1
Angering people who lost relatives and property in Cuba is not Sanders only problem in Florida. He wants to raise taxes to provide Medicare for all. But people over 65 — and there are a lot of them in Florida — already get Medicare. For them, they would pay higher taxes and receive no additional benefits. Many seniors move to Florida because it has no state income taxes and they won’t be happy about paying extra Federal taxes and receiving no benefits. Stirring the Fidel Castro nest is only one of the reason’s that Democrats nominating Sanders would be the equivalent of forfeiting Florida.
2
@Rick Actually, Medicare has a ton of holes in it most people don't know about until they are old enough to receive Medicare themselves OR their parent is. For example, Medicare does not cover glasses, hearing aids, or dental care. It does not cover home health aides (for people stuck at home recovering from a stroke who need help with cooking, cleaning). It does not cover nursing home care (which basically most seniors/ families cannot afford at thousands of dollars a month). Medicare still requires co-pays for visits, tests, and treatments unless you pay for a Medigap policy, separately. Sander's plans for Medicare for All would cover these holes so seniors would actually get more than they currently get from Medicare.
https://berniesanders.com/issues/medicare-for-all/
Even if they pay more several more thousand dollars a year, it is likely many would still come out better in the long run. Home health care and nursing home care alone can cost thousands a month.
If their adult children paid attention, they'd also realize Medicare for All may reduce the amount they need to pay for to care for their parents. Not to mention the unpaid time/ energy needed to find/ vet/ and coordinate such services. In other countries with national healthcare systems, these concerns are less severe/ prevalent.
1
Since Bernie Sanders is such a fan of Cuba, he should become a permanent resident. I am sure the Cuban people would love that. He should wait until after the November 2020 election against President Trump because Bernie is certain to lose. Then he can move to Cuba and live out his remaining days in joy.
3
Imagine that: Pete Buttigieg condemning Sanders for trying to start another Cold War. That, however, is exactly what he was trading upon when he made that and other statements about Sanders.
The Cold War is long gone, for about 30 years now. Yet out come the same old accusations and epithets--Bloomberg in the debates, Brooks today in this paper, and all the rest. CNN going on about how best to stop Sanders. The Times op-ed writers continuing where they left off in 2016, condemning Sanders and supporting Hillary. It's back because the current batch of practitioners of Cold War rhetoric are either clueless about American history or desperate and unimaginative about how to answer Sanders' (and to some extent Warren's) policy positions.
Young people know this is shop-worn and irrelevant. And if they study any history (with real historians) they know that Sanders was right about American imperial adventuring of the entire Twentieth century.
3
What a lot of the Berners aren't taking into consideration is that the moment you have to start explaining "why" Democratic Socialism from Denmark isn't the same as Socialism from Latin America, you've lost the argument.
The majority of the American public simply doesn't care to listen to long explanations about why everything they learned growing up during the Cold War simply isn't true or that it wasn't black/white.
Having to spend your time explaining nuance to an American voter is the last thing you need to be doing.
The people on this site and other media outlets making thoughtful comments like these presented here are not the majority of the country. The majority of the country votes based upon emotion and whether or not they like your attitude or if they could tolerate living next to you.
The majority of the country doesn't even click on the headlines on stories on their social media. They make decisions on those headlines alone, comment or "Like" and move on. They've made their mind up.
They're going to (primarily) do the same with this election. It'll be based upon quick decisions influenced by emotions.
That's why Trump had it figured out before. He appealed to people's basic (dark) feelings about the world around them.
The fact is that the majority of voters this November are going to vote for whoever scares them less.
3
Socialism is bad but don’t touch my public education, police, fire service, public hospitals, interstate highways, medicaid, medicare or social security....but socialism is bad! /s
2
It amazes me how many people continue to harangue about a 60 year old issue in Cuba, yet ignore the authoritarian tyrant who is demonizing the USA on a daily basis. Is this the only light in which the NYT’s can report on Mr. Sanders? Does it ever occur to such a distinguished body that people want to vote for him and continue to show that in these primaries? Or is that the problem?
1
The problem isn't that Bernie acknowledged that Cuba had done some good things for its people, it's that our Establishment - the one that launched the Red Scare and the Domino Theory - did a great job of painting "socialism" with that broad red brush. It was brainwashing, plain and simple.
I think Bernie did the math and figured out that almost everyone who has a problem with the term "democratic socialist" wasn't ever going to vote for him anyway. On the other hand, sticking firm to his beliefs and principles, rather than just caving into what's "politically correct" will earn him a lot more voters.
What would you have: a President who is best buds with dictators and tyrants, and openly solicits foreign interference in our democracy, or a guy who simply acknowledges the truth? If you can't see the difference, you're hopelessly blind to reason anyway.
4
Bernie's running on concrete policies to improve the lives of working people - which would be life-transforming in a good way.
Donald Trump isn't going to run on policies for health care, education, housing - he doesn't have any. Trump never thinks about anyone but himself.
Trump's going to do what he did in 2016. He's going to run on 'culture' - the opposite of what Bernie's doing.
Rick Wilson points out Trump will run exactly like he did in 2016 - by enflaming cultural grievances, lying about his accomplishments & trying to demonize & criminalize his opponent. Remember 2016 Trump talking about his "hands," claiming "Lyin' Ted's" father was part of the JFK assassination & Trump stalking Hillary, saying he'd "put her in jail"?
It worked in 2016.
That's what Bernie (or any Democrat) will be up against. Policy won't matter to Trump - he doesn't know, doesn't care.
There will be numerous ways Trump will demonize Bernie & paint him as a nut & a communist. While many of us aren't scared by this, older, many older conservative, suburban & working class voters - who usually vote Democratic - will be spooked when they heart the Democratic nominee painted as a kook & a communist.
Bernie's will need the votes of those older, moderate people who aren't "woke" & or evolved on Cuba to win the election.
Praising Castro's literacy program is too nuanced to make sense to those folks.
Bernie needs to consider them when he speaks.
Without their votes, he can't win.
1
“More government involvement” coming from an 18 year old Chemistry major. Shocking.
Oh c'mon already. Those boomers should be worried about Trump's current slavish subservience to very alive Vladimir Putin instead of Sander's decades old praise of the very dead Castro.
3
The title preceding to this article says it all. Perhaps the best way to answer it is by quoting Abraham Lincoln's famous saying: "You can fool some of the people all the time, you can fool all the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." What was true well over one-hundred fifty years ago is just as true today.
Please be more mindful of your words.
Bernie is NOT stirring that angst. Those with a vested interest on Wall Street and those with an ideological ax to grind, like Friedman and Brooks, are stirring that angst and raising those charges to discredit him.
There is a world of difference. Learn it and stop stirring the pot in the very same ways the press did in 2016. Clearly nothing has been learned since then.
3
“Occasionally it might be a good idea to be honest about American foreign policy, and that includes the fact that America has overthrown governments all over the world in Chile, in Guatemala, in Iran,” Mr. Sanders said.
Haven't heard a candidate mention the Cold War Crimes of the USA since Tim Kaine in '16.
It was the USA who backed the mass-murdering torturer Batista & created the conditions in Cuba which begat Castro.
Oldsters seem to forget that the Cold War was a pointless atrocity invented by the Military Industrial Complex & pushed mostly by Republicans in order to terrify Americans, manufacture a fictitious enemy & spread paranoia in their endless propaganda-war against Progress.
Enough with this Red Scare. Policies that benefit the People over free-market extremism & corporate welfare are not Stalinism.
4
The trains ran on time in Italy when Mussolini ruled. Literacy rose in Russia during Stalin’s regime. But a dictator is a dictator is a dictator. And Sanders knows that. He should just not praise any dictator and that includes left wing dictators in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
2
Trump heaps praise on Kim, Putin, Xi and Erdogan but that rule only applies to Democrats after all.
1
The intelligence level of Sanders supporters is comparable to that of Trump true believers. Most Sanders supporters don’t even know what socialism actually means. Scandinavia isn’t socialist. While Bernie supports nationalizing and expropriating private businesses.
Sanders supporters are deceiving you when they talk about Scandinavia. Nordic social democracy is unique. Norway has per capita massive oil and gas reserves, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, very strict limits on immigration, free market policies like eliminating rent controls, high and unprogressive taxation on middle income earners including VAT... Denmark has taken a very hard line on illegal aliens and require legal immigrants to integrate in order to receive public benefits. And individuals basically can’t sue the pharmaceutical companies in Denmark. These countries can’t run massive budget deficits like the USA, so they have high taxes on everyone and even trim their public benefits when needed.
1
If you think the US doesn’t have high oil wealth per capita you are not paying attention.
1
To young voters: Those that do not learn from and understand history.... are destined to repeat it.. in all it's ugliness.
5
The silence from the US was deafening when right wing regimes in Chile, Brazil, Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, etc were slaughtering thousands of their own citizens. Ask the Mothers of the Plaza.
4
Young Voters in the USA do say, SO WHAT... I was in Moscow in 2015, just before the world changed. Young Moscow residents asked me, "why don't American youth(s) vote?" My handlers warned me against talking about politics, but the questions were very clear, why don't they vote?
The young people in Moscow would love to vote. If they could.
but here in metro-NJ, the young people are too self-absorbed to vote. Too entitled too vote. Too gullible to vote. Too lazy to vote. I could go on and on.
3
When the choices are two corporate shills and the electoral college ultimately decides, voting doesn’t matter and the populace is disenfranchised. It’s not that complicated.
1
As a long-time Democrat and Miamian it seems to me long past time to break the stranglehold of Cuban exile political domination. Kowtowing to the ancien regime former elite that set itself up in Miami has brought us nothing. These folks, including Ms Fabiola, have only been Republican-lite forces: they undermined the gubernatorial campaign of the African-American gubernatorial candidate, Andrew Gillum; they were unable to deliver for Sen Nelson; as reported by the NYT at the time, they fumbled the Gore vote into the hands of a mob; and they have been closer to the Bush family than the national party.
And, if we are going to describe the Nicaraguan Contras as a “resistance,” then Sanders’s comments about US interventions are more than overdue.
5
According to the 2018 FIU Cuba poll, a candidate's position on Cuba ranked DEAD LAST (8%) on the list of voting priorities of Cuban-Americans. This ranks even below the percentage of people who turn up to vote a straight party ticket (13.7%).
On top of that, most Cuban-Americans still vote Republican and independents outnumber registered Democrats (44% registered Republican, 26% Independent, 19% Democratic).
And again....Sen. Sanders' comments were not substantively different from when Pres. Obama said Cuba "should be congratulated" for their educational achievements. If anything, his was more laudatory than Sen. Sanders. People don't seem to be taking into account that Sen. Sanders prefaced his comment with "We're very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba..."
5
This is anecdotal from a 61 year old, but the young people I’ve been around impress me as being smarter and more flexible in their thinking than people my own age.
And this article reinforces my observations.
4
So what? We're gong to lose the election with this guy. That's what. How difficult is it to steer clear of a subject that immediately loses Florida for your General Election campaign if you say what Sanders said?
Bernie's supporters will say he's just keeping it real. I would refer them to the classic Chappelle's Show skits "When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong". Perhaps that should be the slogan of Bernie's 2020 Campaign.
2
This is a great example of how news medias distort news. Sanders was quite articulate about what he exactly meant. As always, it was taken out of context.
He said that he thought that increasing literary was a good thing. He’s right about that. However, he criticized the autocratic nature of the regime – like he has for many more countries.
It just shows that a person or nation is not all good or all bad. Even bad countries can sometimes do good things. On the other hand, good countries can do bad things.
Please don’t distort what the guy said.
7
Senator Sander’s political views related to socialism were widely held among college students in the 60’s and early 70’s. I experience Senator Sander’s angry rants as a repetition of words that were frequently used at that time. Apparently, if one waits long enough, the same old thoughts can become fashionable once again, but not based on an astute interpretation of changing world environments.
In the 60’s and 70’s some young Americans admired Cuba and visited to help with the sugar cane harvest. Many young people became alarmed when they finally realized that Castro had condemned gay and lesbian Cubans to prisons declaring that these people he labelled as degenerates were not capable of being true revolutionaries. When the HIV epidemic hit, Castro sent infected people to closed insane asylums.
No, I do not believe that boomers are clutching their pearls at the mere mention of the word socialism. It is more likely that we do not see a reason for mentioning good things about Castro in 2020 while trying to carry Florida as a swing state. Even among the left winged intellectuals, most had moved on from mentioning good things about Castro by the mid-70’s, but not Senator Sanders. He never changes. He just keeps saying the same old things.
If voters are looking for a candidate who is high energy, really smart, and thinking carefully about the world that we live in today, I recommend Senator Elizabeth Warren.
1
There’s something called the “mere exposure effect.” Novel ideas are not easily accepted. To quote Max Planck “new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
Republicans have been making a huge mistake with their increasingly extremist views and behavior over the past 30 years. As a reaction to it we have social democrats running for office now. So millennials and younger are now familiar with social democracy.
Republicans are burning their own house to the ground.
4
I'm 61. I say so what. No I didn't just move out of my mother's basement. I'm a physician who belongs to physicians for single payer health Care.
7
It is obvious that a lot of Americans don't know a lot about Cuba, Mexico and Central and South America in general. It would be good to learn about them. Cuba is no liberal democratic state, but people live and work there and have everyday lives. Their health system is very good and Americans have gone to Cuba to use it. Especially good is primary/preventive care. Cuban doctors have served around the world. And yes there is corruption among administrators of the program. But the docs still do a lot of good. Basically, Cuba is no heaven, but US sanctions caused a lot of harm and did nothing to help bilateral relations and probably encouraged Cuban trade with Russia. We've got to develop nuanced understanding of our own and other countries. Socialism doesn't mean Cold War Communism. Nicaragua is another country that gets badmouthed. I have a friend, an American friend, who has a coffee farm in Nicaragua. The government has slipped into authoritarianism, but there, people, too, just live their lives. And the US government supported the wrong side in Nicaragua, Chile, and elsewhere. Americans need to learn a lot more about these countries before it jumps on Sanders because a lot of the problems in the area can be traced at least in part to US policy. And I would like to say that I am 76 and I know other people my age who support Bernie. The split among progressives and moderates really isn't strictly generational. American ignorance must be dealt with!
9
I am a Boomer. I am an Amy Klobuchar/Stacey Abrams ticket supporter. Bernie's comments about Cuba don't bother me. If Bernie is chosen to be the candidate I will vote for him. However it is pretty clear to me that Bernie will lose Florida because of his Castro comments, and he probably won't help the down ticket candidates. With him as our candidate we could very well lose the House and we probably won't be able to take back the Senate. I am equally as afraid of McConnell as I am of Trump. I must say that I am disgusted with the Dems for not providing us with a viable candidate to run against Trump, The ages of the top three runners is seriously worrisome. It is a concerning "stent-off". I wish I could wake up from this nightmare
2
@MJ
The "viable" candidate the Dems provided us with in 2016 lost Florida and election, remember?
2
My opinion has 3 elements.
1. The Cuban communists have provided, it is true, health care and education, but, there are Gulags. So the Conservative song entitled "all is bad in Cuba" isn't really honest or scientific. The Liberal song, "look at them do many wonderful things," leaves out an honest discussion of political terror..
2. All of our politicians, right and left alike, are disingenuous to focus debate on Cuba at this time; this is old news and relatively unimportant. Our economic elite over 30 years have made China, a communist nation, the industrial powerhouse of the entire world... and China funds North Korea. So our politicians want to debate and discuss the danger of a few million Communists on an island -- while ignoring 1 billion Communists who possess nuclear weapons aimed at our major cities. Engaging in a debate about Cuba is fooling and misleading the American people about CURRENT geopolitical and economic realities -- I have to wonder-- why is this so?
3. If American elites, nonetheless, want to consider Cuba and its revolution from 60 years ago, the warning from history might be that an elite class can be neutralized and removed relatively quickly when it fails to keep the confidence of the majority of the population. This insight is in no way favorable to communist regimes. The communist elites in Eastern Europe were removed in 1989 and 1990-- when it became clear that they had failed to serve the majority's interests.
The war against Socialism was never about freedom. It was about war against a threat to American corporate interests (the rich and powerful didn't want their riches and power taken away).
So now a new generation has grown up betrayed, beaten, impoverished, and disenfranchised by those corporate powers, and people are SURPRISED that they want a new form of government which takes the power and money away from those corporate powers?
The old generation needs to wake up and smell the coffee. THIS is what happens when you smash unions, slash benefits, slash wages, and lower taxes for the rich. THE CORPORATIONS BROUGHT THIS ABOUT WITH THEIR OWN HANDS.
Don't like it? No problem! DOUBLE WAGES. Pay 100% for health care for all employees. Bring back full pensions. Encourage workers to form unions. Reduce the work week to 32 hours nation-wide with the same pay and benefits. Give the same sick leave, parental leave, health care, and free education that people enjoy in Europe and watch the power of the Social Democracy movement disappear!
What's that? You don't WANT to pay more taxes and double pay? You don't WANT to provide good benefits and healthcare and education for free? Well then, it looks like the new generation will FORCE you to. Remember, this is the future you CHOSE by your actions.
8
It's often forgotten that many of the Cuban and Venezuelan immigrants to America come from the wealthy agricultural and industrial magnate families which impoverished the people in those countries to the point that revolution was needed. Of course they're unhappy. They presided over medieval-style inequality and they lost their Versailles. Hardly unbiased.
6
As a historian, I am always interested to discuss the events of 1917, 1959, and 1979, but I do not consider these events important issues in the presidential campaign of 2020.
"'The man had his honeymoon in the old Soviet Union,' said Harvey William, 70, who works in Charleston, referring to a trip Mr. Sanders and his wife made there shortly after they married in 1988."
And the authors of that article let this stand, despite the fact that this paper published a profile of Jane Sanders on December 28, 2015 that made it clear that the trip to Burlington's newly appointed sister city in Russia took place shortly after their wedding, but that their actual honeymoon was a year later, in St. Lucia. The trip to the sister city could be considered a business trip Bernie made as Burlington's mayor, but that wouldn't sell the story, would it?
I have to laugh, thinking about how any other candidate would be backpedaling so hard they'd burn rubber on many of the things he says. Not Bernie. He has a different worldview. It's too nuanced for the sound biters, and unfortunately plays into the smear campaign. The good thing is that more and more people see who he really is and understand that this country needs him more than ever today.
6
Sanders isn't stirring cold war angst. The corporate media, the GOP, and the corporate Democrats are.
It makes me laugh that people slag Sanders for pointing out the fact that Castro installed an admirable literacy and medical services system in his country, but those same people see no problem with Trump publicly stating his love and admiration for Vladdie Putin and Kim Jong Un.
7
Well, for one thing, I am glad the current generation of Bernie's die hard supporters did not go through what we did. I remember duck and cover drills in school. We were instructed to go behind the school and shield our heads with our arms, and expose our backside to a potential nuclear blast. That is what we grew up with youngsters. You didn't relive the Days of October when Kennedy came within hours of starting World War II because those sweet Russians were putting missiles on Cuba 90 miles from the American soil. Ask the Cubans whose families were thrown off their land and taken by the government. You also didn't sit through the Vietnam War and lost a lot of your friends. You didn't live with the concept that most of us believed. We believed we would never survive and live as an adult. You didn't live with the draft, which was taking people right out of high school. Of course we don't care for Castro's Cuba, the Russians or even the Red Chinese. I am glad you don't have those memories. You live in a much safer world, but missiles have been replaced with the internet. Just don't expect us to sympathize with your relative naivete to what we actually experienced. Of course we are extremely concerned with Bernie and his ideas, as many of our friends died and were maimed by people like Castro. Bernie thinks Castro wasn't so bad. I will state that Bernie was a conscientious objector and never served in the military. I did't either, but I would have if called.
1
Yes, instead of drilling for a nuclear war that never happened, we drill for active shooters and experience mass murder weekly. If you think the latter is better I truly feel sorry for you.
"So what?"? Will it have an impact on whether Trump will be defeated. That the "so what?" Nothing else matters.
1
Every town in Cuba — even the rural areas — has a local clinic with a doctor where citizens can seek medical care without a fee. The richest country in the world can’t say the same.
Older voters aren’t worried about Bernie’s comments either.
5
Sanders is not stirring cold war angst. In reaction to Sanders' primary/caucus wins and his national poll results, the media and the DNC are stirring cold war angst in an effort to stop him. I am a senior who lived through the cold war, and I didn't know and don't care that Sanders went with his wife to Cuba in 1989. Talk about a non-issue and a distraction. What I don't like to see is the NYT filling the role of the John Birchers during the cold war. Not interested in reliving those times.
5
Okay, the amount of times that the NYTimes needs to be corrected on this is staggering. With the exception of Cuba, people fleeing Latin America in the 70s 80s and 90s were fleeing right wing dictatorships that were installed and supported by the United States. The current generation of refugees and migrants are fleeing economic conditions that are caused by brutal austerity and exploitation by US businesses or social unrest/crime/etc that are secondary to the economic despair imposed by the US and the client states that either still exist or were only recently deposed. The Castros instituted a repressive regime in Cuba, and as a Sanders supporter I think it was an error that he didn’t emphasize that enough (though nothing would have satisfied the rabid media), but the wider critique of US imperialism is an important dimension to his campaign. Framing this as a blemish is ridiculous; the millions of murdered and mutilated bodies left in the wake of the US and/or its client states just in our own hemisphere comprise a level of carnage and brutality that dwarfs anything the Castros have done. We have yet to reckon with the ocean on blood on hands, and Bernie’s vocal opposition to imperialism is a small step in the right direction. All of the talk of indoctrination in Cuban education ignores similar indoctrination in the US such as the deification of Ronald Reagan, a ghastly mass murderer. For a while, even mentioning this fact would render you persona non grata in Washington.
3
I grew up with staunchly anti-Communist relatives of Eastern European descent, but I visited Cuba with a church group in 2011. There were many surprises. While I would not want to live there, I learned that the restrictions on religion have been lifted (the Jewish congregation even holds classes for youth and children), that sole-proprietor businesses are allowed, that the country has a vibrant art and music scene, that there are cars other than 1950s American models, that the government is restoring the old city without displacing the residents, that the U.S. has an agreement with Cuba to take 10,000 immigrants a year, and that any Cuban who can prove Spanish ancestry can emigrate freely to Spain.
If you want to know something about why there was a revolution in Cuba, read T.J. English's "Havana Nocturne," which is about the last years of the Batista government. English is no fan of Castro, but he understands that revolutions don't succeed unless a lot of people are unhappy.
There are other repressive countries in Latin America, there are other poor countries, and now there are countries largely controlled by drug cartels who terrorize the population. The idea that Cuba is uniquely awful is just rubbish.
3
Ignorance of many voters can be spun any way you like. Voters in general response to adept politicians like Nixon, Trump and Sanders using fear and claiming real change. At least Sanders actually has policy goals for change.
2
Why is Sanders loving Cuba. Granted, Cuba is no longer an existential threat. They still are a dictatorship. In addition, we have a huge diaspora of Cubans residing in the US currently and they are not fond of Cuba as it now exists as an autocratic government. Why rile them up? Young voters have no memories and apparently knowledge of Cuba-US history. Their loss.
2
I'm old enough to remember the cold war. I also remember that the dictator that came before Castro was ok in the eyes of America because he let American corporations exploit the poor in Cuba. The things we did around the world during the cold war make Castro's acts seem like child's play.
3
I’m not sure what the fuss about Cuba is. Just in the 21st Century the US has invaded and occupied two countries and killed, wounded and bereaved hundreds of thousands. One of the presidential candidates cast the deciding factor on the invasion of Iraq. I still remember the night of “Fire and Fury” and hearing how a boy lost his parents and both arms.
3
Hold your nose and vote for Bernie. He'll never actually get Medicare For All but he might move the needle a bit that way. We already have "socialism" in our current Medicare, Medigap, Medicaid programs and we've had our Social Security program for even longer than Medicare. We had food stamps until Trump killed that. We have a form of socialism in our national highway system - imagine if each of us had to build a road from our house to the grocery store, etc. Consider if we each had to build and maintain an army because the government left that to us. Once The Bern gets behind the Resolute desk, he'll either have to work in collaboration with 538 other colleagues or continue the flood of "executive actions" that go nowhere just like our current "stable genius". Yes, Trump will hammer him on socialism but each candidate has their own vulnerability to be exploited by our mean bully in the play yard. I'd rather see Amy or Pete behind that desk but I don't want to split the vote so please, Bernie adorers, don't take your football and stomp off in a huff if your guy doesn't get picked in June; we need every vote we can get for a Democrat.
1
I don’t understand why this is an issue. I also don’t understand why Cubans (older and more often than not white) act as though they are the most persecuted people in the world. As a group they’ve done very well in the U.S. Especially compared to many who’ve been here far longer. Batista was corrupt. Not to defend Castro’s government in this regard but Batista took it to a new level particularly with the Mafia involvement.
As for losing FL only time will tell but it is idiotic to think those Cubans who were so offended were ever going to vote for a Democrat. That was never going to happen, particularly with older people.
Lastly, the redbaiting type attacks, I’d be surprised if they meant much to those younger than about 55. When older Gen X’ers were in their early 20s the “communist threat” was no longer a thing. I just can’t see getting worked up over a dead Cuban leader or a political ideology/economic system that is in the dustbin of history versus a president who lies all the time and flouts the law when it’s inconvenient to him. How is that not a greater threat?
3
I’m 70. I’m fine with saying literacy was important to Castro. What I can’t stand about Bernie is his arrogance, constant anger and yelling, and his myopic vision. Either Trump or Bernie will spell disaster. I’m so sorry so many young people can’t see that.
2
Castro is dead. And unless the government knows something I don't, it wasn't Cuba that provided the backing for the 9/11 attacks. And it wasn't under Cuba's orders that a Washington Post journalist was chopped into pieces. And it isn't in Cuba that women are not allowed to venture out on their own or are just now - in the past 12 months - being allowed to drive a car. OK, already, it's not a perfect country. But to have perpetuated the idea - filled through with harsh foreign policy - that this little island really poses a threat to the U.S.? Get over it America. Let's deal with the real problems that face us.
14
I am not that concerned about what Sanders says about Cuba etc,. I am more concerned about his populist attempt to take over the Democratic Party. His over the top attacks on Hillary Clinton in 2016 probably played a big role in her loss to Trump. Now he is leading the field and this time likely to take down the chances of the Democrats winning the House and Senate if Democrats are foolish enough to nominate Bernie. You could say Ralph Nader gave us George W. Bush and Bernie Sanders gave us Donald Trump. I agree with a lot of both of them say but when you put them in the middle of elections for president the result is trouble.
I never understood why saying that Castro’s Cuba did something right (literacy, health) was so anathema - that can be acknowledged without saying that it is perfect or brushing over the repression of the Castro regime. Most countries are mixed, including our own - not being able to afford healthcare is a different kind of repression. Meanwhile consider Saudi Arabia and many other tyrannical countries the US has had no problem supporting.
5
Obama said the exact same thing Sanders said. The media is amazingly hypocritical to make an issue out of this. Not a single fellow Democrat thinks this is an issue. This is only an “issue” for extremist right wing conservatives. Which tells you who owns the media,
5
The "right wing media" did not deliberately murder more than 100 million of their own countries citizens. That was the leftist, socialist, politicians in Cuba, USSR, China, North Korea and like minded countries where "solidarity" over Marxist fantasies was more important than reality and personal freedom for their citizenry.
People have been willing to put up with a nonstop horrorshow of comments and actions by the current throne-holder. Bernie says this or that people POUNCE - and are OUTRAGED. why.
8
George McGovern never had the baggage that Bernie Sanders has. If he is the Democrats’ nominee, the Republicans will have a field day building out a narrative in his own words and pictures.
11
Sanders young followers only seem to be interested in one thing -free college tuition. I am a Veteran who has no desire to live in a socialist controlled country. I will not vote for Sanders. Where was Sanders when Castro had comrade Khruschev taking missiles to Cuba. I was on military alert in Brooklyn and ready to go to Key West Florida. President Kennedy demanded the turning back of the Russian ships and made us all feel safe.
11
Healthcare as a human right is a colossal issue- the US being the only developed nation on earth without a national healthcare system is probably Bernie’s number one draw. Also: though buggy, his commitment to a Green New Deal to deal with the raging climate emergency. Its younger people who will be here on earth as apocalyptic effects unleash.
So you take your Social Security? Then you’re benefitting from socialism.
1
Castro is dead and the notion of litigating this election around him is ridiculous. Human rights and civil liberties should be safeguarded. They can usually be protected best in strong states, not under the threat of perpetual subversion. That being said, Castro was no Mobutu Sese Seko of the Congo, Nicolae Ceaușescu of Romania, Papa and Baby Doc of Haiti, Augusto Pinochet of Chile, or Pol Pot of Cambodia, and the list goes on. As others have acknowledged, the Cuban Revolution must be evaluated in light of the brutal, exploitative Batista regime that it overthrew.
Castro accomplished a lot of good for the Cuban people and for poor nations around the world, through medical and other social assistance. I was privileged to see him speak at Riverside Church for four hours during his last visit to the United States and marveled at how much good a poor nation like Cuba could do for the rest of the world. During that speech, he offered to provide a free medical school education in Cuba to Americans. This was after the fall of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc, when Cuba's financial position had declined precipitously.
Let's emulate the best of the Cuban Revolution while criticizing its failures. But let's not be naive. Workers in liberal and social democratic countries benefited from the "communist threat" because their governments recognized that providing social protections was an alternative to communism. When those regimes fell, it allowed predatory capitalism to run amok.
9
Remember when President Obama said the 80s are calling and they want their foreign policy back? I think many doomsday boomers who are promoting “red scare” hysteria right now are permanently stuck in the 80s. But we’re not. We’re ready to move forward with big bold change that will benefit all Americans.
Bernie 2020
13
Socialism has some merit but only in a balanced proportion as all approaches to USA life should be. Typical of educated idealists, approaches are attractive in theory but when examined with first hand witnesses like from Cuban exiles, a kind of truth emerges that underscores the balance necessary to move forward. It is a common belief that counties where socialism flourishes often are characterised by suppression and errie forms of government. The fact that the US democratic life has provided advantages in education to study all theories without government approval is a good argument to be cautious embracing a philosophy which, if adhered to strictly, could change the very democracy affording the rights to study what you choose, including anti government theories. Bernie is a perfect example as he sees the good in socialism but he pounds the air with too feverish a love affair with same. Perhaps this is why he comes across as irascible and frankly looks a lot like
Castro in that he will not cut a deal, will not strive for consensus as everyone is wrong if they do not see things his rather dictatorial way. Too bad, a basically good man is so out of balance. I will vote for him if he is the chosen nominee because blue is the only way to go which on my part, is more than he and many of his progressive followers did for Clinton in 2016. And by the way, in making Trumpism a reality, did that effectively secure social gains for health care, education, immigrants, etc.? HELLO!
1
Boomer panic? I'm a boomer. I went to college with boomers. We all thought pretty much this about Cuba. We knew the old Cold Warriors were nuts.
Whoever if offended by this talk of Cuba, it isn't us. We were saying the same in the early 1970's, when I was saying it then.
10
Unfortunately, education budget cuts result in many younger progressives' illiteracy of domestic & world history, limiting their view of socialist positive or negative affects.
3
All Bernie needs to do is openly and unflinchingly condemn communism... be he won't... because he can't. He understands that socialism's inevitable end goal is communism.
13
Boomer paranoia? How about Millennial cluelessness? Gen X apathy? Got polarizing labels? Get 'em out and dust 'em off. When you throw people into categories based on age you are treating them like objects and guilty of discrimination. Sanders is tone-deaf to his audiences - videos going back 20 years make this clear. He's not a team player and was not a particularly effective legislator but he has some excellent points. Doesn't matter, keep your eyes on the prize, get Trump out. At all costs.
8
Some things should transcend generations. Fidel was a murderous Stalinist autocrat who cast Cuba into a backward static economy for decades, even as a dozen similar Latin countries forged ahead to levels of prosperity unimagined in Castro's prison. Meanwhile, he invited the Soviet Union to use his island as a base to attack the USA, sent thousands of Cuban troops far abroad to fight and die as Soviet puppets, and kept prisons full of political prisoners. In exchange, Fidel made sure that all the peasants could read -- so they could consume state propaganda in between Castro's six-hour harangues.
11
Fidel was a Communist, like the Bolsheviks. They take power by force, do not believe in democratic processes or private property. He was not a Democratic Socialist. Socialists DO believe in private property and democratic processes- they also believe govt’s role is to provide a civilized safety net for the people: education, healthcare, social security.
Headline: "trump Offered Repeated and Continuous Praise for Putin, Duterte, Erdogon, Xi, Kim Jong Un, white nationalists. Moral and Immoral Voters View It Differently."
But, yeah, Democrats, let's get upset because Sanders is too far to the left for corporate America so he must be vilified because he said things 30 years ago. Let's get upset because a vocal minority of republicans in Florida, who will never vote Democratic (because 50 years ago Kennedy you now) are upset, because they're the only Latin American diaspora that exist as a result of a brutal dictatorship and political violence.
Let's allow the corporate media to act as censors of history for Democratic candidates so they can weed out the "too liberal" and march in an establishment corporatist who is acceptable. If the Democrats can't settle on an establishment "moderate", then we have to settle for trump, who can dress in full SS regalia and not lose a single vote. Right-wing extremists are fine; they just hurt people. Left wing extremists hurt what really matters: the one-percent and out of control corporate profits.
18
Zachary Taylor was the 12th President of the U.S. He owned a plantation in Louisiana. It was said that the workers on his plantation were treated well. They received a pound of meat a day, had a good allowance for clothes, and the overseer had strict orders to give someone 2 days off if they were sick. By all measure their standard of living was higher than the average American of that day..........But they were still slaves.
7
@W.A. Spitzer
And Senator Sanders would, of course, recognize that.
Enough with the hypocrisy. China, Vietnam, Saudí Arabia, and many more are just as, if not more authoritarian than Cuba, yet they are America’s friends.
And you shouldn’t hold Castro to a different standard than you do Trump; from a historic and contextual perspective, they have both done good and bad things.
12
Hitler loved dogs and had a plant-based diet.
I am older and I am voting for Bernie. This socialism stuff is silly. He is allowed to speak his mind 50 years ago.
19
@Paul Schejtman
He made his positive comments about Castro and Cuba last week, not 50 years ago.
I can't tell whether the Times as a newspaper has instructed its reporters to put an anti-Sanders slant on every article they write but it's beginning to look that way. Too many pieces extrapolating outcomes based on conversations with one or two one or two individuals.
24
I grew up in a communist country and had an incredible childhood. But I despise communism. What’s so hard to understand that maybe a communist system is a horror show but there were positive things as well?
American culture supports a black/white worldview. An evil character has zero redeeming values. On the other hand, heroes must be perfect.
11
Here's an older voter (75) who isn't even slightly bothered by this Cuba business. With a president who is virtually married to every dictator on earth, starting with Putin, if Bernie recognized jobs well done wherever they're well done, I'm fine with that.
22
Young voters? You mean that part of the electorate that turns out the least?
11
Younger voters: the ones who will be cleaning up the mess left by short sighted older voters, and dealing with the climate catastrophe that the dead older voters wont live to experience.
This whole issue is ridiculous ! we do business with China a communist country, our President admires Putin and Kim Jong, and people bring up the Cuba thing?
Ah..but business is business , and ideas are ideas, and ideas are dangerous...
14
Can we compare Sanders talking about Cuban education and Trump's love letters to Kim Jong Un?
What is wrong with the news industry?
Please try to give us something we can use as we decide who to vote for.
15
What I don’t understand is all the bad press about Sanders when Trump embraces Russia and North Korea.
9
Batista, for whom does not know him, was a criminal dictator who perpetuated slavery, although in a more digestible way to the well thinkers of the establishment who enriched through sugar cane plantations, casino speculations and other amenities. The cuban population was in misery and illiterate. Castro, in site of the perduring embargo, was able to bring literacy to all people, one of the lowest child mortality and better free health care that sud America have and actually.
Just a few number from the World Banks 2018.: mortality rate under 5 years of age /1000:
Cuba5/1000; Italy3/1000; Denmark4.2/1000; France 4/1000;Switzerland 4.1/1000; Sweden 2.7/1000;Canada4/1000; USA6.5/1000.
I wonder why these results should be neglected and instead the talking should be about the people that were impoverishing that island to make themselves rich and of course escape to Florida not to work a normal non enriching job.
5
Full disclosure: I am a white male hetero 70+ year old who has been a Democrat since the John Kennedy-Richard Nixon election of 1960.
The article says:
"But for many younger progressives, the negative reactions to Mr. Sanders’s comments — which were also aired and debated in his 2016 presidential campaign — seem like boomer panic and a pernicious form of red-baiting, and reveal the divides within the Democratic Party."
Back in the day, it was amazing how much smarter my parents became while I was away at college for 4 years.
By the time I was in my 40s, I actually sought out my father's advice on many things.
I guess those 18-25 year olds are convinced that they know so much more than Grandpa and Grandma, because all those years of life experience must rot one's brain, right?
10
Cold War angst? Sanders or no Sanders, doesn't Russian election interference stir Cold War angst?
4
In addition to a literacy program and health care, Castro murdered dissidents and installed Russian nuclear war heads aimed at the US.
Bernie’s hero.
12
@David Parsons
Yes. Its sort of like a wife physically abused by her violent husband, but she says she won't leave him because he is such a good provider.
1
Bernie’s view of Cuba is balanced. He criticized authoritarianism while praising Castro’s literacy program, that sent educated volunteers into the countryside to teach sugar cane cutters, housewives, and black descendants of slaves who faced discrimination to read, to bring them into political life. Castro would have won an internationally supervised election with at least 80% of the vote. He expropriated the giant sugar plantations as a necessary means to empowering workers and raising their standard of living, letting the former ruling class leave for Miami.
Kennedy and the CIA attempted to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, threatened it with nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis, and tried to assassinate Castro many times. U.S. pressure drove Castro into the arms of the Soviet Union, resulting in the bureaucratization of the state and dictatorial and inept decision-making.
Biden, Buttigieg, and establishment Democrat red-baiting is an opportunist smear that takes advantage of the public’s lack of knowledge about the Cuban Revolution.
11
@Bruce Shigeura Literacy programs enabled more Cubans to be exposed to Castro’s propaganda. And if that didn’t work, there were firing squads. There’s no way to put a smiley face on Cuba’s history for the last 60 years.
1
@Jones Castro executed by U.S. estimates 5,000 people after the revolution. The Batista dictatorship murdered, raped, and tortured uncounted tens of thousands, plus the brutal Machado regime before him. The U.S. and other foreigners owned 70% of the land, and Havana was an American mafia-run playground of casinos and prostitution. Anyone who thinks a peaceful Ghandian movement was possible is delusional. The Cuban Revolution was an armed insurgency. The Cuban people overwhelmingly supported the revolution before it won and even more after liberation. The Cuban government began as a popular democracy with enthusiastic citizen participation, but steadily became more bureaucratic, authoritarian, and incompetent. Now they can’t even raise enough eggs for the people. With an educated people, they could be a major force on the Net in the Spanish speaking world, but the U.S. boycott and the government’s fear of the truth of the outside world stops them.
American government and Cuban exile propaganda dominate U.S. media and history. You can’t learn the truth of the Cuban Revolution without reading journalists who went there with an open mind.
1
He denounced authoritarian regimes, several times. He was solely talking about their literacy program (just like Obama did). This is a non-issue.
10
I think Sanders' praise was poorly chosen. Sure, dictatorships sometimes have effective programs, but can you really separate, say, the Third Reich's model autobahn construction program from the regime? There is just too much baggage when there were better examples to choose from.
Having said that, Fidel Castro is long dead. Raul Castro has already stepped down from power. The people in charge now are too young to have been in the leadership during the revolution. The outrage is also rather hypocritical considering the guy Castro overthrew was an US-backed dictator who was in bed with the Mafia, and was just as brutal but way more corrupt and incompetent. All this huffing and puffing over Sanders' comment about Cuba's literacy program is absurd and comical.
5
The young people are not stupid. The generations before them, boomers, Gen Xers have left them a worse situation than the generations before us. We have destroyed the planet and dont intend to stop, we have made it harder to achieve the american dream, we have stagnated their wages, we have started endless wars, we have tipped the economy in favor of the wealthy and are in another guilded age. They are probably hoping Sanders will provide some equality and safety nets.
3
@MC
"The young people are not stupid."
True, but they're ignorant. Victims of the Republican war against education.
And they're uninformed. Too lazy to educate themselves.
Reading history takes time away from napping in their parents' basements.
1
It's not his Cuba comments we should be worried about. It's his refusal to condemn Maduro. After what he's done to his people, Sanders can't hide his contempt for anyone or anything that gets in the way of his orthodoxy... and that includes a vile regime.
5
The world is not all clear cut black and white. I am sure Castro did some good things along with many bad. There is no harm recognizing this so long as we also keep the big picture score book. We are adult humans and we should be able to not need everything all good or all bad. There is a chance that even the con man in the WH will get something right - maybe prison reform? We can always credit him as well, but again, be mindful of all the dumb and dangerous things he does - dismantling the US pandemic team....
2
I wish all media, candidates and everyone else would stop pitting whole categories of people against one another: youth/boomers; billionaires/everyone else; Blacks/white; college/not college; women/men -- even Black women/White women. Every time you write and repeat these generalities you are exacerbating divisiveness -- even if it isn't GOP/Dem.
In terms of this issue informed, thinking people will understand the Castro did some positive things in Cuba. In fact, probably some good is done by every autocratic leader. Certainly Chavez helped his country economically and raised standard of living. Thinking people will also understand that doesn't necessarily make them good people or good leaders and noting achievements certainly doesn't suggest that anyone likes the style, likes a dictator. This is contrary to the one who actually says he does love and praise autocrats without specific reasons and in some cases only because of "strength."
Lastly, this headlining is yet another example of mutually exclusive, binary thinking or promoting of ideas. NYT writers and editors should be a lot smarter. In what way is it even helpful to readers? We need to have facts not data about what other people think.
3
I suppose the Castro comments do not mean much, but when I hear all his talk about going after specific groups (even if they deserve it) combined with his honey moon to the Soviet Union, I'm sorry, just not comfortable with Sanders. He reminds me of Lenin, and we all know who replaced Lenin. Trump will undoubtedly destroy the world gradually, but it's preferable to a gulag.
3
It's politicians who are supposed to spin the words of politicians, not the "free press." Let's be frank: Bernie does not admire Fidel Castro. He does not admire Maduro. He does not admire authoritarians. Period.
Is a movement to increase literacy in your country bad? How about a movement to combat poverty? Or provide for the general welfare? No.
Is the murdering of your own people bad? How about restricting their freedom to own businesses? Or silencing the press? Yes.
There -- I just described the Cuban government under Castro without calling it by its name. There is objective good and objective evil. Bernie knows the difference, does you? Or do you subscribe to the belief that people can only do all good things or all evil things?
By the way, show me another active candidate in this race who fights for Latinos and has their support more than Bernie and then talk to me about him alienating the support of Cubans -- and only do so if you're Cuban.
4
Senator Sanders is on a collision course with history. Ignoring Cuban repression of religion, free speech, gay rights, to name a few, is a yolk that will sink democrats. Inflexibility is a weakness.
Self correction is a sign of maturity and insight. We don’t need an extremist right now.
4
@Ed Latimer nothing extreme sir. to simply point out an effective program by a dictator does not make one an endorser of everything the dictator did. Nuanced thinking is also a sign of maturity and insight.
We are talking of a man who received the World Health Organization Health-for-All gold medal in 1998, this is not some bizarre opinion.
Nobody praises communism but it is absurd to deny the literacy and health achievements in Cuba.
This has nothing to do with age, it's about nuance and knowledge.
8
@Jérémie Berger I think age is a factor as much as it's a general proxy for one's exposure to cold-war propaganda.
These folks are so arrogant it calls to mind the line from Citizen Kane, "you are going to need a lot of lessons. And you are going to get a lot of lessons." The best thing older people can do is help guide younger generations away from danger. Those of us who have lived through the era of false prophets know all too well that a guy who is almost 80 years old whose only accomplishment is naming a couple of post offices is a recipe for disaster when making promises he can't possibly keep. There is no happy ending for the Bernie movement. He'll lose to Trump or he'll be utterly destroyed as President. And if they think our fears and our warnings are bad, wait until they see the billion dollar Trump campaign unload on Bernie Sanders. Maybe the lesson that comes out of this election will be, "listen to your elders."
3
@Sasha Stone listen to our elders who have done what with country in the past 30 years?
no thanks, say's the vast majority under-40 crowd.
2
I understand where Sanders is coming regarding some of his rhetoric, since though somewhat younger then him I also was involved the same Sixties politics, where Fidel was a sort of hero for bringing social welfare benefits to the Cuban downtrodden. My perception of Castro as an heroic figure evaporated many decades ago, and I understand that when Bernie says he did good things to many its like praising Hitler for building the Autobahn. What bothers me about Bernie both as a candidate and as a presidential standard bearer is that he is so rigid in his rhetoric that he can't seem to pivot away from it when it would really help him politically. He could do this without changing one letter of his proposals, which are the things that really matter. He also does not seem to have someone high in his campaign that can question him on this. Bernie supporters will tell you this is just a corporate medium distraction, but at the end of the day I am not so sure. I feel his rhetoric can drive away people who might support his ideas and might also support him.
2
Y’all, Donald Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin to interfere in the 2016 election. Vladimir Putin is a ruthless Cold War KGB spy, who swore an oath to destroy the United States.
But Bernie Sanders is the one stirring up Cold War issues...? Really? Really really? What a time to be alive.
5
Hmmm.. Nixon met with chairman Mao, and said his writings moved a nation:
Mao Zedong meets Richard Nixon, February 21, 1972
Dr. Kissinger: I used to assign the Chairman’s collective writings to my classes at Harvard.
Chairman Mao: Those writings of mine aren’t anything. There is nothing instructive in what I wrote.
President Nixon: The Chairman’s writings moved a nation and have changed the world.
Chairman Mao: I haven’t been able to change it. I’ve only been able to change a few places in the vicinity of Peking.
1
My old man was a Marine in the late 50s to very early 60s. He was stationed at Guantanamo Bay. He saw Castro’s men shoot people in the back as they tried to escape onto our base.
When I was a kid, similar people were willing to risk certain death by trying to cross the Caribbean Sea to Florida in absolutely anything that might float.
You can tell a lot about a country by the direction their guns point. Ours point out. Cuba’s point in, just like North Korea, the old USSR, and other bastions of socialist lunacy.
The idea that Bernie doesn’t fathom how badly this will play in Miami is amazing.
The young don’t see the problem with Bernie and socialism because they’ve been indoctrinated for 30 years by teachers and professors who wallow in liberal ignorance like a pig wallows in mud. The kids were kept intentionally ignorant about Soviet and Maoist actions, because it contradicts the maxim that the USA is “always evil.”
When Trump wins in November, you can’t say that we didn’t try to warn you.
5
@Vote For Giant Meteor In 2020
The ignorance of "the young" and their "teachers and professors" can't be blamed on liberals alone. The Republican war on education started with Reagan.
What they sowed we are now reaping. The difficulty the Bernie bros have with writing a coherent sentence is just one example.
1
Telling how not once you consider that you were the one indoctrinated by the ruling capitalist class. Keep parroting those 70s and 80s cold war propaganda points though, it makes it easy to see who's given this topic critical thought.
As an aside, the rate at which police fatally shoot Americans shows pretty clearly where the guns are pointing.
Grief! Sanders said that he does not support the Cuban form of government but does think that free health care and higher literacy rates are a good thing. I'm boggled by the silly fallout.
5
Hmm. I'm a boomer and I've always believed in democracy and a free market. Yet, I also identify as a socialist, though in the European sense of social democracy--which seeks to find an appropriate balance between the public interest and business interests. Perhaps if Bernie would call himself a social democrat instead of a democratic socialist, people would be less alarmed. Even so, given this country's strong identification with capitalism, I don't think Bernie is the right choice. I'm on board with his policies, but not with his bluster and divisiveness. We need change, but let's be real. I would choose Elizabeth Warren instead.
6
@Shaun Judd I'm a Democrat. Social Democrat sounds like I have lots of friends and get around.
Bernie is starting to scare me. Cuba? Let's face it, he may say Democratic Socialist to hide his collectivism leanings. No, Mr. Sanders, we do not want to be like Cuba, other communist countries.
3
I was born right before the collapse of the Soviet Union and I agree so what. The United States has spent the past 29 years wasting trillions of dollars, killing hundreds of thousands of people in the Middle East, and displacing millions more maybe it’s time to end the American Empire.
6
With all the people who still today tremble in fear of Russia, who actually believe that Sanders is a communist, who believe that there is still a Soviet Union - and it has missiles pointed at us right now as several people told me over the past year - the Cold War has never left us.
The damage wrought by years of reckless propaganda have warped people of more than one generation. Including, alas, Senator Sanders himself. He showed this quite clearly when he tweeted that he saw as a "key issue" for Americans: "Exposing who was actively consorting with the Russian government's attack on our democracy." (2/21/18)
Yes, in a move that would have warmed the heart of Senator Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon, Sen. Sanders urged Americans to turn each other in just as happened in the Cold War of Bernie's youth. How comforting...
https://emcphd.wordpress.com
3
You wonder how many of those people in Little Havana celebrated the death of Batista, the corrupt dictator Castro overthrew.
Probably not many as most of those who fled from Cuba when Castro took over had no problem with Batista.
4
Mr Lok as many other young folks assume all this free stuff comes without a cost. Unlike the boomers, who lived amongst those who survived communist starvations exterminations and extreme cruelty,non of Lok's cohort have heard these stories firsthand. No book,class or movie can convey that message.
What Bernie and his followers propose are just the first steps ie taxing the rich,regulating business,make work programs etc..which always need evermore funding sources as capital and know how flee.
Bernie talks the same talk as Chavez early on..young folks don't know where it could lead even with the recent Venezuelan collapse into misery there for all to see.
4
Excuse me if I don't take my political cues from a generation of voters who've accomplished little, seen little, and experienced little in life.
As for Sanders himself, foot meet mouth. He could have selected from an innumerable number of governments and programs to name, but instead his mind wanders to a truly odious regime in Cuba, as if to cherry pick facts while ignoring the whole body of work that was the Castro regime.
Joseph Stalin achieved the near impossible of transforming an agrarian country of mostly peasants into a global, industrial superpower of industry, science, and technology. He also murdered 20 million or so of his fellow countrymen through purges and deliberate famine and slave labor. I don't intend to praise to former points while ignoring the latter facts. Sanders nonetheless doesn't have a problem doing so, not just with the Soviet Union, but Cuba, and Nicaragua, etc.
Sanders doesn't believe the US requires incremental reform; he would rather eliminate private insurance (which even NHS-loving Britain hasn't done), double government spending with no plans to pay for it, and soak the rich who by the way can easily pick up and leave the country to avoid said taxes.
Sanders lies and obfuscates about raising taxes on the middle class, because we'd be the only ones left to pay for his program. For that alone, he is the charlatan of the left and must be defeated if we are to avoid 4 more years of Trump.
9
It seems like a lot of people need a history lesson regarding Cuba, especially those who regard it as some kind of paradise for the Cuban people before Castro came into power. Such thinking couldn’t be farther from the truth, and it ignores why Castro was able to take power in the first place.
America’s hand-picked guy, Batista, was brutal toward his people, stripping them of their rights, subjecting them to torture and execution. The Cuban people hated Batista.
Castro’s actions are another matter entirely, but let’s not act like Batista was a great guy who got overthrown for no reason.
7
The youthful Bernie supporters have little interest in taking responsibility. Like us who were once youthful. So the fanciful prescriptions that Bernie offers doesn't matter to them. When he loses to trumpy and Congress goes to the Republicans, these youth will simply shrug 'whatever' and move on to scrolling through the different apps on their smart phones.
4
So the people who know nothing of what a disaster communism has been in Cuba think the people who actually KNOW people who were IN Cuba and managed to escape the oppressive regime are overreacting. Is that about the size of it? Well, there may be no stopping Bernie because the kids all think they will get free stuff forever. If Bernie wins, they won't get anything at all, because the gridlock in DC will be even worse than it is now: and it's bad now.
5
The killer detail here may be the date of Sander’s visit to Cuba: 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell. That’s WAY too late to be entertaining any illusions about communism. It’s evidence of willful blindness on his part. We don’t need another president who is unwilling to acknowledge the facts when they don’t happen to suit his world view.
6
The millennial’s like Bernie because he’s offering them free everything. The millennials are also ignorant of the horrors of communism and socialism. Bernie’s plans have nothing to do with the political systems in Scandinavia. Those countries are more capitalist in many ways than our own country. Economies have to generate money to pay for welfare systems.
9
We are the ones most to blame for the dire position Cuba was in for so many decades, with our cruel blockade. To punish all of Cuba because they overthrew a U.S.-friendly dictator and replaced him with a communist regime in 1959 was the continuation of the red scare, and to continue trying to starve them out for 60 years was outrageous. Were we so afraid that Fidel Castro was such a powerful leader that we felt we should try to assassinate him? Some policies of his regime were wrong and punishing to the Cuban people, but the misdoings they suffered under his dictatorship were far less than the damage done to them by the corruption and greed of the Batista regime, partnered by the Americans who exploited them.
Whatever positive opinions Bernie Sanders expressed about advances Cuba was able to make despite their opposition from the U.S. were hardly a betrayal of our democratic ideals.
3
I totally agree.
Sanders 's remarks about Cuba and other authoritarian regimes are disturbing precisely because he is showing a belief that the ends justify the means. It is a shame how he has lied to people about his record as well as the Democrats' record; he has basically flipped them. He would be a disaster if he wins or loses. His combination of arrogance, entitlement, and incompetence (or laziness) would be toxic to the so-called progress he claims he wants.
7
The last I checked Castro is dead. Instead of worrying about praise about the Castro regime in Cuba, we should be working to engage who is there today. Today I'm far more concerned with Saudi Arabia and Russia than I am with Cuba, and I'm tired of acting like the Missile Crisis and Bay of Pigs happened last week.
6
I have to admit this was my first thought as well. I don’t get why we should care about this and not say the U.S. role in Chile. Or as you rightly pointed out more current threats and dictatorships.
1
@Jimal
It speaks to Sanders's frame of mind. It's one thing to romanticize socialism/communism in the 1950s.
It's quite another to keep doing so in 2020 after all the perils and misdeeds of those governments have been laid bare for all to see. It reeks of ignorance on Sanders's part.
1. South Florida Cubans are very conservative. They vote against Cuba and abortion, for small business rhetoric and patriotism (yes this is a generalization, but a notable one).
2. In direct relation to this article, young people can think anything they want of Boomers as long as they vote for a democratic president. I mean actually SHOW Up and VOTE.
8
Lol, why aren’t we millennials allowed to vote for a GOP candidate?
Time to raise the voting age. I'm thiking about 40.
7
Do I support Sanders? Do I support Trump? Would I support Fidel Castro if he were still around? Do I support the Cuban-Americans in South Florida? Do I support Israel? Do I support the Palestinians?
The Bible and mindful atheists make it clear. You support a person every time he or she follows the Golden Rule and oppose them when they don't. So I oppose Sanders, Trump, Castro and you, the reader, every time any one of us fails to be guided by these four principles of the Golden Rule: (1) be aware of and sensitive to how your actions affect the feelings of others, (2) don't do for others what others can do for themselves, (3) say no and set limits with those who act selfishly; protect yourself, and (4) never judge others to be undeserving of your kindness or generosity. Hopefully, I get to support you most of the time.
1
@Joshua Simon, MD
At Liberty University Bernie gave the convocation (see it on youtube, it's good). He said the Golden Rule was what guided his morals-based political platform of Justice for All.
Everything Bernie does is the Golden Rule in action, which upsets many people.
I'm old enough to remember that it was young people who got it right on Vietnam, civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, the Iraq War, etc. Older people often get too comfortable in their narrow world and automatically reject anything "different." Let the young create the world they want to live in.
14
@theresa
Everyone, of all ages, deserve the right to create the world they want to live in.
1
Sanders isn't the first Democrat to offer nuanced praise of Cuba's health and education systems. The difference is that Obama did it AFTER he was elected. Young voters may be fine with it, but we need all the votes, especially Florida's votes. Sanders seems to believe that as long as he tells the truth everything is good. This isn't a fairy tale, it's a do-or-die election against a stark raving narcissist. We don't need unnecessary labeling of things Socialist or compliments to Castro when we're trying to garner nationwide support. Sanders or his team is feeding into the narrative that he's not electable with this 'truth telling' strategy.
2
Older voters like myself are also likely to remember how easily the Republicans destroyed George McGovern and can imagine it happening again. I certainly can't predict that history will repeat itself, but I'm afraid that in this case, it seems very likely.
3
There's a reason the Cuban Revolution happened. What preceded it was even worse for the people. When we talk about harm toward our own citizens, we can look at ourselves and see that we have also failed too often on that front. But regardless this is about what sort of vision we want to follow into the future in the United States. Do we want to continue with a racist authoritarian regime? Do we want to rebuild what came before that, a society that was working really great for the super rich and not great at all for everyone else? Or do we want to move toward a compassionate and generous society that understands that it's not healthy for any of us to have people dying on the streets from homelessness or dying prematurely because they can't afford health care, or from diseases of 'despair,' like alcoholism and drug abuse? Sanders isn't the only democrat offering a more compassionate and generous vision of the future, but he's the one leading the pack at the moment. His mantra, "Not Me, Us" is a good one. We'd have a healthier and happier society if we adopted that and actually enacted policy that supported it regardless of who wins the nomination and the general election.
3
Sanders essentially said that literacy and education are good things regardless of who promoted them. Some managed to find fault with this.
For quite a few years, Cuban Americans who claimed asylum here were allowed to return to the very place they fled when other Americans were prohibited. Some of those folks were using our money. That’s not at all the worst of it. Those flying back to Cuba, some 400,000 a year, were quite literally flying over others trying to float here and some lost their lives in that attempt.
Little was said by anyone about that horrific situation. Where were those criticizing Sanders then? There simply is no comparison between that and Sanders comments. Carlos Curbelo, himself a Cuban American, lost his seat in Congress last election. We have him and a few others to thank for exposing a disgraceful situation. Americans should know the full truth and we have every right to demand accountability of those in public office who sat silent.
3
why do the older generations view Sander's remarks on Cuba differently than the young, one major answer is the lack of civics education in schools, it seems the younger generation views Cuba as a tourist destination without realizing that the Cuban people for decades have been stripped of the rights that these same young people enjoy in a Democratic Country, they do not see Cuba's poverty, lack of human rights, high crime, as an issue when truly they should, if they were citizen's of Cuba, they would not be able to practice their religion, they would be imprisoned for sexual orientation(LBTQ), they would not have the luxury of technology, they would not have the latest vehicle, they would be governed by the Government, Bernie Sander's loves to taut the fact that he would do everything for free, education,health care, day care, this is what the younger generation sees, it's like a big sale on somebody else's credit card, except it is their credit, for every free progam you must take away funds from other programs, taxing the 1% is do-able, but these same younger people, may not strive, because the bottom line for the wealthy is that, their bottom line, their investors, so the old saying " if it sounds too good to be true, then it is too good to be true" the younger generation live in the now, for certain things that's ok, but you need to project the future, where will you be under Bernie's plan 20years from now, when can he fulfill his commitment, not in the first two terms
1
I'm not young, but younger voters are right to dismiss this as "boomer panic." Those who get bent out of shape by socialism in the form Sanders speaks of it should have understood long ago that our economic system is ALREADY a mixed capitalist/socialist system, and our economic system is separate from our government system, which is a democracy. It is absurd that some boomers and pre-boomers are scared of democratic socialism but certainly get riled by any threat to their Social Security and Medicare, both of which are socialist programs established by Democratic presidents.
I for one am appalled by this hysteria. Older folks obviously need to take refresher government/civics courses.
Until they do, however, I think national newspapers should stop simply reporting hysteria and start educating the American public about their basic government and economic structures. But the newspapers seem to have their own private interests in mind in smearing Bernie Sanders nonstop.
6
I will not vote for Sanders in my state's primary but would reluctantly do so if he is he Democrat nominee.
I visited Cuba almost 20 years ago with my wife and her grandmother, who was 90 at the time. We went there to visit her grandmother's only surviving sibling who lived in Holguin. My wife's abuela wanted one last visit...and then lived another 9 years!
One of the things that struck me about Cuba, compared to other countries in the region, is the high rate of literacy/education and basic healthcare. Unfortunately, there was little opportunity to apply one's education and the healthcare clinics lack basic supplies. Basic infrastructure was lacking yet the country displayed none of the basket case characteristics common in much of the developing world.
One can argue what the revolution achieved and didn't achieve but the availability of basic healthcare and advanced education are not subject to debate. Clearly Cuba can take a lesson from our market-based economy but I don't think it makes anyone a socialist or communist to say we can take a lesson from them in terms of healthcare and education being basic human rights.
I'm still convince that the country would take off if
3
@JDD
Our healthcare is ranked 37th in the world despite our
paying twice as much as top ranked France. Costa Rica is ahead of us.
Cuba is number 39th in the world, not bad for free health care, and their well trained doctors are famous for their good work helping other countries around the world.
Education is also free in Cuba.
Regarding what Bernie said - that Cuba's done very well on health care and education, he is speaking the truth. The US could learn a lot from Cuba.
3
Well okay then I think Bernie has no chance what so ever.
If generalization were possible, here is what the young (born after 1980) are looking for, and find in Bernie: a totally effortless ways to connect with what is compelling and entertaining. Connecting with social media, streaming video, and gaming - totally effortless. Effort equals kryptonite. They spend more time getting out of social engagements, and keep everything open ended (without committing) so they can minimize effort.
Bernie is indistinguishable from their parents and teachers, who asked nothing of them, but told them they were awesome and they were going to make it all happen for them. You can have a conversation with the young as does Bernie, as long as he is saying: "here is what I am going to make happen for you, free college, forgiven loans, free healthcare. Because you are special and awesome."
But unlike their parents and teachers, Bernie expects them to register and vote.
Fat chance of that happening.
I cannot even give them free money; they will take it only if I bring it to them when they want it, and in the right amount, at the right time - else, I can keep it. I suspect Bernie does not know of this.
Poor Bernie.
5
@Kalidan
The 20-somethings I know, who come from all over the world, are working on their PhDs and doing hard-core research to save people's lives. They work in labs six days a week and (if they are Chinese) on Sunday also. They get up at 6, take a run, and are out the door by 7 am. They don't return home until 9 or 10 pm, then they study for a few hours or Skype with family. No drugs or drink and no time for parties. As lab rats they aren't paid much and I've calculated they're working for about $6/hour will all the hours. Note they're not studying corporate law or at the B-school with the hope of making millions some day.
Maybe you're hanging with the wrong crowd.
1
@Kalidan
I'm 68, and my distinct impression is that you don't really know any young people. If you did, you would not slander them so.
5
Bernie Sanders' comments about Cuban literacy are true. The reaction to truth is interesting. What we should be more alarmed about is a President who constantly lies.
Additionally, Sanders is not a Socialist is the true sense of the word. People need to educate themselves.
And believe it or not, there are boomers who are voting for Sanders. My husband and I are voting for him because we believe in health care for all!
19
@Stephanie
All of the candidates have policies that will ensure healthcare for all.
The difference is that they can get theirs passed in the Senate - and can actually get the Senate.
With Bernie at the top of the ticket we are unlikely to get the Senate and can lose the House as well.
The only seats to get a Senate majority in 2020 are in red-leaning states because there are only 4 toss-up seats. The toss-ups are AZ, CO, NC, and ME.
This means that even climate change will not be addressed if Bernie can't get the Senate. If Bernie then loses the White House. Trump would have full control.
A moderate could win the Senate because moderate voters seeking to control Trump would be far more likely to vote Dem for Congress if they do not have to fear Bernie and his policies.
3
@Meg
All you are doing is repeating talking points from the status quo. That's fake news. You need to think deeper - without your fear based programming overriding independent thought.
I was a fan of Bernie and still am to a certain extent. But as he's become the front runner, I've learned more about his past. I simply do not see any reason to honeymoon in the USSR in the 1980s. Nor do I get doubling down on Castro. It also appears Bernie is not suggesting Scandinavian style capitalism. He's really an old school socialist / borderline communist. Nothing wrong with universal health care, public college, etc. But he has nothing good to say about free enterprise at all. That doesn't sit well with me.
So I'm really leaning more toward Bloomberg at this point. He is much more balanced, has some pretty liberal proposals, but has experience managing a city and is not going to scare businessmen. (And that means big business and small business.) I also like that Bloomberg does not yell and is able to admit mistakes from the past and apologize. Best of all, he has plenty of money.
4
@SR
Bernie was not doubling down on Cuba - he was doubling down on truth (much different than Trump doubling down on lies). People are such emotional thinkers they can't take truth - they prefer Trump's lies!
The only thing that bothers me is Bernie’s lack of common sense. Yes, we need universal health insurance and equal access to education. No need to use Cuba as an example.
6
'“In a society where technology is so important, where it takes fewer people to produce more things, we’re going to have to have a more socialistic society...” he said. “The government is going to be required to do more, and it’s something we should welcome...”'
In many ways I don't disagree. But regardless of how well meaning or deserved, it's far from clear that a majority of voters want a massive expansion of the federal government. Even if Bernie or Warren are elected, the problem for most legislation at the federal level is that it requires a House majority plus a 60 vote senate supermajority.
With Bernie at the top of the ticket, we may not maintain House control, let alone get the senate. And if the Dem nominee loses, it's four more years of a newly unrestrained, autocratic, and incompetent Trump. And did I mention two or more SCOTUS appointments plus ongoing stuffing of the federal bench with right wing robots? The country may never recover.
Speaking strategically, if the moderate majority of Dem voters want to slow Bernie, their best move is to only vote for whichever moderate candidate leads in their state, thus denying Bernie the maximum number of delegates. Splitting votes among similar candidates weakens the group overall. A brokered convention, where moderate delegates have a clear majority, will hopefully choose the best moderate able to face off against Trump.
As I watch the latest polling, that'll be my approach going into super Tuesday.
3
Socialism has to be viewed with a very nuanced lens when making objective historical observations. Bernie's problem is that this is a political exercise where nuanced explanations of socialism aren't going to fly; people have their indelible opinions based on life experience. There's just too many people at this point in time unreceptive to any kind of socialism or socialism derivative.
This makes him basically unelectable or such a roll of the dice (historical turnout) that a more moderate candidate should be nominated.
4
The Trump campaign hasn't unleashed its oppo research on Sanders yet. Sanders' weakness in the general election, besides his lack of appeal to moderate voters, is that he's a prime target for Trump's fearmongering -- at which Trump and the GOP machine are very good.
1
It seems to me that it is not a politically wise thing to compliment leaders that are know to generate such intense differences in opinion. Nothing is gained by making the comments, so why make them? Someone in his camp must be fully aware that making statements like this will alienate a significant portion of Americans.
4
The age divide NYT paints here is overly simplistic. I am a millennial Democrat, and I had a negative reaction to Sanders's Cuba comments as well because my parents are immigrants who came to this country to escape authoritarian communism. Trauma is heritable. I am here because of their bravery, and I, too, don't look kindly on praise (even if couched) of authoritarianism.
Given these comments and his economic policies, if Sanders becomes the D nominee, it will be impossible for me to persuade my parents (moderate Republicans who voted for Hillary, Obama, and George W.) to vote blue again this fall.
4
I'm old and support Bernie. Or Biden. Or Warren,etc, etc.
Bernie is not advocating communism.
Older voters need to learn, need to be educated, that Medicare is a form of socialism. Health care for all, in whatever form, is socialism.
Education paid for by the government is a form of socialism.
I'd like to see the rugged individualists / libertarians try going without health insurance for cancer, diabetes, childbirth, surgical procedures or any ER visit.
It's a sin in this country that anyone has to face that possibility.
3
The regurgitation of Cold War rhetoric in the democratic race is embarrassing. As is the "neutral" coverage that continues to magnify the supposed importance of Sanders comments about Cuban education--sentiments that the more centrist Obama shared. Sanders led by denouncing authoritarianism, then made a simple observation--made by historians and others--that Cuba achieved remarkable literacy despite its poverty. He didn't even elaborate in any depth about how much US foreign policy has bled out the Cuban economy.
But while the media delights in making this an important spectacle, Trump has in fact praised and worked with authoritarian regimes. And where's the articles about Bloomberg praising China? The nation that has fought against free speech and punishes US businesses and activists who protest their authoritarianism? Nah, let's focus on how Sanders told the heir of a massive fortune (Cooper) that Cuban educational achievements deserve praise. Way to choose what to cover.
And where are the articles about Mayor Pete's flirtation with McCarthy-style rhetoric? And his comments about how we should forget about the revolutionary 1960s? To my mind, the trumped up anti-communist hyperbole made by moderates is far, far more alarming. They have decided to slander their opposition in the style of the Cold War right, and we should all be much more concerned.
4
Sanders hmm still no. And unfortunately not being the only, if he’s the choice I may stay home and not vote.
Now this is what happened last election with people too. Sorry no more chaos for me thanks. And if he thinks he can get it done, I don’t think so. Vote Bloomberg.
2
I’m a boomer who has been to Cuba. I have no ideological axe to grind. It’s a fact the Cuba has better education and medical services than most, if not all, of the rest of the Caribbean. Many Cuban people are alive today who simply would have died in childbirth in other countries. We can know those facts and still know that Cuba is not a good place to be gay, to be a thoughtful artist, a democracy advocate, or a visionary entrepreneur.
7
Funny. I'm a boomer and have always had positive thoughts about the Cuban revolution. Maybe because I wasn't a rich sugar plantation owner. I was terrorized by the Vietnam war and the politicians who wanted to send me over there to get slaughtered. I didn't agree with the government's attitude towards Cuba or anything else for that matter. Pretty much all of my friends at the time had the same feelings. So don't tell me boomers are all terrified of Fidel Castro and anything having to do with socialism. Socialism is just another term for "government," which is something that is meant to serve all of the people. Provide services, health care, etc. Our government has spent our money on foreign wars, stealing oil from the Arabs, etc. Bernie doesn't scare me at all. I'm a boomer. He's just trying to do the right thing for a change.
4
To me generational fault lines are a bit like the vaccine attitude. if you are young enough never to have known the disease you take the vaccine not so seriously. Those who had or knew a person with the disease will not risk skipping the vaccine.
2
For most boomers, I am one, Castro in 1959 and then again with the Cuban missile crisis became a symbol for all that threatened us, nuclear war, the threat of communist dictatorship at our door. Vast numbers of boat people sought refuge here from what so many of us so as tyranny. We had little knowledge of the dictator Babtista who he replaced and the role of American corporations who supported him. And our fears of Castro were amplified as we watched uncounted numbers of protesters and those who spoke their minds disappearing into Cuban gulags. Our young people perhaps for the best know none of this and see only the possibility that democratic socialism and government well run can make a huge difference in their lives. Sanders for them represents that hope. Perhaps we oldsters can trust enough in the wisdom of our young to not over react with the force of our old stories and see a new possibility. I suspect no matter what Cuba may have been and Sanders with his experiences can do more good than harm if he gets the chance as president. Can that be said for Trump?
2
Bernie should go to Vietnam and see how a former socialist economy can be quickly revitalized by opening up to markets and international investment. The same could happen quickly in Cuba if the U.S. ended the embargo and Cuba opened up its economy.
Along with socialist powers comes authoritarian powers. It always has and always will. Sanders may not try to enact a dictatorship, but he will have expanded presidential powers to covet, and he will like the dictators if they hum the right tune. Who does that sound like?
The march of democracy will be stunted under him too.
2
I wonder if the divide is really generational. So much of the commentary against Sanders seems not so much generational, or even purely ideological, but more just tribal. And what his critics seem unwilling to forgive is Sanders finding virtue in a foreign tribe, when what he found, by contrast, did not reflect well on us.
There is implicit criticism of the U.S. when you note that Cuba supplies healthcare on a basis more egalitarian than is available here. That is what is unforgivable. Saying that some hated foreign nation is nevertheless better, in some very limited way, than our own nation is. It is at once an observation which stands, however slightly, against the hatred, while at the same time discomfiting self-regard. Doing that apparently makes critics almost speechless with rage.
3
The young, especially Millenials, grew up in a rapidly changing technological world, where most things were free. The price of admission to all these cool new developments was essentially zero.
One example: Remember the uproar when musical artists had the audacity to start (wanting) to charge for their music to be heard online, via mobile devices, etc.?
(I have no idea how that worked out, do they get paid now?, etc., as I don't listen to music that way ... yes, say it, 'OK, Boomer'! :)
Last weekend, my 20-21 y/o grandniece said something to the effect of 'I don't want to pay for anymore school,' she wants to get her Master's, etc., via a school that will pay for it.
She has the mind and the grades to make that happen I believe, so I say, go for it, of course.
And I certainly don't blame her for not wanting to incur obscene amounts of loans and debts to go on to higher education and advanced degrees.
The bigger point being, this is a generation who is very used to being able to consume most things for free, either via the supplier, or with help from their parents and grandparents.
Of course, when faced with having to take it all on more substantially as individuals, Bernie's message has huge appeal.
And that may be enough. He's not my candidate of choice for sure -- too old for one thing -- but one person, one vote. We'll see how this crazy thing shakes out.
2
Really? Trump routinely praises Putin and Russia. RUSSIA, our main geopolitical rival since 1945, and a real national security threat. But something positive Sanders said 30 years ago about Cuba's progressive health care and educational systems is the problem.
3
I spent part of my life in Montreal, where Americans came to avoid the U.S. government ban on travel to Cuba.
These citizens of The Land of the Free had to scuttle from one airport gate to another, trying to avoid the attention of U.S. “intelligence” agents sent there to photograph them.
Imagine a government so repressive that it spies on its own citizens, and punishes them for travelling outside the country. Still, the United States accomplished much during this period, and it’s important to put things in perspective...
1
Whatever you think of Bernie Sanders, remember that not voting is actually a vote for the other side. If you can't cast your vote as an endorsement of a canditate, then exercise your vote to keep the other guy from winning.
1
my father was a lawyer who had a client who invested in apartment buildings and Cuba. Castro came in and took them all, and then I guess provided low cost housing but paid nothing for the building of them.
I don't mind Bernie praising Castro's literacy program, but I do mind Bernie supporting exempting gun makers and gun dealers from liability and then writing it off as a"bad vote" also if he is so anti imperialistic, why does he support the F-35 fighter jet, the most expensive weapon system in history?
The "so what" in the title is that the GOP have been using the "socialism" attack ads successfully for decades.
We are not going to be able to undo the "dog whistle" impact of this on the emotions of so many moderate and swing state voters
Remember Gingrich's memo: "Language a Key Mechanism of Control?" You can find it online.
These attack efforts by the GOP could easily lose us the House and Senate if Bernie is at the top of the ticket, as many fearful moderate voters vote GOP for Congress in an effort to block what they perceive as dangerous "socialist" policies.
Thus, even if Sanders is lucky enough to win the White House, he won't be able to get anything done, and if he loses, Trump will have full control with both Houses and no one to control his behavior
How do we know Bernie can't win the Senate?
It is because there are only 4 toss-up Senate seats up for grabs in 2020 and they are in AZ, CO, ME and NC
All of the rest of the Senate seats up for grabs are in red or red-leaning states - so Bernie has no path to get the Senate and his agenda through if he leads the ticket. Even most Dems in the Senate do not support M4A
Nominating a moderate and one who the disgruntled X-Trump people can support (those moderates and independents who voted for him last time) is the only way we can get anything done
Those people will support a Dem for Congress to stop Trump if they feel the person at the top of the ticket is a moderate - someone whose policies they do not fear.
1
The discussion about how bad or good Cuba was under Castro has really made me want to read a book about Cuba during the Castro regime. I am in my mid 40s and back in the days when we were in school in Asia, all we knew about Cuba was great doctors, great education and cigars. One of our dream vacation on the bucket list was Havana. Any recommendation on a book by fellow NY readers would be highly appreciated.
1
I'm old. I lived through the Cold War. Sanders praise for Cuba is a non-issue for me.
3
This article seems to be about people who are not intelligent enough to make a distinction between a government's efforts at producing a better educational system, and a government's totalitarian leadership. They are two different things. Following a logical thread, they must also hold the belief that if a country has a good education system, it is necessarily part of a totalitarian regime.
1
I grew up during the Cold War, so I'll I ever heard was anti-communist propaganda. The younger people today, are better educated and are better critical thinkers. Having grown up with the Internet and Wikipedia they know that not everything your told or read is true. They realize that comparing the "Democratic Socialism" of Sanders to actual Socialism or even Communism is way off base. They also look at the inequity in our country today, something they didn't cause, and think the old way ain't so great.
3
Trump is literally in the pocket of Vladimir Putin and we are supposed to be worried that Sanders said some things fifty years ago in support of a Soviet Union that went out of existence in the 1990s? Seriously?
3
It is simple-minded to interpret what Sanders said as "praise for Cuba." He noted that with all the bad there was some good.
There's more it than what gets used for accusation and insult (does anyone think Sanders doesn't get it?).
1
Sanders did not answer the Cuba question the other night as deftly as he could have to assuage fears among older Cuban exiles in Florida; but the majority of them are Republicans, and many young Cuban Americans already support him.
Interesting that the media jumped on his statement that literacy in Cuba is a good thing, which is a statement of fact that Obama praised as well, while Bloomberg called the current Chinese dictator Xi Jinping a democratic leader- an outrageous false statement and ignorant to boot, but it hardly got any reaction. Communism in China is all good, but dare say something positive about our neighbor Cuba, where the people suffer greatly due to the US blockade. Oh, there are a lot of billionaires in China... but not in Cuba.. hmmmm, maybe these are the "constituents" that are friends of Mike whom the Chinese dictator listens to. Global oligarchy? Could be a good thesis for another article, or book.
2
I’m a millennial and I know better than to praise Cuban socialism. Many of its health are programs are in shambles and Sanders rhetoric is going to alleviate Florida. Does Sanders want to be president? He needs to start behaving like one.
What young people think doesn't matter, because young people don't vote, and I say this as a young person.
“... for many younger progressives, the negative reactions to Mr. Sanders’s comments ... seem like boomer panic and a pernicious form of red-baiting, and reveal the divides within the Democratic Party.“
Does this mean (‘progressive’ ageism aside) that authoritarianism doesn’t concern younger progressives? Or that dictatorship is okay if it has a left-wing patina?
Bernie Sanders’s remarks in his CNN interview with Anderson Cooper were offensive because they were either the result of profound ignorance or because they demonstrated polite dishonesty (specifically, about prison camps under Fidel Castro).
Shortly after taking power, the Castro regime imprisoned the head of the United Press International Havana office, Henry Raymont (whom I later knew); they summarily sentenced him to death as a spy. He survived only because he and his his mother were Argentine citizens, and because his mother was able to get the Argentine government to intervene successfully (Castro still cared about public opinion in Latin America).
Sanders brushed aside police state considerations with airy comments, including the ritualistic generalization that he condemns authoritarianism. Although quick to condemn right-wing authoritarianism, Sanders responded only with canned language ‘condemning’ arrests and legalized murder of presumed political opponents. That, simply, is not an adequate amount of outrage; they indicate that some of Sanders’s governmental ethics are situational.
2
I'm an older voter and Cuban-American. I'm tired of both the stereotypical portrayal of older Cuban-Americans and the grotesque pandering in which both parties have engaged to a delusional segment of the Cuban-American population that has still not got over the fact that they are never getting back the hold they or their parents or their grandparents or their great-grandparents (yes, it's been absurd for some time) once had over the Cuban economy and people. Castro's failures were many and his legacy's failures remain many, but it is counterproductive with respect to remedying them to refuse to recognize that his regime largely maintained its power and internal legitimacy not through repression but through delivering education, healthcare and some modicum of dignity to the vast majority of Cubans left in poverty and degradation by all prior Cuban governments. The opportunity to offer something better to the Cuban people is there. Obama realized it. Nothing is gained, now, by reviving Cold War red-baiting for American domestic political ends.
1
Cuba has done a lot in it's healthcare system with very few resources.
2
Reading these positive and nuanced views on Bernie tells me that there’s still hope for America!
2
All Democrats, all Americans who believe in our Constitution, our way of life, and in democracy, are terrified of Donald Trump being reelected. That is understandable. But both the conservative Democratic leaders and Bernie Sanders himself need to quit attacking each other, or we will hand that reelection to Trump on a silver platter.
1
Authoritarian regimes come in all flavors - left, right, and anywhere in between. The same with populist politicians. Compare, e.g., Trump with Sanders.
That Sanders overlooks the awful aspects of leftist authoritarian regimes is not an accident. He's an old-school leftist himself.
Leftists are not liberals -- they don't believe in the marketplace of ideas, the value of debate, or the possibility that those who disagree with them can nonetheless be good, reasonable people.
Leftists like Sanders believe that they already have the True-Right Answers and thus that those who disagree are simply wrong -- and therefore deserve to be suppressed or labeled as counter-revolutionaries (or "The Establishment").
1
@ycl Or worse, elites!
It never ends. Now a Boomer, I remember being called a Commie for opposing the Vietnam War.
I think those of us who support Bernie Sanders should expect what will probably approach a daily onslaught of extrapolation, hyperbole and outright lies about him and his positions , especially if he continues to shine in the primaries.
We may even get to the ‘Love It or Leave It’ stage, screamed at us by masochists who cannot fathom how this man is trying to help them live a better, fuller, happier, and healthy life in a free representative democracy.
2
I'm a 63 year old Democrat (who else am I going to vote for?) who is happy to see a more nuanced discussion of Cuba and American foreign policy as well that moves beyond our exceptionalism into our complicity for some pretty awful behavior and that doesn't paint our "adversaries" as completely evil. There's a reason Castro overthrew Batista (not that the regime didn't come with some big problems) whom our foreign policy supported. We never met a dictator we didn't like as long as he wasn't Red. Time to put all of that to bed now and the young people know it.
1
There are three interesting issues here:
1. Cuba has an oppressive dictatorship; it is far from being a democracy.
2. Yet Cuba does a good job of ensuring basic services such as prenatal care. And it embarrassingly does a better job than our own United States. So for example, in 2019 the infant mortality rate in Cuba was 4.411 deaths per 1000 live births, but in the U.S. it was 5.748.
3. Cuba is the closest nation to us, other than Canada and Mexico. Yet we don’t enjoy normal diplomatic relations with them. Yes, they’re a dictatorship, but we have relations with almost all of the world's dictatorships. For example, we must have relations with Russia and we do, even though their leader is the murderous Putin. But with Cuba, our leaders allow themselves to be held captive by the vocal Cuban immigrant population in Florida.
OK, but should Bernie be praising the Cuban system? This is an example of one of those times in life when you don’t want to lie but you also may not want to say the truth out loud. But too late now.
It’s starting to look like we may be stuck with Bernie as our Democratic candidate. If so, we will have to make his candidacy work. Until then, it would be nice if our Democratic candidates would shut up about who said what decades ago and instead start explaining how they will get our once-great country back on track. I don’t personally care for Bernie’s solutions, but at least he’s talking about solutions rather than what’s wrong with his opponents.
2
@Maggie - You're absolutely right, the old USSR was subsidizing Cuba; one way was to buy their sugar at an artificially high price. And since the fall of the wall things aren't so great in Cuba. But note that some things there still work; these infant mortality rates are from last year.
1
As a Canadian-American citizen raised in both countries and now living in Montreal, I feel that Americans are very ignorant about their neighbors and love blaming 'the other'. US citizens should take a look in the mirror and at their own history. American economic domination ground Cuba into a situation of quasi-slavery by the time Castro took over. Havana was a get-away for sex tourism, smuggling and offshore banking for decades. The fact that Cubans have universal healthcare and educate doctors from all over the world speaks to the positive things that they have achieved.
They are not evil, and America is not evil. We're all just people. Bernie is great at pointing that out -- it's sad we need to be reminded of this. I'm so tired of the scare tactics. I've stopped fearing and am going to start thinking and speaking about social and economic justice, and I'm voting for Bernie on Thursday in the Massachusetts state primary.
2
Why are young potential voterts interested in supporting the self described Independent Socialist Bernie Sanders? Because Sanders has been primarily and consistently advocating for the absolution of Student Loan Debt and free college education for the past four years. Period.
So with that said, let's not forget that four years ago when Sanders began his primary run against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nod, young voters then like those today, didn't know Bernie Sanders from Colonel Sanders. So here we go again, Sanders being primarily a one-trick pony when it comes to garnering support.
Oh, for heaven’s sake, everybody calm down. Start thinking and stop reacting.
Bernie Sanders stated a fact and then, when confronted, stood by the truth instead of walking it back.
Sanders is not a Communist. He’s also not a politician. That’s why I like him.
3
@PfT He's been in Congress since 1991. He most certainly is a politician and a member of the establishment.
@MD
If you look up the word "politician" you will see there are two definitions of the word.
I was not using the word "politician" in the literal sense (as in one who holds elected office).
I was using it figuratively (as in one who manipulates in devious ways to gain advancement, i.e. one who walks back comments to gain favor with voters).
1
The debate this week amazed me in one way: How childlike Mayor Pete was, glib in his put downs, rude in his overtalking and constant interruption, smug in his expressions
It is possible to like parts without embracing the whole.
It is possible that some boomers may recollect FDR's domestic social welfare programs more than whatever Mayor Pete might imagine the 60's to have been
1
Truly investigative journalists would have interviewd Scandinavian professors in economy, political science, sociology , law etc. and asked them about Sanders´program and the differences between USA and Scandianvia, and asked questions like:
- in your opinion, why would, or wouldn´t his policies work in USA, while it works in Scandinavia? I can name two. 1) The level of trust towards authorities, the system, and fellow citizens are much higher in Scandinavia than in the US. 2) People working in the bureaucracy in Scandinavia are neutral and law abiding in their execution of their working tasks, and need not be changed when a new government takes office. Those are them most important reasons a Scandinavian system would never work in the USA, not because Scandinavian societies are more homogeneous, or have lower numbers of inhabitants, like most Americans assume. But the USA does not have investigative journalism.
@Maggie No!
I am a Latin American who left escaping a tyrannical government. The most usual ones, on the extreme right. So, I am one of the many older voters who do not take any offense with the way Mr. Sanders characterized either Castro, or Cuba. The US government, and many of its people, have no problem supporting murderous tyrannical dictators on the right. They then use the same blunt colonial approach to disregard anything positive that struggles in places like Cuba have produced. If anything, Mr. Sanders is guilty of honesty in a most hypocritical political landscape. If we were to pick just one US president who seems to have the respect of many, Barack Obama, we could easily say, "...he was also responsible for more deportations in four years that his Republican predecesor carried out in eight," or "he ramped up the drone strike policy which murdered scores of innocent people...," thus entertaining the fact that he is human and we may like some things he's done and oppose others. When it comes to Castro (and Sanders, I might add) however, holding him to the same standards is treated as heresy. We all need to get a lot more real during these polarized times, as pandemics and warming climate catastrophes (and the self-manufactured abysmal class gap between have-everythings and have-nots,) do not really care for what you think reality is, they just are.
1
Older people often spend a lot of time reminiscing. Memories may not be perfectly accurate but they do serve as a framework for evaluating new circumstances and events. Bernie’s backers essentially use enthusiasm in place of memory for the obvious reason. What bothers me is that these college-types never seem to ask “And the what?” Now, Elizabeth Warren has thought thru so many “and the what’s” that her rallies seem like seminars. Which brings me to my point. A couple of administrations ago STANDARD TESTING became the Holy Grail of education. Mark the correct box, get the answer, you’re a genius, your teacher gets a bonus, the school receives a letter grade, and all is sunshine and light. There is no “And then what” , you just got the right box. Well, Bernie’s marked all the right boxes, but “now what?”
I had lived in Cuba for several months, for couple of years; beautiful country, beautiful people. Yes, free education, free healthcare, etc. Yet, behind Cuban's cheerful attitude I could feel a deep sense of emptiness, purposelessness, hopelessness... For them I was (also) news; I felt I was some sort of "wikipedia" in which they could find information about Europe and Asia, places I knew quite well. They asked me tons of questions about places they could never see and travel.
Many were well educated, doctors, Lawyers, dentists, teachers, etc. most were driving taxis, few were working for the government for a penny. My Cuban friends were not allowed to go to discos, hotels, some university campus... I had to bribe a security guard of a facility to allow my friends into the pool. Cuba was a gorgeous place, fun for a loaded European like me, yet, in a way, it was one of the saddest place I had ever visited.
Beyond money and good health, people seek/crave for self-expression and self realization. Cubans have been robbed of one of the most important human right - freedom to create, opportunity to express themselves freely, and in the process, to acquire tons of information about themselves and the world.
Capitalism might not be perfect but it is thousand times better than socialism
4
@PatriciaMazzei @SydneyEmber
Disappointed that your article so emphasized the views of the Miami Cubans. These hyper-partisan folks have their own personal axes to grind and are not representative of "Old Voters" in the US as a whole.
So give it a break, and give it more balance, by digging deeper next time. Please.
2
American millennials should figure out ways to reach out to their counterparts in Cuba to assist them in resisting oppression and human rights abuses on the island. The country that desperately needs political revolution is Cuba.
Cuba needs real democracy but that’s not what the Cuban exiles are mad about. They continue to harbor a fantasy that some future Cuban government will give them back the land that was expropriated from them and divided among Cuban peasants. This just isn’t going to happen, it is fait accompli. Any future Cuban government isn’t going to want to boot families off that land and and restore the system of Batista, and they won’t have the funds to pay significant compensation.
It’s important to remember that most of those who fled Cuba were the privileged beneficiaries of the spoils of brutal dictatorship, and I have zero sympathy for their losses.
Capitalism is best defined as what it is not. A true capitalism virulently rejects all premises of socialism, collectivism, communism, Marxism, etc. This includes the socialist acceptance of labor unions, the communist penchant for government management of the economy, the literacy of Cuba and the upward mobility of Sweden.
1
The USSR fell under the weight of its self-aggrandizing myths.
We are headed for the same fate If we can't listen to someone exposing one or two of our own myths.
2
I’m a boomer and I have no problem with Sanders praising Cuba. So stop stereotyping boomers.
2
Bernie Sanders is gravely wrong about Cuba. While universal healthcare is not a product of the totalitarianism in Cuba, praising Castro for Cuba's universal healthcare is extremely misleading.
As much as I find the current White House resident despicable, Bernie Sanders is not the solution. He will be an economic and cultural disaster. I will sit out the election if he becomes the Democratic nominee for POTUS.
Several commenters here decry Bernie for calling himself a “socialist” rather than the “democratic socialist” he says he is (at other times, I guess). I’ve been assiduously following for weeks now, and have heard MANY others (especially his fellow candidates, and of course media pundits and even some media “reporters”) label him a socialist, but I’ve never heard him say that of himself. I’m a (democratic) socialist myself (you all can guess what I mean, since it has such multifaceted meanings), so I’m just curious: am I wrong? Anyone have evidence of him self-identifying as a “socialist”? (For what it’s worth, I believe the “democratic” in “democratic socialist” refers to political philosophy, while “socialist” is an economic reference - as a Bernie supporter I sure wish he himself would clarify, it would sure help when it comes to this whole Cuba dust-up, among other things.)
I’m 35. I’d like to think I’m educated and well aware of socialist and communist history in the world.
...Boomers, get over yourselves. Bernie isn’t a communist, and he isn’t even “radical” by international standards. It’s 2020. Can we please talk about something more substantive than old people’s irrational fears based on assumptions?
2
Most people in this country don't know anything about Cuba. They have no idea how bad it was for most of the population under Battista, The Mob and the enablers of an imperialist American government pre-Castro.. Castro became an authoritarian dictator, did a lot of bad stuff, no question and a lot of people have wanted out of there. I lived in Poland in the 1960s for a year and I know what about the horrors of living under communism. But you still can't deny the truth that for the darker-toned and poorer class of people in Cuba life got immeasurably better after the revolution. Education, health, and cultural acceptance. If you look at the picture of the Cubans in Florida waving flags and getting all riled up about Sander's remark you'll notice that most of them are light skinned. If you go to Cuba, particularly Eastern Cuba you will notice that most of the population is more African. Anyway, we seem to have no problem with China anymore, or Dutarte or Saudi Arabia and any number of brutal dictatorships around the world that we do business with and make Cuba and Castro look like paradise
1
I am older and I wasn't offended. They do have a high literacy rate and healthcare for all. Why is it bad to say that? I so tired of our policy in Cuba being dictated to us by the south Florida Cubans.
1
You know what they say: The most successful things in Cuba are health, education and housing. The least successful are breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Sanders backed Bolivia’s Evo Morales, even though he adopted the Maduro way of doing “democracy”, changing the constitution to stay in power for life. They call it a “human right” (to be president for life), and this may not sound that big of a deal, but it was, and it says a lot about Sanders.
On paper, their vision sounds good, free everything, no poverty, jobs everywhere, equality, etc. Then they throw climate change on top of all the goodies, what’s there not to like? It’s a human right to be happy, wealthy and healthy.
Thing is, once they take power, and they make the Forbes top 100 list of richest people, they run into reality, the evil oligarchs take their business and money elsewhere, productivity plummets, corruption is inevitably, a matter of survival, economies shrink, people begin to suffer...suddenly everyone is not equal to everyone else. Those in power control the means of production & natural resources, members of the socialist party get the jobs, everyone else is miserable, worse than before. What happened? The people just swapped who takes the money & power, they remain miserable....unless they’re willing to pay ridiculously high taxes, which hello, they won’t, see Chile to find out what a small increase in bus fare does to a struggling low income class.
Sanders supporting autocrat Morales, knowing how despicable socialist governments act once they take power. Is all one needs to know about this Castro fan.
To the 18 year old college student - if technology is requiring less people to do things why is unemployment so low in the U.S.? Technology is and will displace workers but there is major disagreement as to whether it will eliminate humans from working. If the Industrial Revolution should have taught the millennials anything it is that adaptability to a changing employment environment is important. Should society (not necessarily government) do more? Yes. People deserve a living wage and they deserve access to healthcare. But we disagree on how to get there.
But this is about Bernie and his past (and possibly current) attachment to Cuba, Nicaragua, and the old Soviet Union and other failed leftist regimes. This goes past literacy programs to wanting to privatize whole industries. This goes to getting votes by promising free everything.
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. I fear that history is no longer taught in schools. Or the students simply no longer pay attention.
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To D.C.....The same could be said about Trump white nationalism racist politics in America government at federal level those who vote to repeat history forever doomed America democracy.
Sander's point is to illustrate America's social ignorance of social services. How is it that the richest nation to ever exist cannot "afford" free public healthcare, education and a large robust social safety net; Yet tyrannically ruled Cuba could. No one has agreed with Castro's violent oppressive leadership; yet only the collective stupidity of the American people can complain about a literacy program or god forbid guaranteed healthcare. Anything socially beneficial to the people is communist, yet we hand over tax free land to the wealthiest businesses as "incentives". Long Live this Banana Republic.
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Since there is good in everything and Cuba has healthcare and education systems we can learn from, according to some comments and Bernie supporters, maybe we can guide a percentage of migrants from our Southern border to Cuba? They would share the benefits of healthcare and education + since we know from multiple NYT articles that immigrants, any and all, benefit the economy, they could contribute to the growth of the Cuban economy. Win-win situation! There is an article in this issue of NYT featuring a young Cuban woman waiting in Mexico for the chance to immigrate to USA. Maybe we should ask her about the bright side of Cuban socialism.
3
The issue isn't generational politics, it's Sander's inability to express the substantial downsude to repressive, dictatorial regimes in places like Cuba. Yes, the literacy program was great, sure, but was that worth indoctrination, expelling homosexuals, and the lack of freedom of expression? I'm old enough to remember when homophobia and defiling free expression were things that liberals were against.
Mussolini made the trains run on time, by Bernie's logic everything that went along with punctual train schedules in fascist Italy isn't worth considering.....
7
I am pretty sure Sanders is a communist -- and he's playing Democrats like Lenin played so-called moderate Menshiveks leading up to October 1917. How so many people can't see his obvious communism is beyond me.
4
The Republicans intend to use the "Socialist" mantra against the Democrats again, leveraging the Democratic Socialism, i.e. European-style of Bernie Sanders as a straw-man argument.
The historical facts are Republicans are perfectly OK with dictatorships and kleptocracies of any sort as long as they can make a buck off of them. They embrace right-wing autocrats, historically, around the globe and tripped-over themselves doing capitalism with Communist China and an Oligarchical Neo-fascist Russia when the opportunity presented itself.
A Communist dictator isn't any better or worse than a Fascist dictator. In fact, we have an entire Republican administration sitting in power that is more aligned to the government of Putin's Russia than the one created by the United States Constitution.
To say Republicans are hypocrites is a study in understatement. To scold on the history of Castro while embracing the history of Batista is a study in willful ignorance.
The Republican Party stands as a good example of both hypocrisy and ignorance.
3
Are Democratic voters really so dense as the media assumes by pushing this silly story? We have a sitting president who regularly praises communist dictators -- yes, actual living communists with real power -- like South Korea's Kim and China's Xi for all the good things they have done in their countries, how strong and smart they are, etc. at the same time he acts more and more every day like a dictator of America. Pushing this story against Bernie Sanders and "socialism" serves Trump well by distracting from his almost daily assaults on the rule of law, Congress, the free press, patriotic career public employees, and anybody who even mildly criticizes or stands up to him. But keep it up, NYT, and be complicit in his re-election.
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@abigail49
Roughly 40% of voters are Independents - one can assume Ds will vote Blue and Rs red - roughly less tan 30% each of all voters, but those independents in the middle can be courted by either side and some can be influenced by all the hype. This was apparent when Trump won. So, yes, since "socialism" is a favorite attack, and a successful one, that has been used by the GOP for decades - it is a huge issue.
2
"Many older Democrats with sharp memories of the Cold War have been baffled and even offended by Mr. Sanders’s praise for the country " Let's leave aside the the moral hazard posed by supporting the murderous dictator Batista in the 50s and the hypocrisy of selectively hating Castro while tolerating many Latin American dictators, Castro's real offense was cozying up to the USSR. Had he overthrown Batista and remained our boy in charge, the anti-communist pearl clutchers would be silent on this comment.
My objection is the clear bias of the reporting. Look at the words in this article "Mr. Sander's praise." I watched the interview. "He said, "We're very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba but you know, it's unfair to simply say everything is bad."
Not only is it unfair, it would be untrue. Yes on the balance Castro was a murderous dictator and deserves our contempt, but that shouldn't give the NYT leave to distort Sanders' words.
5
Saudi Arabia is a brutal dictatorship. We haven't minded since oil was found there decades ago.
China is a brutal dictatorship yet a majority of the Congress voted to give China "Favored Nation" status to get access to their cheap labor and huge market potential. It even still calls itself Communist. Yikes!
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@Judy So the moral equivalency is if we tolerate those dictators, it's OK for Sanders to tolerate his own list of dictators? I'd like him to speak against authoritarians, all of them. There are plenty of examples of good healthcare policy and educational excellence in many countries beside Cuba. Strange he should pick that country.
We would do well to move past knee jerk anti communism. Thank goodness there’s a younger generation that lacks the ideological blinders of an earlier era.
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Barack Obama also praised Cuba's education and healthcare system. Maybe we could learn a thing or two from them.
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Here are my concerns about Sanders:
— He is an elderly man who had a heart attack and had stents placed. My dad had this procedure a number of times, and he usually had to rest several days after the procedure.
Yet, Sanders refuses to release his medical records. Why not? We have every right to know.
— It has been proven time and time again that Sanders’ Medicare for all plan, free college tuition for all (Can’t remember if he promises
free daycare, but Warren has.) will bankrupt our country. Yet, he hasn’t revised his plan once.
— Although the Cuban comments don’t bother me, it was stupid to praise Castro at this time. Although Miami has the largest Cuban population, Union City, NJ, has the second largest base, so that will probably affect voting in N.J. I don’t know if you know any Cubanos, but they are very proud and stubborn, and they know how to hold a grudge.
— I am tired of screaming, crabby old men. Trumpf is bad enough
— If we elect Sanders, we will lose the chance to get rid of trumpf
My two sons and their girlfriends are Bernie supporters. I have had this conversation many times with them.
1
Re linking Sanders to Castro as a "... a pernicious form of red-baiting" Sad part is, it's not just the Republicans doing this but the Democratic establishment and the corporate media.
4
There is a simple answer to this, go to the World Bank database (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.ADT.LITR.ZS?locations=CU-CN-IR-RU&name_desc=false) and check the education for Cuba through the years. The only take is that Cuba did very well fighting illiteracy. Whether Castro or Gandhi was the leader is irrelevant to your take on Cuba's improvement in literacy. Facts are facts.
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So Republicans are aghast at Sanders' measured remarks about Cuba, but they defend trump's immoderate praise of Putin? How do you smell hypocrisy again?
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First off, all "boomers" didn't buy into the false capitalism/communism dichotomy!
When Buttigieg -in his typical millenialist historical ignorance, tries to pin the "Radical" label on Sanders, he'd best remember that gay-marriage is one of those radical ideas that grown-ups that preceded him fought for!
Buttigieg would be wise to learn that a foundational component of the Castro regime's platform was to champion the struggle against the phenomena of domestic and international systemic, structural-racism. Phenomena to which Buttigieg has only recently become "woke".
Not only did Castro's regime work to root out the historical white-supremacist thought and practice in Cuban society -and long before "America" even chose to identify this as an issue, it also FOUGHT on the global stage against international white-supremacist thought and practice, the origins of which were established in European imperialist and colonialist projects but were contemporaneously veiled in the supposedly white-washing language of capitalism .
Buttigieg would be wise, also, to learn that while "America" was giving tacit approval to the anti-democratic white-supremacist Apartheid regime in South Africa and its unlawful occupation of Namibia, the Castro regime was waging war against its white-supremacist policies and helping to establish the circumstances that would lead to two independent democratic nations there.
To some Black voters, these historical facts, and one's ignorance thereto, matter!
1
Americans of all stripes should by now be well beyond fed up with this tip toeing around Cuba now for some sixty years. Barack Obama to his credit tried to rehabilitate the country in our eyes somewhat, at least making it more feasible for Americans to travel there. Particularly the so called Cuban ex pat community in Florida. Ok we get it, Grandpa had to flee the island, leaving his profitable brothel or gun or drug running business behind. Not our problem.
3
We should have full diplomatic relations with Cuba. Fact is Cuba was an oppressive dictatorship that inspired a leftist revolution. The US has fought the will of the Cuban people ever since including trying to kill Castro numerous times. The Cubans in south Florida belonged to the oppressive class in the 1950s and they want the US to reverse the butt kicking they got from the rebels. Btw Sanders rightly calls for relations with Iran and for US foreign policy to no longer be controlled by AIPAC. Makes me consider voting for him.
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Why is Sanders praising Cuba? Did he find a pocket of voter support hanging around? There is nothing admirable about one of our long term antagonists. Dumb Bernie.
2
Am I the only one who actually saw his interview on 60 minutes. Yes, he did praise Castro's literacy program, but he came FAR SHORT of praising Castro's methods or his legacy in general. He called out Castro for the authoritarian ruler that he was, and he also acknowledged that sometimes bad people can do good things.
It frustrates me that we think that bad people are all bad. Sometimes they can, and do, good things. We can acknowledge the things they did good while still condemning their full record.
It's like Mr. Spock [yes, Star Trek] said, Hitler took a bankrupt nation, and turned it in to a world power in <10 years. That doesn't make Hitler a good person, but it is something many other world leaders haven't been unable to accomplish.
2
So the times is dredging up this old news and recycling it, just in case everybody hasn’t hear it already. For shame, Castro teaching all those peasants to read! The older Cubans in Miami were never going to vote for Sanders anyway, they are in the Trump camp as he has been grooming them for three years.
3
Who cares about some old comments / opinions on Cuba?
If 2018 was any indication, folks care about health care, attention to the climate and human rights. This whole Cuba media thread smells a lot like the Clinton email 'scandal' that the Times kept covering. A whole lot of nothing, and a distraction from the issues that voters on the ground care about.
4
The Cuba story is like the Middle East. Everyone has an opinion and everyone keeps repeating the same talking points
I do know that it would be nice if we had a massive literacy program it would of been nice if those Cuban doctors were working with people suffering from HIV
In America that feeds off of racism it’s pretty pathetic to listen to self righteous slogans when Jim Crow, stop & frisk was the law of the land
I have yet to hear any outrage from Cuban Americans about the treatment of blacks
Let’s stop with the pretend Cuban outrage and get tTrump out of office . Heard a lot of mouth when President Obama wanted to stop the same insanity that the US has been engaged in for decades
Americans focus and stop the living in the past. White Cubans tell blacks to get over slavery so I think Cubans need to grow up
You’re just not going to stop are you? Divisive and misleading headlines... these “reporters” or “journalists” have all already shown their hand. Any reader who pays even the least bit of attention to these author’s Twitter pages know exactly where their political sympathies are... i do not understand how the NY Times can expect any reader to believe that the election coverage is unbiased when they allow all their employees espouse their own opinions and views in social media... i genuinely feel that this is almost a social experiment the media is playing with people. Cuba?! Really?! You can’t find something else more substantial to spill ink on in such a monumental election as this? Endless peddling of fear and doubt again and again and again by the same authors in these pages day after day... someone is pulling these levers ...
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Yeah? I'm an old Democrat and I say give it a rest with this junk. The Times' anti-Bernie obsession is really getting sad. Obama praised Cuba, too. Have you no decency or integrity?
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It was called the Cuban Missile crisis. Guess when the Koch brothers were configuring the US public school system through supporting the dumbest bunnies to school board elections, they didn't t think that was important - along with civics.
Sanders lauded and worshiped at the feet of a full blown dictator. If these "young" alleged voters (they are not known for their voting habits) don't get that, what else don't they get? Or is free stuff worth the cost of freedom? If we can't tell the difference between socialism and communism, we are in big trouble, and as Khrushchev said a long time ago, "We will bury you." His timing was off. But Vladimir made sure there were two eager useful idiots to bring that promise to fruition.
1
Sanders . . . a communist hiding in plain site.
2
Very dishonest by the New York Times. Bernie praised a program that the Cuban government implemented, yet deplored authoritarianism. We're not as dumb as NYT thinks we are.
3
This debate, manufactured by the NYTimes, is diverting readers' attention from issues that matter. Stop it.
2
the cold war was a time of shameless across the board media complicit propaganda and an evil, undemocratic and fascist supporting foreign policy. im sure bernie has said supportive things about salvador allende but you can be sure American media wont revisit that one. the times shows how out of touch it is by bringing up cuba so much
The cold war was decades ago and is irrelevant to this discussion, unless you are an old idiot like Chris Matthews.
Obama opened relations with Cuba and we would all be better for it. Sanders has never hinted at the authoritarian type leaders Trump is and wants to be. To put that label on him is completely dishonest about what this Guy has been saying for decades.
If anyone really thinks that sanders is going to try to impose an authoritarian type communist regime they can vote for trump, who is probably guaranteed to provide all the strong man antics for them.
2
Watch this video produced by Reason TV (libertarian organization) and think how many ads can be harvested from it by Trump's campaign: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2d3DMC6qyg&t=6s
The fact is that the majority of voters in presidential elections are middle age or older. Trump will have a field day with the naive comments that Sanders made about, the USSR, Cuba, Iran Hostages, Sandinistas, etc.. Check out how Ortega of Sandinista fame is doing now in Nicaragua. He has turned out to be worse than the despot Anastasio Somoza.
2
I took a course in Hispanic Studies taught by a leftist Latino professor who taught us that Cuba's medical schools under Castro were of such quality that other Latin American countries sent their medical students to Cuba.
But he didn't offer that as an excuse for the brutality of the Castro regime.
For a reality check on that, this excerpt from an article by Ronald Radosh (the professor who told us about Steve Bannon's wish to destroy our US system of government, uttered to Prof. Radosh at a cocktail party). The article reviewed "AGAINST ALL HOPE: The Prison Memoirs of Armando Valladares":
'"They beat me as I lay on the floor. One of them pulled at my arm to turn me over and expose my back so he could beat me more easily. And the cables fell more directly on me. The beating felt as if they were branding me with a red-hot branding iron, but then suddenly I experienced the most intense, unbearable, and brutal pain of my life. One of the guards had jumped with all his weight on my broken, throbbing leg.''
'That treatment was typical. In the punishment cells, prisoners were kept in total darkness. Guards dumped buckets of urine and feces over the prisoners who warded off rats and roaches as they tried to sleep. Fungus grew on Mr. Valladares because he was not allowed to wash off the filth. Sleep was impossible. Guards constantly awoke the men with long poles to insure they got no rest. Illness and disease were a constant.'
Marxist Bernie's "honesty" is decidedly skewed.
Life expectancy world ranking , F, M- my thought
1. Japan, Singapore - 88, 82 - What is more important than health?
2. Europe, Isreael, Korea-85, 80 - Govt works
37. Qatar, UAE, Bahrain-81, 79- No alcohol has afterall some benefit
45. Cuba – 81, 77 - Bernie has a point
46. US -81, 76- My ignorance is better than your knowledge
52.Turkey, Brazil, China- 80, 75- As expected
86. Saudi Arabia-77, 74- Oil not equal to health
108. Bangladesh-76, 72- Miracle
112. Russia -78, 68 - Man+ Vodka
135 India/Pakistan- 71, 68- Sanitation, Inequality
188 Nigeria, 57, 55- Where you start
1
Maybe he could have also noted that Mussolini made the trains run on time.
3
What to think about "communism" these days?
It is ascribed to the Stalinist era and the secret police of Eastern Europe. Also to the murderous Pol Pot regime in Cambodia. Nowadays it is embodied by the totalitarian Kim in North Korea.
On the other hand, it also assigns to mainland China, who is kicking everyone's butt.
One of the great tragedies of the USA is that hate has been constantly used to brainwash the populous.
After WW2, the government kept up its war propaganda for the entire Cold War, except the bile was directed at "commies" rather than Nazis and "Japs". That gave Americans 40 years (2 generations) of brainwashing..and effectively throwing out the socialist baby with the bath water. Speaking to an American born in that era is like speaking to Hitler Youth during theirs.
The simple fact is that it has forced a version of government and capitalism on the US which hurts people. Makes no sense as ALL the richest countries in the world are Democratic Socialist. The US has become a dangerous and anachronistic place.
1
Hitler was a vegetarian, so he had some good qualities too.
Sorry, that doesn't make him praiseworthy.
4
Some of us old guys have memories of the red scare, but also have some memories of Batista, the dictator who murdered and tortured his people, enriched himself and his cronies while the population went hungry, and who was supported by the US and our companies. And we remember when Cuba was a mob hangout and whore house for the United States. And remember that Batista's gang was the reason why Fidel came to power to the cheers of the Cuban population. And who was even a hero in the US because he stood up for the liberation of the Cuban people, until we figured out that he was a communist, and therefore bad. And we remember that America tried to invade Cuba. Oh well...
1
I'm old enough to remember Cuba before Castro and Cuba during Castro's initial reign in the 1960s, and I was less offended by Bernie Sanders's comment about education than worried and dismayed by his cherry-picking one thing that Castro did to improve life for Cubans, while discounting the many brutal and authoritarian acts committed under that dictatorship. What if Sanders instead had said that Hitler did a lot of very bad things, but he did get the trains in Germany to run on time? Would anyone, even Sanders, think this was a positive accomplishment? Something to be emulated or extolled? Could it in anyway counterbalance the inexplicable horrors, the millions of lives lost, and the acts of pure evil that were leashed upon the world by this terrible man and his minions? Of course not, and for Sanders to not understand that his example was extremely inappropriate and problematic makes me worry about the judgment of a man who seems to be leading the democratic pack. Cherry-picking history is a dangerous practice in the leader of a nation-- and don't we already have a prime example of this before our eyes presently?
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@Mr. Darcy's mother
I think Bernie assumes that the public has a reasonably high level of understanding, that given his strong condemnation of dictators he Of Course is completely against any fascism or communism, or cozying-up to any autocratic leader (unlike Mr. Trump, w/his infantile bromance w/ the power of Putin and Kim). Unfortunately, many will not process the meaning behind his words, and instead just react in fury at the first "communist-sounding" remark.
He has certainly been crystal-clear about the nature of the reforms he wants to see in the US. It might help his case to be just as repetitive and simplistic regarding his opposition to all forms of political oppression.
But either way, his opponents will try to paint him as the 2nd coming of Nikita Khrushchev...
13
@Mr. Darcy's mother
I feel your dismay at this cherry-picking too, it is so oblivious and "kind of misses the bigger picture" (as an interviewee said in the article), but on the other hand I get why Sanders picked this policy of Castro, because 1. education and literacy is in my view THE thing that elevates our condition as human being, it goes hand in hand with spirituality (religious or secular) to develop our fullest attributes and in that it is one of the most basic human right 2. this is an aspect of US politics and policy that has been kind of left to slowly decrepit and a lot of discussions about government funding etc miss the point of how fundamental education is.
I think it is telling that Sanders chose to praise Cuba's education rather than its health care, even though health care is the central theme of its campaign: because education is so central to developing the humanity in each person.
12
@Mr. Darcy's mother "Fidel Castro was a dictator who did a lot of good things for his people." - General Colin Powell
Outside of the U.S. that is the overwhelming consensus world view of Fidel Castro. He is the David who beat the Goliath. He is Robin Hood. He gave the Cuban people pride and they loved him for it. His "brutality" was no worse than the U.S. allies in the region: Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras. While older Miami Cubans find Bernie's qualified praise of Fidel Castro to be a deal breaker, most Americans are indifferent.
34
As a Canadian who lived in the US for a few years and who traveled to Cuba a few times, it's sad to say but I feel much safer in Cuba. The country is beautiful and the vast majority of its people is highly educated and very welcoming. For a vacation I choose Cuba over the US anytime...
6
@Rene Luc So where would you rather live? I might pick Cuba over Quebec for a vacation, but not to live. A lot of Liberals in this country said they would go to Canada if Donald Trump won in 2016. No one said Cuba.
Well, the younger generation has been judging Sanders and the other candidates for themselves. And they have also been watching the DNC and the media and judging their intentions and honesty. And soon half the states will find out what the other half think of the treatment of Sanders and then ...well, we shall see.
3
For what it's worth, my family has had direct contact with some Cuban citizens as part of a religious exchange program. That included visits in both directions, particularly in the early 1990's, right when the Castro government was dealing with the collapse of the USSR and the serious economic reconfiguration needed.
While things weren't perfect, everybody had the basics - enough food (although not really any extras), clothing, housing, and medical care. Their kids were getting a modern education. And neither the Cubans nor the visitors from America were followed around by government spies or anything like that on a regular basis.
And that's more than many Americans can say.
17
@Dave
"While things weren't perfect"
Wow, it's so easy to forget about the incarcerated. Especially when they're serving ten year sentences and aren't allowed to write home.
Bernie would have become one of them if he'd gone there and advocated democratic socialism.
And they didn't have to follow you around. Your room was bugged. And some of the normal people you met were also part-time snitches.
Do you think the Cuban KGB are stupid? They are not. They are experts at what they do.
I am not a Sanders voter OR a Sanders apologist. From what I’ve seen, he praised literacy programs that work, not Cuba. He promoted nuance in interpreting the value of what different systems around the globe can offer, so that we glean the best pieces of each. His mistake was in trusting the American media and public to be able to see distinction.
Even the most heinous governments have gotten it right in isolated places. You’ll notice many people in this country love their Volkswagen, for example.
21
@X
Castro's literacy programs were about teaching people to read Marx. One cannot be a Marxist without reading Marx. Just like you can't be a Baptist without reading the Bible. That was why Protestants opened up schools for poor and working class children after the Reformation. So they could read the Bible.
After Cubans could read Marx, Castro deprived them of anything to read that wasn't supportive towards Marx. He instituted strict censorship. Because literate people become a threat to an authoritarian if they're allowed to read or write whatever they want.
Europe was too big for censorship to work verybwell. So in Europe, increased literacy led to the Age of Reason and beyond.
Communist countries remain trapped like insects in amber.
As a boomer Vermonter who has also visited Cuba in the recent past, I welcome any nuanced views from a politician. Our national conversation is plagued by simplistic black-and-white opinions about complex situations.  In Cuba I was impressed by the high literacy rate as well as the healthcare system.  I was dismayed by the political repression and the lack of opportunity for young people. These are just examples of multiple pluses and minuses. I believe any reasonable person could come up with a long list of pluses and minuses about our consumer capitalist society. Please, people, can we stop having conversations based solely on one dimensional symbols and instead acknowledge complexities?
38
Bernie reminds me of Jeremy Corbyn in that he is a political contrarian and seems to gravitate towards societies which offer alternative structures economically and politically although he has condemned the Cuban government's authoritarianism. I think that he also has a good grasp of the role that the US has played in Cuba's history. I have never quite understood why the USA gets so emotionally charged about Cuba. We have diplomatic and economic links with Vietnam, China, Cambodia, Angola etc and those nations are not democratic, open or strictly capitalist. Donald Trump met with a far worst dictator in North Korea and said he is a good guy! Hopefully one day the realpolitik/engagement approach that is taken with these other nations will be applied to Cuba instead of the US simply reflecting the loud and emotional voice of Cuban exiles who are given far too much consideration by the State Department.
7
Having grown up during the Castro regime (I first thought it was a convertible sofa), I can add that the fear is very real for those who remember the Russian missiles believed to be pointed at our shores. Cuba was a threat; 90 miles from the US. In retrospect it was the closest thing to “1984” that we imagined. But, they have fostered an advanced healthcare system and are highly literate as a nation. They just forgot to give their citizens freedom.
He "marveled that visitors could take a cab anywhere in the country". Oh, lord. That is indeed still true today, but a big part of the reason for it is, the bus and train service is so bad. And giving tourists long-distance taxi (or collectivo) rides gives taxi drivers a chance to earn a few precious dollars.
2
“Socialism” seems to be a much-abused term in the US. The variant “socialized medicine” looks simply bizarre to me as an Australian. We are a market-based society and economy, but if any party ran on a platform of dismantling the government-funded universal healthcare system, Medicare, that would be political death, including for Conservatives. Sanders praised Cuban achievements in literacy. That does not mean he is praising the Cuban persecution of gays and lesbians, or that he would get into office and somehow mandate a centrally planned economy. If you’re an American who’s been bankrupted by healthcare costs, socialized medicine must sound like a wonderful proposition, not a terrifying slide towards Communism.
11
I kind of find this argument somewhat humorous.
I'm one of the old folks who remember the cold war (my Dad was at sea on a USN cruiser during the crisis) and remember all to well the air raid drills as we waited for the missiles to rain down on the NY Metro area.
That being said, my view of the cold war is far more nuanced, as our track record in Central & South America leaves much to be desired. We've supported some extremely nasty dictators who did far less for their countries/people than Castro did for his.
The paranoia over the term "Socialist" should easily be tempered by the example of "Fascist" or "Imperial" that seems to be the direction our current leadership is exemplifying.
Too, our current leadership seems to be happy to embrace Socialist countries like India, PRC and DPRK. The first two one could easily say they have done some good for their people. No one seems to be bothered by that...
14
Newsflash to Boomers, the News Media, and Conservatives: young people DO NOT care about the label Socialism. In fact, many of us have positive associations with the label.
Bernie Sanders is not suggesting the elimination of the 'free market' system, but rather closing the gap on income inequality to level the playing field by increasing taxes on top corporations and ultra high net worth individuals and families who can clearly pay a bit more.
20
Bumpers on the free market mean it’s no longer free. BTW, the Cold War was won by the capitalists!
@Adam : Please stop assuming that all "boomers" are right wingers who freak out about socialism. Believe me, we had socialism figured out a long time ago - remember, we're Bernie's generation.
2
@Adam Please don't stereotype all Boomers. Many of us share your enthusiasm for a Sander's presidency. When you generalize negatively about an entire age group, it discredits what you have to say.
3
This is a misleading headline.
I'm old, and I share the views of the young voters on this one.
That they are willing to see the big, true picture rather than a narrow, edited version, gives me hope for our nation.
32
its so strange that many younger people have such little knowledge of history. You don't have to live through something to know about it. We learned it, to greater and lesser degrees, in school. And I assumed younger people learned history too. But my kids tell me, not so much. That's not good. Without some kind of history knowledge you don't have any context to put things happening now in --you can't see them fully. Without knowing what went before, events are only immediate, they lack depth and understanding,
I thought American history class was pretty boring but try to get some history from books, There are great history writers at work. Get some history--it gives you much more to work with in today's world.
2
Free health care, housing and education is indeed a radical idea. Don't let the word get out.
11
I think he likes Cuba because they have an admirable national healthcare system.
I get it.
But Cuba doesn’t have anything else.
Oh yeah. They have healthy people and all of them are impoverished. Equally poor under the law.
No thanks. Bernie isn’t my favorite candidate but I’ll still vote for him rather than trump.
4
Emigrants from Cuba are offended by any praise Castro gets. That is fair. There must be a good reason they are here. A much better life more freedom, everything. But when judging Cuba one should not compare it with the US. It should perhaps be compared with Haiti close by.
If I were to choose between the two I'd prefer to live in Cuba rather than Haiti.
7
There is a difference between praising and pointing out some of the good things they did. This is prime example of how the media can slant the news to paint a very different picture than reality just by the headline on the piece.
3
"The government is going to be required to do more, and it’s something we should welcome, not be afraid of.”"
In other words, Mr. Lox wants more free stuff paid for by other people (and their taxes). No wonder he likes Sanders.
3
A century ago, JP Morgan was the world’s richest. His wealth, in today’s dollars, is said to have exceeded $300,000,000,000. Today’s actual richest, Jeff Bezos, is worth but $130,000,000,000 or about one third as much. We have prided, taxed, confiscated and shamed down success to the point that achievement is now but a shell of its former self.
@Mark Shyres: He pays taxes, too.
The issue with Sanders is that he's more Noam Chomsky than Adam Smith. His praise of Cuba is but the tip of an iceberg of his lifelong extreme left worldview. In a word, he's an extremist. Regardless of what inexperienced, and historically unreliable, voters like Sanders' online youth brigade might think, he simply has too much extreme left philosophical baggage. It will result in a George McGovern type implosion in a general election. Sanders provides easy fodder for even an utterly beatable lightweight like Trump.
5
@Wesley That’s a good reason to vote for Sanders. Chomsky is one of the greatest thinkers of our age.
Keep in mind that lots of older folks are going to vote too. And they remember when the Soviets put missiles in Cuba and menaced us for weeks with the possibility of nuclear war.
Bernie should drop it. Praising Cuba and other countries which have been run by crazy dictators isn't a good luck.
Good luck Saturday, Bernie!
2
@fast/furious Bernie did drop it. It's you and the New York Times who believe that the most important issue facing the US right now is if presidential candidates speak well of Cuba or not.
It is simply a fact that Castro implemented and utilized the literacy campaign to indoctrinate Cubans and consolidate his hold on power. Apart from that, it is simply untrue that it led to a significant jump in literacy.
An informative op-ed on this topic by a Yale professor of history in yesterday WaPo can be found at:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/27/dear-bernie-sanders-you-cant-separate-cubas-social-policies-its-authoritarianism/
When it comes to facts like this, why is there a "divide" among Democrats? We are the self-proclaimed "thinking party." We should all be able to agree that improved literacy is a good thing, while recognizing that a dictator trying to use a "literacy program" as an excuse to exert control through controlled media is not.
Sanders and his supporters should be able to easily make that distinction.
3
Times, they are a-changin'.
The young understand that we need to revisit this idea of capitalist fealty. Not that the capitalist system is wrong but that worshiping short term gains and the almighty dollar over everything else can have consequences.
We ought to ameliorate the suffering capitalism can wring (though it is still the best economic system available) and consider what else we ought to value as a society.
It's not so bad. Embrace it, or try to shape it if you must. But don't just screech and hide your head in the sand.
2
Maybe someone should give Sanders' millennials a crash course on what it is like to be a poet, an artist, a writer, a journalist, or anyone willing to speak to what he or she believes openly - and stare at four rotten concrete block walls of a Cuban prison, eating half rations of rice and beans. Detente with Cuba is one thing, and Obama was right to pursue it, but no one should ever whitewash what Castro and his dictatorship did to liberty on that island over the last sixty years. There are hundreds of political prisoners in Cuban cells as we speak. They may have free medicine, but people can only whisper.
8
@Rick Morris Maybe someone should give Montreal citizens a crash course on what it is like to be a poet, an artist, a writer, a journalist or anyone willing to speak to what he or she believes openly in Batista's Cuba and stare at four rotten concrete block walls of a Cuban prison. The problems of Cuba are certainly not due to lack of US intervention.
Again, the presidential election is not about what any candidate has said about a Cuban literacy program.
This is absurd.
@Steve
So, I'm an American, just like you, Steve. The article was about Castro's Cuba, no mention of Batista there. Actually, Sanders should talk about the atrocities of Castro, relative to Batista's, since they are comparable, in order to give his sympathies of the former some perspective. And in reference to your last paragraph, Sanders will be judged, fairly or fairly, on his ideas about Cuba. And about the Soviet Union. Fairly so, in my view.
Sanders didn't go to the Soviet Union for his honeymoon. He went to St. Lucia. The quote in the article didn't correct the person who misstated it. Reading it, it is easy to take that statement for fact.
3
As a Gen Xer who has seen her grandfather lost to Fox News, I think “boomer panic” is a great way to put a pin in that notion that too many (mostly) older people are in thrall to the Furies of talk radio and right wing propaganda— so easily whipped up into a nearly ecstatic fear. And about what? Socialized health care and education, and the loss of “Christian values” via abortion, drug use and teen pregnancy. All this while humanity is actually facing an existential threat in global warming and a true spiritual crisis in income inequality.
7
There is one point on which I agree with Sanders and hope he makes it again more clearly: The USA has blood on its hand in many countries of the world, and killed liberalism in many countries - especially in Central and South America - because it identified American interests with corporate interests.
Would there have been so many dictatorships, would Cuba had turned toward the Soviet Union, would anti-americanism have poisoned generations in Latin America had the USA not deposed liberal governments so that United Fruit Co. wouldn't pay taxes? Would Iran be so anti-american had the USA and the UK not deposed Mossadegh to keep Iranian oil to themselves?
10
@S North
I'm not a Bernie fan, but I do give him credit for saying that. We don't like to own our shadow, so it's refreshing when somebody actually says it out loud.
It would have been helpful if Mr. Sanders had his facts straight. According to Cubans, the education program was the brainchild of Che Guevara, not Fidel Castro. Wouldn’t an education program more likely come from a Marxist dedicated to helping the poor rather than from the ego-driven and power-hungry Castro? It’s questionable whether Castro espoused any ideology upon victory, but readily adopted that of the country that was willing to help him financially, the USSR.
1
There is not one American who would freely choose to live in the Cuba that existed prior to Castro. It was a corrupt Mafia run society that thrived on the fact that the US was so busy fighting communism that they allowed the conditions to exist. Indo China, Sputnik and McCarthyism were working their way through the American psyche and the "Domino theory" was still on the drawing board.
When the revolution came, the US did little to help, leaving Castro to seek help elsewhere, and seeing an opportunity, Russia came to Cuba's aid (see Cuba missile crisis 1962)
For anyone in the media to go back to those days and call someone to task for speaking their mind about the subject is fundamentally dishonest.
I am an old person who predates the boomers. I am not the only one who can look back at that time and change my opinion once the dust has settled.
4
"Anti-imperialist"? No. He's in favor of, or at least tolerant of, Cuban imperialism in Venezuela (where the security services are run by Cubans) and Nicaragua, and never criticized the Cuban military's presence in Angola.
2
Old man here, so the lede seems a bit simple minded---as is all too often the case. I saw the overthrow of Battista and installation of the man who soon turned against us. Cuba under Castro managed to improve literacy and health care for its citizens. That is widely understood to be a fact. Why is it wrong for anybody to acknowledge those benefits for Cuban citizens while also recognizing the very real faults of the harsh and authoritarian regime? When did telling the truth become a problem?
6
It pains me to read this article and some of these comments. I am as left as they come, but will always stop short of praising a country known for its authoritarian government. There are plenty of dictator free, democratic countries out there to marvel over, who do not have a dark side of civil rights abuse, as Cuba certainly does.
4
We do not need to back thirty years to find evidence that Bernie is a socialist. First, he wants to nationalize the US healthcare system. That is socialism.
He continues to declare he is a socialist. His bff is AOC another self-declared socialist. What more do you need to know.
It is very convenient to pick only the good part of anything and ignore the rest. Sure, there is healthcare for all in Cuba. Now, what about quality and medical breakthroughs. Have any new drugs been created in Cuba.
Bernie is so adept at redirecting any question back to billionaires are the problem. And now when asked about his praise of Castro he says he never endorsed an authoritarian leader. Splitting hairs.
2
The horror of a possible Bernie vs. Trump election is that it really won't be a "stark choice" so much as a lurid caricature of democratic choicemaking - pitting a bellicose, cruel, unseemly advocate for unrestrained capitalism against a starry-eyed moralist with seemingly little capacity to assess the real-world unintended consequences of some very well-meaning choices.
This is Overton Window ping-pong, where nuance is forbidden. In the end, it just undermines self-governance. And Vladimir's happy either way.
1
I'm a 'boomer' veteran who did duty in the European and Asian theaters when the Soviets were in full bloom. Bernie does not scare me. Trump and the Trumpican party scare me.
Bernie Sanders could never become an authoritarian dictator like Trump aspires to be. 1-Because the Republican party would fight him tooth-and-nail (as if they aren't already doing that to all Dems) and 2- the Democratic party would not stand for it.
Unlike the Republican party which marches in lock-step, no matter the damage to the Constitution or country the Democrats will turn against their own if they are breaking the law.
Besides, I've seen Democratic Socialist countries and I have seen authoritarian countries of both the left and right wing varieties and I will take a D-socialist over the others any time.
7
Cognitive dissonance and denial in the face of contravening evidence are prime indicators of a cult of personality. You have to wonder at this point, what would Bernie actually have to DO to have his supporters question him? As Donald Trump famously observed, he could "stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody" and "not lose any voters." It's looking more and more like that applies to Sanders too.
What an amateur mistake.
Oh Berns, you should know better. The left has made the "on the one hand this, and on the other hand that" into an art form to the total surrender of reason and judgment, and the impossibility of reasoned-judgment in public discourse.
The person who cures cancer will be regarded by the left as a good guy for curing a terrible disease, and as a bad guy for causing massive unemployment and a run on social security because people are living longer.
Bernie represents all the humanities professors who argue that if your house got robbed, you should meet the thieves half way, compromise, and find ways to give over half of what you have - so that you then have equal halves. Of course, this logic goes out of the window when it is their house being robbed; then they want everyone else to pay them.
Eventually it came to bite the left in the tender spot upon the election of Trump, who produced the triumph of the reasoning: "you should be robbed," and "if you have less, more shall be taken from you, if you have more, more shall be given to you."
Serves them right.
1
Bernie has always been enamored of repressive socialist regimes. He marveled at how nice things were in the Soviet Union, willfully dismissive of the murders of millions of its own citizens that country was built upon.
The Cuban "literacy program" Bernie refers to is a euphemism for "communist indoctrination at the point of a gun." Anyone who didn't go along with it had their lives ruined. There is nothing to admire about it unless Bernie has ideas of starting something similar here. "It’s unfair to simply say everything is bad?" What's unfair is ignorantly dismissing the horrific conditions that the Castro regime inflicted on its citizens as anything less than horrific.
3
Cognitive dissonance and denial in the face of contravening evidence are prime indicators of a cult of personality. You have to wonder at this point, what would Bernie actually have to DO to have his supporters question him? As Donald Trump famously observed, he could "stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody" and "not lose any voters." It's looking more and more like that applies to Sanders too.
2
Yes, there's a generational divide about Cuba, not only because of socialism, but because Castro was a murderous dictator. I too think he achieved some great things--medical care, education, etc.,--but please don't ignore the way he abused Cuban citizens, instead of once again, kids, missing the point of why some people hated him. Please stop being glib and clever for five minutes and read up on why so many in Florida exploded in joy when he died.
4
Today's "moderate" democrats who consider themselves mainstream are wealthy military profiteers like the Republican party, they are not democratic at all, as they are to the right of Eisenhower just before he handed the presidency over to JFK. They are rich, and don't want to be taxed fairly by Bernie Sanders. Bloomberg can buy them. The Democratic mainstream are Republican-lites.
Its pathetic to see mainstream Democrats use the term "socialist" to smear Sanders, by acting like crazy Joe McCarthy in the 1950s, this is on old trope used by the lunatic cold warriors of that time, to see them now foaming at the mouth as rabid wealthy pundits on MSNBC, CNN, CBS, ABC, Fox News etc. about Russia and Cuba are symptoms of the moral disease and hypocrisy that infects the Democratic bourgeoisie, they are trust fund elites and political toadies out of touch with both Sanders and Trump's constituencies, the mainstream DNC and RNC are/were out of touch with hundreds of millions of Americans who want a change for the better in their working and middle class lives.
Sanders is a good, honest, humble and consistent man, this is palpable and what worries DNC elites, as they are corrupted by wealth and their wealthy cronies, they want a tyranny over the Party.
Here's hoping the corrupt media, in the pocket of wealthy Democrats, does not hammer the last nail in the coffin of American democracy, by railroading Sanders like they did in 2016 through their unjust political machinations.
5
As an older voter let me assure you: it's boomer panic.
3
There are two kinds of communist regimes in the world, the ones America feels comfortable to bully and "punish" and those it doesn't. I'm no friend of Cuba or Castro, but I despise Xi Jinping no less than Castro. China tortures multitudes of people in its "re-education" camps as we speak but you won't hear a president of either party here say boo about it. Because, let's face it, they own us. Same with Saudi Arabia.
Fact: Americans are uncomfortable with nuance but it's on them when they choose to misunderstand. Praising one (1) aspect in a communist country doesn't make one a communist. Oh, and by the way - Cuba is communist, not socialist. Those two are not the same! Can't anybody crack a book and look it up, or for heaven's sake google it.
1
The "age split" on Cuba described in this article is a gross overgeneralization. I am almost 70, and know many people in the "post-Cold War" generation who aren't the "blinkered boomers" that your reporters stereotype as regarding Cuba as the Epicenter of Communist Evil 90 miles off Florida. I had friends who went to Cuba to cut sugar cane with the Venceremos Brigades in the '60s and '70s - when the U.S. government viewed that activity as near-traitorous. Many more people I know visited Cuba in the intervening decades and continue to do so now - when our government continues to discourage it. We have watched with interest the advances in literacy there and know about the health care that's available to the Cuban people - as we see our neighbors in the U.S. struggle to pay astronomical medical bills and the GOP do everything it can to thwart even the modest provisions of Obamacare.
We don't romanticize the Castro regime - but we wonder how Cuba would have thrived without the decades-old U.S. embargo and consistent efforts to undermine its government and assassinate its leaders.
Do us a favor, New York Times - lose the ageist stereotypes. It's tiresome and frustrating to read about my generation on your pages and wonder who, exactly, your reporters are talking about - or talking to.
3
Castro did not become authoritarian in a vacuum, it occurred in the context of antagonistic efforts by the US to overthrow and assassinate him. The embargo drove Cuba into the open arms of the USSR. The culpability of the US should not be ignored.
"I believe that there is no country in the world, including the African regions, including any and all the countries under colonial domination, where economic colonization, humiliation and exploitation were worse than in Cuba, in part owing to my country's policies during the Batista regime. I believe that we created, built and manufactured the Castro movement out of whole cloth and without realizing it. I believe that the accumulation of these mistakes has jeopardized all of Latin America. The great aim of the Alliance for Progress is to reverse this unfortunate policy. This is one of the most, if not the most, important problems in America foreign policy. I can assure you that I have understood the Cubans. I approved the proclamation which Fidel Castro made in the Sierra Maestra, when he justifiably called for justice and especially yearned to rid Cuba of corruption. I will go even further: to some extent it is as though Batista was the incarnation of a number of sins on the part of the United States. Now we shall have to pay for those sins. In the matter of the Batista regime, I am in agreement with the first Cuban revolutionaries."
— JFK, interview with Jean Daniel, 24 October 1963
"boomer panic"
Don't you love the ease with which "woke" millennials embrace ageism?
I wonder if they entirely miss the irony of disparaging an entire generation of their elders with a pejorative stereotype while bestowing cultish adoration on a Marxist sloganeering demagogue who's the left-wing version of Trump ... and 78 years old.
3
These Berners have a good point: democratic socialism is not Communism.
The problem is, Bernie obliterates that point everybtime he makes excuses for Communists in Cuba and the USSR.
What Berners don't realize is that the political prisoners in the USSR and Cuba were not evil right wing capitalists. Those people all fled after the Communists took over.
The political prisoners were mostly either religious believers, or people caught espousing the wrong kind of socialism, i.e. democratic socialism.
Berners are not as ignorant as Trumprrs. They believe in science. They have good intentions.
But they don't even understand the history of their own claimed belief system. Instead they cry about being confused with Communists, while they make excuses for Communists, just to defend Bernie.
Meanwhile, they strut around like Bolshevik bullies. Not a single one of them shows anything close to socialist compassion. Not even one.
1
Young and old may view Bernie and his thoughts and remarks quite differently, but to actually win an election you need both. It is incomprehensible that Bernie would seemingly needlessly go down this road. There was and is no upside to praising a murderous dictator even if he brushed his teeth regularly and petted his dog. Can you just imagine the Republican attack ads to come.
While the actual POTUS is on record saying he could grab women’s genitalia because he was famous, we’re supposed to worry about Sanders expressing a nuanced view of Cuba? While the actual POTUS is clearly in the back pocket of the current authoritarian ruler of a hostile Russia, we’re supposed to worry about Sanders having travelled to the USSR during glasnost, when the country was firmly on a course towards more economic and political freedom, when Reagan went there also?
As well to consider Cuba under Castro without the context of the murderous dictatorship under Batista that preceded it, or the embargo and 60 year campaign of political agression by the US, is intellectually dishonest.
1
A lot of Americans can't handle nuance and complexity.....they tend to think "we're #1 !'.....and they tend to vote Republican.
Perhaps these right-wing hypocrites would like to return their Social Security, Medicare and stop using our socialized Interstate Highway System.
Bernie Sanders told some inconvenient truths.
The radical right screams "socialism !"
Sad.
2
@Socrates ....Sad, but true. Now do you want to change things or do you want to reelect Trump?
Truth is truth. And NYTimes has it in for Bernie and writes with a slant, edging so gently, the public in one direction article by article. The truth is all leaders are grey - good and bad mixed. Is it better and healthier to paint a leader as all bad? No. Is it easier to do? Absolutely. Nuance taxes the brain. Who needs that?
1
It is Sanders' mistake to brand himself a 'socialist' and not to differentiate between laudable programs (such as free healthcare) and totalitarian communist regimes.
From a European perspective, he is not a 'socialist'. Sanders' proposals are not 'radical'. Cost? Health care and decent wages are cheaper than bombs and self-inflicted mass poverty through health bankruptcies.
What bothers me more is Sander's praise for Cuba's free education. What, free indoctrination? That is what Evangelical right-wingers long for.
However, here is the choice if it came to a Sander's candidacy:
Trump-style totalitarian capitalism versus social capitalism, led by an actual 'social democrat'.
Both choices are overly polarizing. But which pole you would want to support as ordinary citizens seems obvious, not just for young people. It almost appears that the other candidates are not polarizing enough.
Could Sanders cause damage like Trump? Building is so much harder than tearing down. Besides, a European style social economy that works for all seems so much better than the American corporate and billionaire welfare nation that it now is.
I worry about rapid decline and onset of senility by the top contenders (Biden's increasing mix-ups, Sanders' broken record, DJT's inability to learn).
Go America! Great-grandpa leads the technological, social, and economic revolution for our future! Invest in state funerals (pun int.)!
A.J. Deus
Social Economics of Poverty and Religious Terrorism
1
Nobody would ever give you 30 seconds to explain molecular biology or the splitting of the atom, but somehow history and social sciences are required to be described in sound bites. It is a fundamentally ludicrous state of affairs largely created by a cynical and lazy media class who doesn't want nuance.
Do you know many black Cubans were enslaved on sugar farms prior to Castro?
That's a 100% verifiable fact I haven't seen in any of these Cuba-freakout stories yet, and I'm not sure why. The American media seems utterly incapable of covering history with any degree of nuance.
Sanders simply stated that despite Castro being a dictator, he did improve the lives of Cubans in certain ways. He wasn't singing Castro's praises. Anyone who says he did is being dishonest.
1
@RK ...That's not the point. The point is we desperately need to get rid of Trump and win down ballot races. A socialist at the head of the ticket won't get us there no matter how honest they are.
he only Democratic candidate who has a snowball's chance of defeating Trump is Bloomberg.
And I'm a conservative Texas Republican voter.
Bloom has the credentials, the experience, and the wherewithal to stand up to DJT who is a junkyard dog in the debates.
The others would get eaten alive by Trump who will use their bones as a toothpick.
@JSS - So a conservative republican from Texas is giving advice for the democrats. Noted. Thank you for your interest.
1
The history of US policies about Cuba is fraught with stupid mistakes. Before Castro there was another dictator, called Batista and the island was a summer colony of the US. Batista was not equally appreciated by the Cubans, who had a revolution against him. And the first door the rebels knocked at for help ans support was not Moscow, but Washington. And it was slammed in their face. Because the US loved so much keeping their resort in the hands of the previous dictator. This pushed Castro to seek protection from the Soviets. He could not reasonably trust the benevolence of the US. As was then proved by the Bay of Pigs. In all that confusion, the Cuban revolution passed some good reforms, like described by Bernie and at the same time established a tyrannical dictatorship. Fact is that unlike western movies, complex historical events cannot be understood simply as a fight between bad guys and good guys. In rare occasions, like Nazi Germany, pure evil takes over a country (but even then with some serious responsibility of the "good guys", who reduced Germany to the deepest misery after WWI). So Bernie is guilty of not treating Americans as little children that cannot deal with the slightest complexity of the real world.
1
Most Americans wouldn’t last 5 minutes in a developing country. 5 minutes.
The huge numbers of people fleeing these countries at the expense of their lives and dignity is a testament to absolute failure of Castro, Kim Jong Un and the Russian Communist Party
Liberal and conservative Americans alike wouldn’t last 5 minutes.
“It was a colossal blunder,” said Bob Squires, 70, of Murrells Inlet, S.C. “Loses Florida. If you look at Twitter, the people who had relatives come from Cuba, they have quite a different view. Bernie’s got blinders on.”
So let is get it straight: Florida will be lost because the principled Cuban immigrants do not like Sanders' factual statement about Castro and literacy. And they will deliver their votes to trump who, as per WaPo, made 16,241 false or misleading claims in his first three year. More, they will deliver Florida to trump who said that about Mexican immigrants (and Latino brothers of the Cubans): "They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists."
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“It was a colossal blunder,” said Bob Squires, 70, of Murrells Inlet, S.C. “Loses Florida. If you look at Twitter, the people who had relatives come from Cuba, they have quite a different view. Bernie’s got blinders on.
Of course they have a different view; most of them are descended from people who were privileged under the brutal Batista regime whose overthrow was Castro's first positive accomplishment.
I’m the son of Cuban immigrants. My family’s two small businesses were nationalized by Castro’s government.
The “literacy campaign” indeed taught people how to read... alongside nonstop propaganda and brainwashing them in allegiance to Castro. Each student had to send a letter to Castro at the end of her instruction thanking him for teaching her to read and write!
I hate socialism. I will never vote for Bernie Sanders.
@david
Do you pay Social Security Tax? Do your parents collect Social Security? Do they have Medicare?
Bernie Sanders should listen more to older voters because, as we've learned over and over again, the young talk a lot, but they don't actually turn out to vote.
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@RRM Actually, in the 2018 elections, more younger voted than older ones. And not all older voters are right-wing.
2
@RRM
They talk a lot, but they know little history.
E.g., the constant bleating about FDR. They know/care nothing about FDR.
A few months after the Cuban Missile crisis that brought the world 1 second before midnight on the doomsday clock in 1962, President Kennedy asked his speechwriter, Ted Sorensen to write him a speech about the USSR that he then delivered in June, 1963.
It was all about the sobering effect of how close the world came to being annihilated. JFK then asked the rhetorical question: why are we at each other's throat all the time? The USSR has a way of life, which may not be like ours, but it is their business, not ours. Russian culture and history has a lot to give and there are many things we can share, politics aside.
And that was the foundation of the peaceful coexistence between East and West, that led to the 1975 Helsinki Accord, a watershed moment.
15 years later, the Soviet Union ceased to exist; but instead of helping Russia and the rest of the Eastern Bloc integrate peacefully into the liberal world order, US foreign policy swung back to the Cold War mentality with full vengeance.
'Cuba' is a clear symbol of this.
Sen. Sanders is absolutely correct in his assessment about the island nation. He should be commended and not castigated for his honesty.
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@waldo I agree completely with you. What bothers me about Bernie is that he refuses to acknowledge that 1) Getting 100% literacy is much easier for a totalitarian regime 2) it is a form of control because you want them to read your propaganda and you don't want them to read outside information. This is very easy to do with an island nation. I need to hear Bernie say that indeed it is an audacious goal at which they succeeded - but it's unfortunate that it's unable to reach its true potential because of the politically controlled environment.
It's not about old hatreds or scores. It may be that way with the Cubans who had to leave everything behind or have their property taken by the State - that's an emotional scar that will never heal. But for Bernie not to acknowledge the circumstances of the "achievement" means he is blinded by his own diatribe at best and dishonest at worst.
Can’t rec this enough, nailed it...
2
Castro would have listened to Bernie yell his incorrect ideas about socialism for about ten seconds and then ordered his KGB to take Bernie away and lock him in a tiny cell for ten years.
The vast majority of political prisoners in the USSR and Cuba were either religious believers, or people who were socialist but not Communist.
Castro would have locked up every last Bernie supporter in a tiny prison cell because they were socialists but not Communists.
It's always heartbreaking to see anyone on the left make excuses for Communists. But this is a longstanding habit of moral compromise in the service of politics. It started when people on the left made excuses for Lenin and Stalin in the 1920s and 30s.
Are Bernie's statements really praise or just an observation of what government can do when it sets a goal to do something. He never said he wanted to be like Castro or do the things evil or good done by Castro he was only making a statement about the literacy rate in Cuba after the revolution. Bernie is a Democratic Socialist he sees injustice in our country where people are made to chose between medication or rent, seeing a dentist or doctor or food on the table. We are by far the richest country in the world but there are children and adults who don't get enough to eat, children who have never seen a doctor or dentist. We are destroying our environment. You only have to look at the trump policies of cutting regulations on clean air, water, food inspections, redefining the endangered species act to wonder will we as a society survive. We teach our children to be compassionate, tolerant, unbiased and when we see someone running for president that wants to give us medicine or a chance for our children to go to college for free or at a reduce rate we call him or her a communist. Capitalism will survive it did after the policies of Theodore Roosevelt. In fact after regulating large corporations prosperity came along. No, Bernie is not a communist but a man who sees injustice and wants to eliminate it and make sure that a child is healthy and has a roof over his or her head and can see a doctor when they need to I don't see anything wrong with that do you?
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@MLucero ......"Are Bernie's statements really praise or just an observation"......It doesn't matter. Put together with his self ascribed socialist label he will be destroyed by Republican propaganda in a national election. With Bernie at the head of the ticket Republicans will hold the Senate and retake the House. Sanders isn't the only person running who wants to eliminate injustice. Time to think outside the Bern.
This millennial's amazement is at the selective hearing the media and others have. Bernie condemned an authoritarian regime but complimented a literacy program that worked. Last time I checked, literacy was important to Americans. The red scare is over and luckily the propaganda campaign of the 60s have worn off. The media and others seem to have issues separating the forest from the trees.
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“ Mr. Sanders’s campaign does not view his remarks on Cuba, or his history of praising socialist governments, as problematic for him because it matters more to older moderate voters, a demographic Mr. Sanders already finds hard to reach.”
So clearly Sanders is only interested in SOME Americans but not ALL. Very inclusive, Bernie. I don’t appreciate your divide and conquer approach, pitting one group against the other. Sounds like somebody orange I know.
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@Wade It's quite a jump from something the campaign said (that's based in fact) to the notion that Sanders is trying to divide people. Have you seen the 60 Minutes interview or only read about it through the filter of the corporate-own, main stream media? Sanders said exactly what Barack Obama said about Cuba's education and health care systems and Sanders denounced the regime's authoritarianism. It's on video. Go take a look.
@Wade - I see Bernie as advocating toward a far more fair and inclusive society, and reducing want for the largest number of people. How is this pitting groups against each other? You may not see or agree with his vision, and that's what makes horseraces. Where is the magic candidate that unites all people? Please tell.
False. He wants to ensure access to health care for everyone. He wants to improve everyone’s standard of living. Just because he doesn’t agree with you on everything doesn’t mean he’s “not inclusive.” No matter who you vote for, you will (I hope) not completely agree with them on every issue, otherwise you would be a sheep. I will vote for Bernie despite not agreeing with him on everything.
There was a study a few years ago that showed that in Cuba a person with a broken leg was treated faster and with less expense than in the US. I cannot find the study but it stuck in my memory.
I am an older voter who watched the Cuban Revolution on TV as a child. Part of that coverage included the news anchor explaining geopolitics. By the time I left high school I had a good understanding of Cuba.
Cuba isn’t paradise but it does do some things better than we do.
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The quote from the 18 year old is right on the money. “The government is going to be required to do more, and it’s something we should welcome, not be afraid of.”
Here's hoping smart kids can help their parents and grandparents see the light.
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Actually, many of those who are of Bernie's generation were thrilled by Castro (& even more by Che Guevara) because his programs did benefit the bottom half of the population. However, most of us took a different view when it became clear that Castro intended to be dictator for life. It's the boomers, most of whom are in their 60s, who became the most uncompromising neo-cons, searching for commies under their beds. I'm happy if younger people don't tremble at the words 'democratic socialist', although, personally, I think 'social democrat' would have made more sense, because in much of Europe the social democrats are the left of center party, not thought of as being extreme.
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@Jenifer Wolf I suppose those of us that had family members killed by Che or by Castro we have a slightly different view. Those that lost everything may have a different view. Try asking them what really happened in those reading programs. Those that lived there understand. Those that lived through it see it happening again in the US government with the current administration and are very concerned when people don't understand history. I completely agree that we need to drop this old baggage but some of that baggage are lessons of history that we would do well to not forget.
it's quite telling that in all the brouhaha about Bernie's Cuba comments, what's never discussed is how the Cubans are able to produce higher literacy rates and health indicators (like life expectancy or infant mortality rate) than the USA.
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Americans, based on many comments here, are decidedly insecure about the capitalist system that is rotten to the core and serves only a privileged few. For this reason, anytime anyone mentions something good about a competing system, everyone gets up in arms. Relax, people. Simple facts (which Bernie mentioned): Cuba has one of the best education and health care systems in the world. Bernie didn't say that Cuba is the cradle of personal freedoms. Plus, don't ignore the fact that a major reason for the collapse of the Cuban economy is the illegal blockade that US has imposed on Cuba for over 50 years. US is not perfect and neither is Cuba. Yes, there are some things that are good about the US, just as there are about Cuba. And Cuban Americans don't have a monopoly on having experienced a dictatorship.
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It looks like the Sanders supporters have turned the NYT comments into a campaign tool, with their view always in the top comments and the majority Dem view in the replies to those comments. I find their constant use of the term "establishment" Dems or elites offensive. There is a majority of progressive voters who aren't elite, connected partisans, or wealthy, who see the perils of a Sanders nomination. And the Sanders supports in the NYT comments deride them as if they are Trump supporters. It's making me wonder if this whole phenomena is not a Trump strategy.
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@Fran
I posted here 2 days ago saying that I'm a Bernie supporter who's not happy Bernie's choosing to talk about "good things Castro did" right now, knowing Trump is going to claim Bernie's a "communist."
The reaction here in NYT comments was dozens of people responding to my comment saying that I was lying about supporting Bernie and was probably a Bloomberg who's lying. Or that I'm too stupid to know that literacy is a good thing.
Or that if this made me think Bernie is making a huge mistake it's just because I'm a person with no convictions.
Those points generated a lot of weird craziness that missed my point: Bernie is running for president & may get the Democratic nomination. He needs to be careful and politic about what he chooses to embrace and praise &f hopefully not give Trump talking points about somebody like Castro the G.O.P. can use against Bernie. What I think about Castro is immaterial. What I think about how Bernie campaigns was the point.
Remember how Beto O'Rourke's comment "H-- yes, we're coming for your guns" was the death knell for his campaign? I pretty much feel the same way about guns Beto does but I understood when he said it that he was toast. He didn't think hard enough about how people would respond to that.
You can't just think about your political base if you want to be president. If you're running for president,
the whole country is listening to you. You can't afford to make dumb mistakes. Praising Castro is a dumb mistake.
1
Older Democrats wouldn't vote for Bernie anyway. The twilight of the Boomer political influence is fading, and they do not control the outdated Cold War narrative anymore.
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@Liz Your naiveté shows why Bernie's nomination is so dangerous to our country. Uninformed millenials think politics is so simple. Sanders' support is mostly from young people. Older Democrats are more likely to support another candidate. This may not prevent Sanders from getting nominated, but winning in November is another story. Curent polls showing him competitive with Trump are an illusion; most Americans aren't paying attention to the day-to-day campaigning and news cycles. Most never do. Most voters in the general election are largely uninformed; they either vote straight party, or they make their decisions based on what they hear the few weeks before the election. The GOP will blanket the airways with ads protraying (correctly) Sanders' fondness of socialist countries. This will kill any chance he has of getting elected in November. Young people think this doesn't matter, but they weren't around during the Cold War, Cuban missile crisis, Bay of Pigs invasion, or Cuban revolution. They don't think it should matter to older Americans, and don't understand why it does. But young people don't vote. Not in large numbers. Older Americans do. The older the demographic, the higher the voting turnout. We're still decades away from a time when most voters won't care about this. Until then, Sanders will sink the election all the way down ballot, yielding 4 more years of Trump & a sycophant Republican Congress. (Fortunately, I expect the convention to think more wisely in July).
This comment leads one to believe ageism is to some degree driving your politics. That is sad. That you are unaware of Boomer support for Bernie Sanders and unaware of the fact that many have championed his policies for a period longer than the lifetime of first time voters is also sad. Ignorance, wherever found, saddens me.
@Kevin Young people are turning out in greater numbers for elections than ever before. And it's not just Millennials (who are in their 30s. I myself was born before the USSR collapsed). Gen Z is also now of voting age, so you have two large cohorts ready to turn out and change the conversation that has protected the status quo for decades.
I can understand why something like that would make you nervous and want to employ strategic voting to get Trump out of office but falling back on a safe candidate did not work so well in 2016. We are at a point where the political landscape is so volatile, the conventional rules you cling to are quickly ceasing to exist. That is not naivete. This is how the pendulum is swinging, and this is why Bernie is the frontrunner and Biden is not.
Maybe, just maybe, instead of reducing young people between the ages of 18-39 to uninformed bandwagoners, understand that we came of age as the economy collapsed, with student loans and stagnant wages. We worked hard and deserve a seat at the table with the same economic advantages you were given. This is why Sanders resonates with young people.
As for being uninformed-- my degree is in political science and I've been following the cultural trend of political influence closely for a decade. As the great Dylan once said, the times they are a changin'
Look I'm a Millennial and I think Bernie's ideas are far-far left of field. You don't ever praise a dictatorship or their polices. Giving more and more control to the government is not the answer. Bernie was in charge of the VA hospitals, we know what a disaster those were and still are due to horrific mismanagement by government. I also work for the government, and no- we should not be expanding its powers or spending more money. He still cannot come up with how things will realistically be paid for. I'm sad that he is part of the Democratic party. The models he keeps espousing which "work" in other countries would not work in ours because of the way our government is run and set up. A recent article on CNN discussed Canada's healthcare, and how people are waiting a year to see a specialist, and many people don't even want to go into the medical field. Is that the kind of thing we want here? Bernie doesn't belong in any party with the name "Democratic" in it.
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Is this supposed to be a genuine issue? Looking on from abroad, it’s difficult to tell if it’s just corporate dems slinging mud in the hope that something sticks, or if people are genuinely concerned.
Authoritarian regimes can do good things for their people and more democratic countries can do terrible things to theirs. Why is this difficult to understand.?
Good education and good healthcare are good things to provide for the people of any country. Pointing this out does not equate to supporting everything else a regime may have done.
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This all rings true to me. I am the daughter of Cuban refugees, and my parents and I have starkly different political views.
I went to live in Cuba as a student to see things for myself, and while it's true that one must condemn the lack of political expression, the low quality of life, etc., it's also true that the populace is highly educated at large and nobody is going to declare bankruptcy over medical bills.
Cuba can learn a lot from the US, and we can and should learn from Cuba too. Even my relatives that oppose the Cuban regime saw the literacy program as a positive, so Bernie's praise of it does not offend me.
I think the crony capitalism in the US is just as awful as the socialist corruption in Cuba.
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@TS Good observation! What happens in the United States is that people are afraid to believe, even in poorer countries like Cuba, that people won't die of hunger or ignorance under a different system be it socialist or something else. It doesn't mean that we have to support repressive policies under any kind of government including the one in the United States. Most of the diaspora of Latin Americans living in Florida is basically the former oppressors who controlled those countries for centuries. Of course, they never speak about those facts! They just hope the United States will invade those countries and bring them to rule over the masses the same way they did in the past again!
I’m older. I’m not as offended as I am worried. These younger voters don’t understand the risk of allowing government to do everything for us and take more control over our lives.
They don’t see the slippery slope.
And Bernie’s pandering to those who find capitalism cruel as opposed to it allowing more freedoms and opportunity earned from one’s own efforts.
They’re soft. I’m worried.
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We're on the brink of going full authoritarian oligarchy and we're nitpicking a presidential candidate's off the cuff remarks about a literacy campaign in a country that was last relevant over fifty years ago!
Sanders should be more careful with his phrasing and limit his exposure to cheap political hackjobs.
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Benie Sanders is not the answer to beat trump !
He is not even a Democrat, just as there is no Republican party anymore, it is trump party,
Democrats needs to get majority in House and also in Senate, with Benie Sanders as the nominee thay might not happen.
Bernie is not even the Nominee as yet .
5
The difference is young people (anyone under 45) have more access to twitter and access to the internet and can look up anything they want to know. For example-- there is video of Obama saying exactly what Sanders said years before-- education and health care in Cuba were impressive accomplishments, and authoritarianism was to be condemned.
If one just relies on the NY Times one gets biased information.
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There is no better argument for doing away with the electoral college than Cuba. Our political establishment, Republicans and Democrats, has been in the grip of a relatively small group of Cubans in a swing state who no politician wants to offend. This is not the way to conduct foreign policy.
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I'm a boomer, retired from the military...cold war and mid-east. I find what Sander's has to say as a realistic view of 2020. The world is NOT black and white and to even support that idea is dangerous. It's another divisionary method that keeps the world such a mess. Some societies have things that are better than others...and some portions of society and its ideas need to be reviewed.
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Sanders praised Castro's literacy program? No problem, just praise something good Trump has done, as well. No punchline follows - everyone has done something good at some point in their life, and Trump and Castro are not exceptions.
4
Bernie in the Oval has not even been fully priced in yet. Markets will drop another 20% to 30% if he takes it.
3
Not. Bernie will have qualified people to help run the Govt. Not the cronies of the IQ45 who are clueless case in point Betsy DeVos, who is helping folks get deeper into debit. Seriously and you all thing socialism is a bad thing?
Free local college education
Free health and dental
Climate change now
And when the billionaires are properly taxed. I say good show. Brilliant.
This man has been consistent for years - he does not waver - he wants to lead the country in a better direction. I say right on!
This is not just a matter of younger voters without memories of the cold war. This is a failure of education and logic. Younger voters are accepting Sanders' argument that things like the Cuban literacy campaign can somehow be divorced from the authoritarian regimes that oversaw them. An understanding of history combined with logical reasoning would reveal that Sanders is disillusion in this regard. Nationalizing industries, requiring 100% of a diverse population to do anything, centralizing decisions making....these all require an authoritarian regime to make them happen. And these regimes are always brutal.
4
I'm anglo. My wife is Cuban. Her mother fled Cuba in the 60's. I was for Bernie during the last election. This time around, I was resounded to vote for him, but now I pause.
As much as I like to believe he is a "Scandinavian-Socialist" and not a communist, I am really disappointed in his comments. I have heard nothing but horror stories about Cuba since the day I moved here. I don't know if he was trying to appear strong and decisive to voters for doubling down on his Cuban-literacy comments, but it was a huge mistake for him to say that. I agree with many posters on here who say he could have lost himself Florida. My Cuban and Venezuelan friends are all livid - even the young ones.
I don't think people realize just how many Cubans and Venezuelans there are down here. Here at my company in Miami, there are 113 employees. I am only one of nine people who are not Hispanic.
Bernie needs to explain himself and ease the concerns stemming from his comments. There are too many conflicting reports about what kind of socialist he is. He needs to simplify his explanation, and repeat it over and over again if he is to recover from this. He would also do well to come out and say some unflattering things about Casto, Maduro, etc. He needs to clearly let voters know where he stands. Why all the intrigue and ambiguity? Just come out and condemn these brutal regimes!
Sadly, this fiasco makes me want to learn more about Blomberg, Biden, and Warren.
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I don’t care what someone said 20 years ago, I care about the POLICIES that the candidates are advocating for. That’s the kind of discussion we need to be having. Stop treating the election as a horse race and start treating it as a choice about the direction of the country, a choice about our future.
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as a millennial being crushed by my student loans and medical debt i'm honestly jealous of the old folks who can spare a moment to be offended by something said, out of context, decades ago.
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@Chris Does that sentiment count for other candidates or just Sanders?
1
@Chris
His praise of the propaganda foisted on the Cubans was not out of context. Give us old geezers some credit for understanding plain English, and give old Bernie some credit for saying what he meant.
Totalitarianism has no regard for economic models. There are just as many corrupt totalitarian "capitalist" societies as there are "socialist". In fact, our freedom to dissent, our freedom of the press, our freedom to worship differently than our political leaders, our freedom to live in cultures different than the culture of white male elites have never been under more threat than they are now with this "free market capitalist" president.
There is nothing inherent in affordable health care for all, or guaranteed access to higher education, that leads to forced work camps. It is precisely this false equivalence that young people are reacting so negatively to.
If you don't want Bernie Sanders to be president, then explain to young people how things are going to get better under someone else. Pretending that student loan debt forgiveness leads to secret police, prison camps, and summary executions only convinces young people that you have no real arguments.
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The truth here is that people are trying to falsely portray Bernie as something he is not and never has been. None of the critics ever mentions his decades of public service. That is the place one might legitimately look for signs of dictatorship, because doing so would prove them to be knowingly lying about him.
It is the same lie they used to create fear of our government with lies that make it seem(which is all of us) that any effort to use our government to improve our lives is totalitarian dictatorship literally no different than Castro's communism or Stalin's murderous rule.
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The Cuba dust-up ought to be viewed in this context:
For decades Latin America was plagued by dictators, most of them of the rightwing variety. Many were military officers who set about disappearing and murdering thousands upon thousands perceived as enemies.
Washington rarely criticized these regimes and often supported them.
Today, Brazil's democratically elected president, Jair Bolsonaro, is authoritarian and content to see the Amazon forest burn.
Cuba, then, is not remarkable because it is a dictatorship, just that it happens to be of the communist sort.
Wealthy white Cubans fled their homeland once it was clear that the Castro regime was intent on taking their wealth.
Contemporary Cuba is poor like so much of Latin America. Yet, it is not beset with rampant violence like El Salvador or Guatemala.
Cuban-American critics would have us believe that only Cuba is a Latin American nation where human rights are not respected and poverty is widespread.
Many of us know better.
5
The ignorance displayed by Bernie supporters about his Cuba remarks is stunning. Sure, perhaps Castro increased literacy; he also put people against the wall and had them executed when he came to power. The "he made the trains run on time" rationalization is scary. Are Bernie supporters so enamored of national health care that they're willing to submit to tyranny for it? I'm no Trump supporter; but the left should never claim ignorance on the part of Republican voters ever again.
5
Here’s the reality: Cuba is nowhere near the list of any voters’ priorities except for older Miami Cubans. No one cares. It is at the far periphery of our foreign policy concerns. Cuba is not a threat. It is not a major economic partner. And if we ever want it to be, the embargo needs to be fully abandoned; it’s just dumb policy that helps keep an authoritarian regime in power, as Obama recognized. Gratuitous red-baiting about Cuba makes it harder to achieve a sensible policy outcome. This isn’t the Cold War.
Our government does some great things, it also puts children in cages and tortures people (all of which predates Trump). We can play that game all day. It would be very sloppy thinking to criticize someone who praises positive aspects of American society by saying the United States tortures people and deserves no praise. It is similarly sloppy thinking to criticize Bernie for this, especially when he explicitly tempered his observation with the acknowledgment that Cuba is authoritarian and repressive.
It amazes me that we're even having this conversation when our very President is currently muzzling the CDC and blaming the media for negative reports on the coronavirus. Trying to stem the flow of scientific information because it could possibly reflect poorly on your administration is way more indicative of authoritarianism than a positive remark on a literacy program.
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So now, universal healthcare and education for all is praising Cuba? Pretty much what the headline implies. Yes darlings the big guns are about to come out to condemn Senator Sanders of VT because it won't cost them anything politically. Or so they think. Pres. Obama will likely be the main inquisitor after Baba takes a swing. Yes, are we not over educated, we have internet. It is the law. (this life long Democrat will change parties at the conclusion of this collusion of the "limousine liberal", no biggy)
Most Boomers are so so concerned about pontificating about the "good old days" fantasies they have, nothing scares them more than someone who shatters their tiny world view. Thankfully most young people live in reality, instead of the distorted reminiscencing boomers occupy.
3
I don't understand the uproar over Sanders' Cuba comments on 60 Minutes last week.
A few years ago, 60 Minutes ran a paen to Cuba's medical and educational systems. Perhaps a rerun is in order.
5
I am a boomer ('47) and a conservative; Bernie has a slim chance of ever getting my vote. But if you want honest opinions (and educating what had been an illiterate citizenry was a good thing Castro did) that don't change day to day as the wind shifts, he is your man. He must be admired as an outlier in American politics.
2
However the positive rationale is twisted for supporting this or that candidate in the 2020 presidential election, the bottom line is about 50% of the voters are going to be pulling the lever for whomever they dislike the least.
3
February 28, 2020
Gross failure as a senior leader in the Democratic Party to stand with its historic achievements in America's political narrative. To evoke the Fidel Castro as a leader of social justice and as significant to his candidacy is ludicrous and indeed evil to the cause that the party members expect and demand of and for the oratory to live by. Fidel Castro gave great pain to the Cuban people and inflicted violent activities to Cuban historic realm and blood warring in various campaign under a Marxist banner.
I am very proud of the Democratic Party and expect Sanders words voice the truth - and let's remember the killing of JFK and the Cuban missiles crisis - with his atheistic death of his Catholic faith should be more for all ages of voters young and old to enjoy the hopes and the makings for our America political class to guide for all times.
1
Sept. 21, 2009
Barack Obama on Late Night with David Letterman:
"What's happened is that whenever a president tries to bring about significant changes, particularly during times of economic unease, then there is a certain segment of the population that gets very riled up," Obama said. "FDR was called a socialist and a communist."
Conclusion: Obama never delivered on his own promises.....but Bernie Sanders is indeed the modern day FDR.
1
I hate these generational warfare stories. The only thing in this piece of any substance--and it's glossed over--is this: "the generational split was less apparent in South Florida, where many Cubans, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans do not like his views." Let me put that another way: Sanders as Democratic nominee loses Florida for this election and maybe the next 10 years. Congrats, Sanders apologists.
2
Bernie Sanders does not speak often enough or loud enough about the differences between Cuba and countries like Sweden and Germany.
Our government and the European government feature various degrees of socialism. Corporate welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. The U.S. does a very poor job of executing its government funded healthcare. Private insurance does as well.
Bern's plan to throw more money at government healthcare, just like his plan to have free college and forgive all tuition debt, does not solve the problem. It merely exacerbates the problem, which is that we're paying too much for healthcare and education in the US.
Bern's plan is not really "socialist." In fact it's not a plan at all. It's theoretical dreaming with no substance behind it. The fact that the guy is into complimenting some aspect of Cuba, literacy, that was already at an 80 percent rate before Fidel took over, is pathetic.
2
To open and intelligent voters, the politicians who avoids any good words about the accomplishments of the Cuban revolution is like a priest uttering the magic words that will get him elected. It is pure dogma that all Cuba has done is bad.
Bernie's honesty has a good chance of paying off, especially if he points out that the mantra of "Capitalism Good Socialism Bad" has produced no business at all for the US. An open trade relationship will be good for business.
1
In elementary school, they told us that George Washington and Christopher Columbus are heroes. In middle school or high school, they got around to mentioning that Washington owned slaves and Columbus started a genocide. Like Washington and Columbus, the US and Cuba have complex, often contradictory, histories. Sanders is hoping he can talk to the electorate on a high school level.
3
We blame the fundamentalist and then we act like them. Fundamentalist doesn't see anything good in other religions. Communists used to do same .
Collective IQ eventually starts dropping when we allow conditioning of the mind and prevents the thought of non -orthodox analysis.
This knee jerk reaction from the Cuban emigre and by the paid politicians can be understood from personal losses or electoral gains suffered by them or enjoyed by the leaders
.But that doesn't justify US's blanket negative attitude to that country . Despite sanctions Cuba has been able to provide certain basic needs ( which are human rights ) . Neglecting those achievements or even getting shocked at the compliments from Bernie, by Democrats only prove that their hands are tied both by fake ideology and by the rich donor class. May be Democrats are afraid that those social issues will country their podium one day . It has done.
1
I'm a middle aged Hispanic voter and I'm sick and tired of how we've been treating Cuba. In school all I got was the simplistic American-centric version of history about how Fidel is some terrible dictator. Most people in Cuba support the revolution. Also, even if he was as bad as America tried to portray him and even if Cubans didn't support their revolution that wouldn't justify the embargo and the US actively trying to overthrow their government. That's why these scare tactics about Fidel aren't going to work. I also have Cuban relatives who are children of Cubans who left the country either and they don't buy it either. They know that Bernie isn't a communist. It gives me hope for the future generation.
334
@Nick You're right. There seems to no one who experienced or reads up in what Cuba was like under the pre-Castro "American" era. I cannot bring to mind abuses and exploitation more disgusting other than other Latin American countries the US controlled.
29
@Nick
Yes, and the same applies for other countries whose systems of government do not align with that of the US. We are taught from a very young age to separate black from white, good from bad, with nothing in-between.
It is a tragically simplistic view of the world, of history, and of the future. It discourages diplomacy as ineffective, understanding as compromise, empathy as weakness. And God forbid we ever try to learn something from a different system that might benefit our own.
There is nothing but heartbreak coming for a nation which thinks in this way, and as someone who will vote for anyone on that blue ticket come November it saddens me that democrats have thus far shown the same level of ignorance and lack of political nuance on this issue as their 'enemies' across the aisle.
12
@Nick
Contrast the treatment of Cubans fleeing the political and economic revolution in their country, to the treatment of Salvadorans, Mexicans, Hondurans, Guatemalans, fleeing the political and economic violence and dictatorships in their countries. The latter four have experienced decades of torture, terrorism, imprisonment and oppression, largely unrecognized by the U.S., because their oppressors were/are our allies and puppets. The U.S. has treated Cubans as if they're the only Latin American diaspora that's every sought refuge. At least, the only one that counts.
18
Bernie may be sincere but he has permitted his adolescent enthusiasms and critiques of US foreign policy dominate public discourse. He has shown no interest in appealing to more conservative Democrats who are centrists and, in fact, he threatens them with his health plan. For example, there is one than one model for a better health model than that of Denmark, such as that on Taiwan. A more politically achievable path could be a gradual transition over twenty years. But Bernie's obsession with an immediate and far reaching plan harms his appeal and limits his base. Even if elected, he would find serious resistance from the Democrats, just as Obama did.
10
Trump is far more soft on Communist totalitarianism than Sanders, given his declared love for Kim Jong-un and the fact that he was Putin's choice for the U.S. Presidency.
46
Well if you think Sanders has said some questionable things in the past, I can think of at least 10 worse things Cadet Bone-spur has said in the last 3 or 4 days, things far more heinous and nasty.
I think Americans need a reality check. It's simple really:
the.current.incompetent.president.is.a.corrupt.and.needs.to.go
41
@mrfreeze6 that's cold! ;)
The US has been done business with China and Saudi Arabia for decades now - they both imprison, torture, and kill their own citizens. Our president likes/loves Kim and Putin who both imprison, torture and kill their own citizens. Yet Bernie answers a question when asked about his support of a now deceased dictator and everyone freaks. And all he said was their literacy rate improved.
America needs to grow up.
79
@Susan
Cuba is our neighbor whose leader caused death and suffering to its citizens. Before Castro ,Floridians took ferries to Cuba for a quick vacation from Key West.Castro allowed Soviet nuclear weapons to come to Cuba’s shore to threaten the USA-(Cuban Crisis in Kennedy Admin.) Sanders was not young during this period!
I suppose that if Cuba comes out against cancer, most of Senator Sanders's opponents will feel obliged to come out in favor of it.
9
@William Verick ...No. I like the goals of Sanders agenda. But just in the same way it took Nixon to go to China, only a moderate will be able to get support to implement progressive ideas.
@William Verick yep, pretty much.
Trump praises murderous dictators and autocrats like Kim Jong-Un, Modhi and Vladimir Putin on a weekly basis. Sometimes even taking their side over our own civil servants and military leaders. What have ANY of them ever done for their countries that is praise-worthy?
14
The Cubans in Miami got W Bush in and we all know what that amounted to. No way any of them will go Democrat. Time for journalists to start writing about the grief they have caused to our country.
11
this endless campaign to smear Bernie as some sort of authoritarian dictator type, is not only inane and pointless, but it shows how spectacularly out of touch the times is with the average voter. Bernie is The most transparent man in politics, he is what you see and what you get. At no point has anyone at the times actually contended with the fact that Bernie is the leading candidate. They’ve drank so much of their own anti-progressive Kool-Aid, that they think it’s just some sort of glitch in the matrix.
6
@Andrew G
Bernie brought up reading and writing in Cuba. He didn’t seem to realize the domestic suffering caused by Castro as the price.
Joseph Stalin was a nice guy as well...along as you did things his way. Comrades!
4
@1515732
Actually, no. Stalin had millions of loyal Communist Party members, including top leadership, murdered. He didn't murder opponents because there weren't any---no one dared whisper a word of criticism.
There is a famous story about a meeting applauding some mention of Stalin. The clapping continued, and continued, and continued...because no one was going to risk being the first to stop. Eventually, the chairman sat down and the applause ended. He was arrested and disappeared into the gulag the next day.
@1515732 At least he wasn't "a very stable genius."
Keep talking up Bernie and Castro....then wave bye bye to Florida in November
6
@MB Florida is already in the rear-view mirror, and getting smaller. The Dems had better figure out quickly to stop preaching to liberal choirs in big cities and instead pander to rural voters in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
If you don’t like socialism go to Denmark. Life is better there by a lot
3
@Bertram Ladner.... All the Scandinavian countries put together are smaller than Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa. They have a smaller population and a lot less ethnic diversity.
Oh, to be 25 and think you know everything and have life figured out. How cute..
7
he needs both groups but hes too set in his ways to care. happens when youre 78
1
What I find funny is the same people who describe Hillary as evil have no problem with Castro.
5
@Mal Stone Or Kim Jong-un.
How easy it is for OK boomers to forget "Yankee Imperialism" and the dictator Batista, Cuba was virtually a U.S. colony, a whorehouse, abortion mill, and second home to the American mafia and American gambling interests. No one remembers United Fruit and the American exploitation of Cuban resources for the benefit of U.S. corporations. The U.S. response to the Cuban revolution was to block international trade with Cuba. We made the Cuban economy scream and then claimed that it was Castro's fault. Yes, we drove him into the arms of the Soviet Union and from then on Castro became the man that
lost his own revolution. Sanders to his great credit remembers all of this, including the good things that Castro did initially. Cuba's medical system is still one of the best in the world but we can't acknowledge this because ... what?
America never does harm to other countries. Guantanamo
bay is still a U.S. colonial possession. This attack on Sanders
is cheap politics of the worst kind.
20
@Michael
Tell that to people who fled and almost drowned. Many did drown!
Tell that to those who want to leave now.
Tell that to Florida’s Cuban-Americans.
Everyone remembers the casino downtrodden Cuba and ugly Am capitalism there, but Cubans are our neighbors that suffered before and then and now under Castro.(his brother now)
This is not to excuse American misdeeds, but to also realize the danger and failure of Castro’s cruel rule.
@Michael
Batista was no democrat, but he was not nearly as evil as Castro. For example: Castro was captured in an armed attack on the Moncada Barracks. After some time in prison he was released. When Castro took power, thousands suspected of (peaceful) opposition were summarily executed.
Cuban medical care is poor in quality, not "one of the best in the world". It doesn't compare with that available in many other Latin American countries, much less the richer countries.
“Praise?” If your mom praised you by saying “not everything you do is awful” would that be praise?
3
I know people who fled Cuba. I ha e family that just left Cuba. In short, I know what’s up. I am informed. Sanders is an apologist for a blood-bedrenched regime of human misery. By the way: that “literacy program” Sanders talks about was taught by my mo-in-law. It was a communist indoctrination that was drilled under the watchful eye of political commissars send from the Communist Party. I bet Sanders knows that. And he’s not a dupe.
11
This 70 year old views this article for what it is a repeat of the NYT's earlier hit piece on Sanders.
19
@Steve
It's out of control and unbecoming to this journal. Apparently nothing was learned from the debacle in 2016.
I wonder where these articles were when Barack Obama made similar comments.
9
And the Times weaponizes remarks that Barack Obama and Nelson Mandella similarly made. Thanks, Times
5
Cuba-bashing is silly. Should we ban Rachmaninoff's music because it is Russian? Such narrow-mindedness is Trump's domain. Why is this even being discussed by Democrats? It belongs in the gutter with similar nationalistic garbage.
9
@Mark Blessington
Go to Cuba! The gov has a set tour that you can avoid.
The decline of the Soviet Union support has left Cuba broke and downtrodden, so the gov is allowing some capitalism to quell discontent.
Visit and see...
@Mark Blessington
Agree that the discussion is beneath Democrats. We should be asking why we're close to getting a non-Democrat as our candidate for president.
@Mark Blessington ....."Cuba-bashing is silly"....That's not the point. The point is that even if it is silly it will be effective in a national election.
This is not about young and old people viewing "socialism" differently but more about the NY Times pushing their agenda on us, which used to work up until a few months ago, when people started seeing through it and started calling their so called "reporters" on it. it's becoming more and more evident what the NY Times is trying to protect here.
16
This is starting to look like the Times coverage of Clinton’s emails. This should not be front page news.
10
Bernie didn't say he supported all the policies of the government of Cuba. He said that if we see something good there, like universal health care and literacy, it's okay to point it out. To see clearly rather than through the lens of our ideology.
11
@Phyllis Stern Well, other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
@Phyllis Stern Yeah, Sanders shouldn’t be talking about the free university education and health care they get in Cuba or people here might be demanding it too!
2
Everyone, including Bernie Sanders, openly rejects authoritarianism and Castro's dictatorship.
That does not mean a human being can't compliment Cuba's high literacy rate and excellent healthcare system, two things that all humane societies subscribe to.
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
It seems like these angry Cuban-Americans - who tend to disproportionately vote Republican - are simply too psychologically traumatized by the Castro regime to consider the facts in Cuba.
Bernie is not praising Castro; he's praising the their education and healthcare system, both of which objectively deserve praise.
This is just another episode of Republican hysteria, overreaction and rejection of facts.
Most people in America would like to move closer to a Scandanavian social democracy where free-market capitalism is thriving AND there's a humane social safety net instead of the Great American Healthcare Rip-Off.
Essentially, the radical Republican right echo chamber wants to scare the living daylights out of American voters by screaming "socialist"...."Cuba"...."Castro"....and "Venezuela" to prevent this country from finally adopting some humane public policy.
Don't fall for Republican Grand Old Propaganda scare tactics.
Bernie is trying to help Americans.
Republicans strictly want to profit off of Americans.
Feel The Bern.
416
@Socrates
You should be writing headlines for the NY Times.
The media has a responsibility to be rational and level headed, and they are failing.
28
Agreed. It’s amazing the ridiculous spin on a very simple statement. Bernie in no way was endorsing the Castro regime. I do not agree with many of Bernie’s beliefs surrounding his socialist-leaning policies. However, like everything, with some dialog, civil discourse and COMPROMISE some good things could come from it. I’m afraid because of our 2 all-or-nothing parties, that will never happen.
14
@Socrates Bernie should have the common sense not to say something positive about Cuba even though he might think it. He needs to win Florida to have a shot.
Not all Americans are that intelligent and politics is won and lost on soundbites, that is reality.
People, especially politicians, don't need to verbalize everything on their mind.
2
Younger voters need to learn some history. "OK boomer" I right! Without boomers there wouldn't av been a civil rights, women's rights, anti-war, ant-draft, gay rights, birth control revolution in this country. One the younger generations took for granted as a birth-right.
They never learned that boomers fought for and DIED for the rights they GAVE AWAY.
21
@Denise I agree that the generations before now have done some incredible things for the health of liberal democracy and human rights. That being said I think people fundamentally misunderstand what people like Sanders are saying when they argue that countries such as Cuba have done some good. I think, at the end of the day, this argument comes down to confusion between socialism, dictatorships, and social policies. All three of those are very different things and do not necessarily go hand in hand. Cuba has made incredible strides in their life expectancy, literacy rates, child mortality, and access to healthcare. In fact, Cuba beats some or all of the United States in all of those areas. That being said the people suffered unnecessarily under Fidel Castro. The problem we face now is to find a balance. I think most everyone wants to increase life expectancy, literacy rates, child mortality, and access to healthcare, and absolutely no one wants to turn to autocracy to do so. Perhaps creating more robust social programs is the best method for doing this, or perhaps not.
All this being said, my point is this: No one is arguing for autocracy, but in a quest to find a best path forward some are arguing we ought not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
5
Well then where did those amazing boomers who did all those amazing things go? Retired down to Florida, in their gated communities with their now “I got mine, I don’t care about yours” attitude. For all of the “good” they allegedly gave us they sure as heck are doing their darndest to go a few steps backwards.
5
@Denise WOW. That's a lot of credit you are claiming for yourself on behalf of Boomers. All the things you mentioned would have happened sooner or later. Remember, each generation is progressively more liberal; therefore the social movements were primed and ready to go.
2
The truth is that Cuba could use some of our market system and civil liberties while we could use some of their approach to health care and education. This is not a zero sum game. You can do market and socialism at the same time. Just ask Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway. Our politics have become so partisan that to admit to one tiny positive thing about another nation like Cuba is somehow to promote turning the US into the next Venezuela. This is just utter nonsense. America is in great decline today because of its market fundamentalism not because its retirees draw from Social Security and Medicare. We need a little more socialism in our system not more of the corrupt, profit taking, inequality, corporate run government that put most Americans in a bind and have left our communities and infrastructure crumbling. Be offended with what Sanders is pointing out if you want but what he says is just an obvious truth. Cuba beats the pants off of us in healthcare and literacy. Their people live longer, on average, than we do. Could we maybe learn something from them?
379
@Wayne Fuller
more to think about...
At the beginning of 1959, United States companies owned about 40 percent of the Cuban sugar lands—almost all the cattle ranches—90 percent of the mines and mineral concessions—80 percent of the utilities—practically all the oil industry—and supplied two-thirds of Cuba’s imports.” Senator John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), (speech at a Democratic Dinner, Cincinnati, Ohio, October 6, 1960, during the 1960 Presidential campaign)
“I believe that there is no country in the world including any and all the countries under colonial domination, where economic colonization, humiliation and exploitation were worse than in Cuba, in part owing to my country’s policies during the Batista regime.
—I approved the proclamation which Fidel Castro made in the Sierra Maestra, when he justifiably called for justice and especially yearned to rid Cuba of corruption. I will even go further: to some extent it is as though [Dictator] Batista was the incarnation of a number of sins on the part of the United States. Now we shall have to pay for those sins.
—In the matter of the Batista regime, I am in agreement with the first Cuban revolutionaries. That is perfectly clear.” President John F. Kennedy, October 24, 1963, (interview with journalist Jean Daniel, The New Republic, published on December 14 1963, pp. 15-20)
25
@Wayne Fuller the end does not always justify the means. Castro was a communist dictator. There is no need to accentuate the positives of that.
7
@Wayne Fuller “You can do market and socialism at the same time. Just ask Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway.”
This isn’t about free market or socialism, this is about one of the most brutal, inhumane, repressive dictatorships on the planet. The Castro regime murdered 70,000 of its own citizens.
When he died, Castro’s net worth was estimated at $900,000,000. The average monthly income in Cuba TODAY, ten years later, ranges from $17 to $30 a month. You want to talk about income inequality!
And God knows how many fled, tried to flee, or died trying. Seems like that great literacy program and $20 a month wasn’t enough to keep them happy. Imagine that!
10
I just love that you have to go back over 30 years to find one quote to use against Sanders. Not a scandal, just a quote. The cleanliness of his record and his unwavering stance is a modern political miracle and a breathe of fresh air.
54
@Lawren , what record? How many bills did he originate and pass? Government is measured by the impact it has on its citizens. Bern is a gasbag.
5
@NR, Thank you for asking. Sanders has sponsored 3 bills that have become law and he has co-sponsored 203 others that have passed.
2
@Lawren you mean like how he drives an Audi 800 and owns 3 homes too? Really. He's just like any other politician who gets rich off the people and wants us to suffer while they make policies that don't benefit anyone. His home state of Vermont has some of the worst laws if you want to leave a house or any property to your children, they probably won't even be able to keep it, even if you worked decades to buy a place.
1
We took a trip to Cuba last January. To say it was sad, oppressive, and just plain tragic, is and understatement. And while we can cast blame to some degree on the embargo, Cuba is much like East Berlin was under the auspices of Russia, and they did not suffer the embargo.
Perhaps Bernie hasn't studied up on Castro's opportunistic policies. Perhaps we should understand why Che left Cuba after realizing that Castro was in it for himself. Perhaps he should read what happened to Cienfuegos whose plane mysteriously crashed after disagreeing with Castro.
But having an accurate view of Cuba's Revolution would not be in keeping with the populist line Bernie is espousing. I lose respect for him by the day. He pretends to yell (like a classic rabble-rouser) the truth while promulgating lies and fantasies.
I would say he is almost as self serving as Trump, though Bernie fools himself into thinking he has principles and that self-delusion is one of the greatest defects. In terms of matching egoes, I would say Trump and Bernie are neck-in-neck.
24
@Manuela
So you studied up on the history and went anyways?! Lol...Kettle.
The man answered a question. He responded truthfully and unequivocally, he holds authoritarians and despots in low regard. He commented that their literacy and HC were done well.
All truthful and correct.
If you have a problem with this, then you should also never speak well of the US, Germany, Australia, China, Saudi Arabia, Israel, etc. etc. etc.
Lol...you went to Cuba, but attack the man for saying literacy and HC are a good thing...Really?
Do you not see the disingenuous disconnect Kettle?
4
Millennials associate socialism with Canada, not the Cold War. Millennials understand that the Red Scare of the 1950's was a fear tactic used to spread false, hateful propaganda about the Soviet Union as well as squash any socialist movement threatening corporate interests. Corporations fear socialism because it means they'll have to treat employees fairly and pay livable wages. In response to socialist threats against predatory capitalism, politicians invented a connection between socialism and communism that doesn't actually exist. Like many peoples' grandparents still believe Reefer Madness is an educational film, those same people were manipulated into thinking socialism and communism are the same.
71
@Stephen
I'm a boomer and I understand all of the above. Lots of us do.
4
@Stephen Um, wow.
"the Red Scare of the 1950's was a fear tactic used to spread false, hateful propaganda about the Soviet Union"
I mean, it didn't take much, given the abundant help provided by Stalin for more than half a century.
Please google "Stalinism" and see what you find. No one - of any age - can afford to be this unknowledgeable about history.
It's one thing to say that Bernie's no Stalinist, which I'm sure is true. It's another to imply that there was really nothing about the USSR to be criticized and it was all paranoia. That's plain ignorance.
"Reefer Madness"? LOL! Whose grandparents? I'm 71, a certified boomer, and maybe MY grandparents would have thought it was an educational film. My generation mostly thought it was hilarious.
3
Those of us alive during the Cuban Revolution and who have kept up with “developments” are just astonished at Sen. Sanders appalling ignorance of the human suffering accompanying the “Revolution”. Tens and tens of thousands of Cubans were killed by the regime. Thousands more were persecuted with lives cut short by enforced hardship. Thousands lost their lives fleeing to Florida by small boats/rafts. More thousands perished in foreign adventures mounted by the Cuban Government.
For a leading Presidential candidate to have “kind words” about the Castro Regime is more than appalling. The Cuban SocialistGovernment under Castro was every bit as horrific as the Soviet Union under Stalin. It’s a disgrace to tens and tens of thousands of Cubans seeking freedom. And its a disgrace to America. Simply put the Cuban Socialist Revolution was an unmitigated disaster. That’s why so many risked their lives fleeting the government so admired by Sen. Sanders.
23
@Peter I Berman
How is showing "ignorance" of the regime's repressive policies? At what point during the interview did he praise Castro for being authoritarian and repressive? He merely observed that Cuba's healthcare and education system are much more robust than our own while expressing reservations about their form of government. It's pretty clear that he wasn't denying any of the regime's failings. He's not saying we should be more authoritarian, he's saying we should be able to have accessible healthcare ourselves considering a much smaller country like Cuba can make it work. Give us a break with this "Bernie is a commie!!1" fear-mongering nonsense.
5
Yeah, I've had to listen to Cuban Americans support Republicans my entire life, and it was never because the Democrat on the ticket was socialist. It was because they are Republicans. Nothing new to see here.
4
translation: Boomers who still subscribe to 1960s American fear-mongering Propaganda are upset when the fantasy gets shattered
3
As I understand it, the dictatorship with accompanying limits to free speech, assembly and press is still in place.
And no — these are not the same limits as in the Western world:)
Yes - everybody should have these rights
7
Bad people sometimes do good things, and good people sometimes do bad things. Same with regimes.
Washington, Jefferson, etc. founded a democracy, something barely existing in the world at that time. They also owned human beings, a horrendous thing. Can't we say both things in the same breath?
So yes, the Castro regime did good things and bad things. The Chinese are doing horrible things re freedoms we take for granted (at least till Trump), and their treatment of the Uighurs is a crime against humanity. But they moved three quarters of a billion people out of poverty in the last 4 or 5 decades. Can't we say both things.
Bernie's biggest problem is self-inflicted, mislabeling himself as a socialist while he is really a social democrat. So he gets ridiculous false allegations like being a fan of what is going on in Venezuela. Why? I'd love to ask him.
Actually, Bernie's biggest problem is the human tendency to see everything as good us, bad them. That's the hardest one to overcome.
36
@Peter Wolf but in identifying "Bernie's biggest problem" in your last paragraph, you put your finger on what troubles many about Bernie - that his cost/benefit analyses might be a bit... off.
Over dinner, that kind of pugnaciousness is interesting. When you're talking about significantly shifting the structure of the country, it's something one might want to keep in check.
@Peter Wolf
It's doubly hypocritical for Republicans to be coming down on Bernie for that considering their uncritical, sycophantic support for the Sauds, Putin, and Netanyahu. They specifically like all those leaders because of their authoritarian qualities, whereas Bernie obviously has reservations about the Castro regime's negative qualities.
2
@Peter Wolf I think it's a master stroke. He takes the issue off the table. Go ahead and call him a socialist if you want -- he says he is one himself (wrong so, I agree).
People really underestimate the extent to which Sanders is a shrewd politician.
2
Maybe what's really upsetting about Sanders' comments isn't some innocent praise of Cuba's literacy program, but the fact that after nearly 4 years of having every norm shattered from what we expect from a politician, that we're having to put up with similar nonsense from "our team." Sure, his comments are perfectly innocent from a mayor, or maybe an idealogical left-wing Senator. However, as someone who is running to be President of the United States, and not Twitter, he needs to be more respectful of the diversity of opinion and experience in the country. At 78 he should know better, if you don't want your campaign to get distracted with the "Socialist" label, you shouldn't be playing footsie with failed regimes.
As for "boomer panic," that's nothing more than a glib way of saying you're too ignorant to understand the past. Not even the distant past, see Jeremy Corbyn if you need a recent example.
121
@c
"Boomer panic" is when you are terrified of any vaguely left-wing government, but casually ignore the brutal right-wing dictatorships across the world that successive American governments have funded and supported.
95
@c
I also agree- he should make it clear that he is a democratic socialist, which he is.
But does he need to be more respectful? Look who is in the white house and his twitter account. It would appear it doesn't play a factor.
16
@c
The status quo hangs on to a lot of norms that need to be dropped, and shattered.
I am so thankful for a candidate for the presidency with the courage to comfortably speak truths that need to be said.
The be scared, be very scared, the commies are coming... is old, very old.
Thankfully the millennials, have a wider perspective! They and many other citizens can handle knowing that Cuba, despite being a communist dictatorship, had a very good educational system, a higher literacy rate than than the US, better medical care than the US, and a lower rate of incarceration than the US.
Unregulated capitalism has resulted in a stressed, shabby society.
The US needs a better society,
Cuba needs more freedom...
Both countries can do better.
I want Sanders as president, to acknowledge, foremost, the best in difficult leaders of other countries... and then work in an unconfrontational way to support more humane government.
The US spent decades trying to assassinate Castro and to keep Cuba poor with sanctions.
What was accomplished?
Even millennial Cuban Floridians acknowledge a more complex reality.
32
Come on. Socialism is not communism. Read the definitions and learn the differences. The progressive may want to dismiss the "concerns" as boomer panic but that would be a mistake. Listen to these "boomers" (and I find this term offensive and I am not a boomer!) and understand their point of view. What happened in 2016 should be learned. Middle America, in my view, felt they were ignored by the Democratic Party and they voted for Trump instead. Do not do this with the "boomers" this election. You need the tent to be wide open. They can agree with universal health care but with restrictions. Both "boomers" and progressive can equally hate communism. FYI, I am Canadian and I love my universal health care but it has its own problems. I support expanding it to include dental and medication. I also support universal day care. I also say that the health care system needs fixing before we expand out. That maybe Sanders problem. He is promising too much at once. Start with one program like universal health care and I think most "boomers" would support it. Sanders, to win, need Middle American and the "boomers".
5
I would advise any apologist of socialist utopias to please live in Cuba or Venezuela *as a local*. Fact is that Bernie like other leftist *living outside the regimes they are sympathetic to* always find good things to say about them. Not long ago Bernie said that the American dream was more likely to be met in Venezuela than in the USA. Please go visit Venezuela or talk to any Venezuelan to check how their dream is coming along.
Bernie call himself a socialist and he he is the typical socialist, promising to fix everything trough radical changes in a way that only him know how to do it
Sorry I despise Trump but I would not vote for Bernie. I already lived through the promises and reality of socialism in the country that I emigrated from.
18
@bruno there are many of us like you
1
@bruno You realize that Bernie does not want communism correct? He wants Scandinavian style social welfare programs to ensure everyone has healthcare and decent education.
Stop with the ridiculous propaganda equating that to Cuba. You are simply, utterly and unforgivably wrong in your analysis
3
@bruno That comparison is getting kind of tired and nobody believes Sanders is a dictator. He is a DEMOCRATIC socialist.
3
I was sick when Sanders said that. I’ll vote for him just to get rid of what we’ve got in the White House now but it was chilling to hear him say that. My American parents met and married in Cuba, living there for 5 years. I remember when Castro invaded. My father did what he could to help get people out of the country. Look at Cuba today. It has stood still since 1950. Yes, good education, good health care, but people living in want, need and poverty. And imprisoned on the island. Shame on you, Sanders.
15
You mention Cuba of the 1950s. What about the dictator, the stealing of land, the mafia the secret police. If the people had been treated properly Castro would not have been able to succeed. We always like to turn a blind eye to our failure and heavy hand that caused that revolution. Sickening to say the least. A quick read of Wikipedia is in order for all deniers and historically ignorant.
2
@fishoutawater
So according to your parents, the Batista regime was better? Figures that American expats supporting the Batista regime loved Cuba then and considered Castro an "invasion".
@fishoutawater How about the US embargo, that certainly did not help to improve things either.
2
There are trigger words that cause brain freeze. Communism is one of them.
Then there are those who understand nuance. One could believe something is overall bad but nevertheless has good elements about it. Few things are black or white. Many more things are gray.
Two things could be true at the same time. You could simultaneously be against Castro as a (former) ruler while acknowledging that he made strides in terms of literacy.
Were there nothing good about Cuba, why did Obama seek to normalize relations?
Enough of the pearl clutching.
Half a million bankruptcies per year. Between 25K - 50K preventable medical deaths per year.
Last year $3.2 trillion spent on healthcare in the US. With a growth rate of 6% per year, healthcare expense would be $5.7 trillion in a decade. That means over the next decade about $45 trillions will be paid on the status quo system.
Compare that to $32 trillion for M4A. Savings of $13 T! Plus 5 million families that do not have to suffer bankruptcy and avoiding a quarter million or half million preventable medical deaths.
Compare that to this preposterous "he praised literacy in Cuba" trope.
National health care exists in 34 of the 35 OECD countries with the US being the only exception. We pay double per capita for healthcare while ranking 29th out of 35 countries in life expectancy.
Bernie is right. Time for a political revolution.
26
@Cee , just because Bernie is correct in pointing out the problems in the U.S. does not mean his solutions are the best ones. He cannot pay for all his promises by raising taxes so high. Even he says, "we'll figure it out.'
The guy has barely originated or passes any legislation during his time in the Congress. He's a gasbag of rhetoric, not action.
1
@NR the status quo has as paying $45T as nation, collectively through premiums, deductibles, co-pays, and incidentals, much of it after tax. M4A would be $32 T pre-tax. If we can afford the $45, we can afford the $32T.
If you want to talk about how the payment pie would be sliced, fair point, but how about not spending $725B per year on defense? How about having corporations pay fair share of taxes instead of offshoring accounts, 0 taxes for AMZN. Effective tax rate of 7% for Apple due to German Dutch Sandwich tax evasion, etc....
1
And Trump is friends with a North Korean dictator. Bernie said it wasn’t a bad thing that education was expanded to the masses under communist rule in Cuba. That doesn’t mean he supports violently squashing dissent. Stop try to spin his words into negative press.
5
This is what Bernie said: "Under Castro, Cuba made great gains in literacy and education. It's unfair to say everything he did was terrible."
Here's a lot that is wrong with this statement, based on a helpful interview with a professor of Cuban studies broadcast on NPR this very week. https://www.npr.org/2020/02/26/809741233/examining-bernie-sanders-comments-on-literacy-in-castro-era-cuba
1) The literacy rate in Cuba before Castro was already 80% before Castro took over.
2) The reason Castro wanted to boost literacy was so that he could educate more people about Marxist thinking. For example, the books he used to teach reading identified letters of the alphabet with Marxist ideas.
3) Books were banned then and books are banned now in Cuba.
Not a pretty picture, and doesn't reflect well on Sanders' ability to learn history and understand nuance.
5
@Kugsicle Do you think sanders is advocating strict authoritarianism by saying we should all have access to affordable healthcare? Is he pushing for Stalinist Marxism because he believes we should have more affordable higher education? I'm not really sure how you are making the connections you are. Cuba does have universal healthcare, i'm sure we can find flaws in their system, but nobody is going bankrupt over a broken leg there. The fact that they can't read what they wan't is a result of authoritarianism not better education, so why try and make that type of false equivalence?
@Bill G. I'm focusing solely on literacy in my comment, not on health care. It's the "why" that is at issue here. The regime bans books they don't like, and rewrites history to fit their world view. Castro taught more people to read so that they would be indoctrinated in his Marxist views from a very young age. Yes you can get an education there, but how "free" is it? Take a listen to the radio broadcast I linked to. I found it eye-opening.
@Kugsicle at a time when the average american has a below middleschool reading comprehension level, why are you opposed to pro-literacy programs? Did you know that Castro also liked flowers? But 1) people already liked flowers, so his liking flowers doesn't count 2) he only wanted more flowers so other people would also like flowers - despicable and 3) flowers were controlled by the govt, so they are bad.
The USA needs to stop supporting communism and eliminate the flower scare that has brainwashed our youth!
The whole thing is totally stupid and obviously an attempt to smear him in pure Red-Scare fashion.
Here's how it works:
1. Cuba does have some achievements to its credit. These are undeniable facts.
2. Cuba does have some serious crimes to its discredit. These are undeniable facts.
Bernie, like any sane person who isn't obviously trying to Red-Bait him in order to elevate, desperately, someone else in the race, is for (1) and against (2).
Likewise, China, even more than Cuba, has done laudable things, like dragging tons of people out of extreme poverty, and awful things, too numerous to note, but how about, just for starters, the Cultural Revolution?
Now, if anyone pushing this Red-Baiting, McCarthyite meme were actually honest or non-hysterical, it's utterly clear that everything Sanders has said and done since birth and up to ten seconds ago demonstrates that he is for the social progress -- in Cuba, in China, here, anywhere, ever -- and against the totalitarianism and assorted awful crimes.
See? He's anti-totalitarian, which means "democratic," and also pro-social progress, which can be taken as one form of "socialism." Hence, "democratic socialism."
Socialism has as many forms and claims on its ownership as capitalism. If you like, you can consider Sanders' plans to be simply sort-of-left New Dealism or Scandinavian social democracy or democratic socialism. All near-synonyms.
Not so tough, right? My cat, Grendel, could have explained this just as easily.
9
critical thinking is not the Boomer Generation's strong point
The people who get all nervous about the word "socialism" should mail back their Social Security checks and give up their Medicare benefits.
People generally don't have revolutions because everything is going really well for them. The revolution in Cuba brought some improvements in the lives of the people who stayed there, and to deny that is kind of silly. To tout American capitalism in its current state as a paradise for all its citizens is kind of silly too. I think it's just as silly to get hysterical about Russia's "meddling" when our own country has meddled with impunity in quite a few places (how much US money backed Boris Yeltsin, for example?). Too much silliness, and many of our media outlets aren't helping cut through it very well.
34
@Deb
Deb, I'd happily give back social security and medicare, as long as all the money I was forced to pay into both plans over 40 years of working was fully refunded to me, with interest.
Bernie Sanders does have it correct that Castro did do the odd beneficial thing for Cubans, just like Mussolini did the odd beneficial thing for Italians, or just like Stalin did the odd beneficial thing for Russians and eastern-Europeans whose countries were subjugated by Russia, or just like Mao did the odd beneficial thing for Chinese... But I think most people agree that Castro, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao and other dictators and their style of government (socialism/communism) and their style of governing is EVIL and something I hope never gains a toe-hold here in the USA. If Bernie Sanders is the Democratic nominee, I most definitely will vote Republican.
1
Another vague mischaracterization/misunderstanding of Medicare and Social Security. (Which seems to believe that "the people" who don't like Bernie must be over 65?)
Anyone receiving SS paid into the system with years of payroll deductions given to the government as an interest free advance, as much as 40 years before you ever see a dime of it back. No one just "gets a check." (Some disabled do under SSI but that is a different category.) Medicare offers benefits but you have to qualify to receive them based on your lifetime earning history, and you have to pay premiums for them (more depending on any income you might have), and you have to buy additional insurance to cover everything that Medicare fails to. That isn't "free" either.
@Deb Exactly my point. From my history lessons, Cuba was run by rather corrupt and undemocratic regime under which only the bourgeoisie and the connected were doing well. The place was also mob infested and basically a playing ground for many dubious elements from the US.
2
I’m not afraid of the Russians as a military or economic threat - I am terrified of Putin as looking to damage the US in return for what he feels we did to his beloved USSR, the reason our 17 intelligence agencies agree unanimously that he feared Hillary Clinton and supported her mad opponent.
What I fear about Sanders is that this simple progressive who calls himself a “socialist” is a candidate supported by Putin because he will lose to Trump as McGovern lost to Nixon in 1972.
That’s what this boomer fears.
If he had called himself a Democrat, he’d be viewed as a strong progressive capable of replacing the thug who now wants to decide which Supreme Court justices can hear cases against him, and his multiple violations of federal law going back 30 years or more.
Bernie, for reasons unknown, shot himself in the foot, politically, decades ago.
Any other progressive can take out Trump and probably Make America the Great Nation it was before it was put in the hands of a guy whose only been successful as a ‘reality’ TV star.
1
@Eatoin Shrdlu Bernie is a democratic socialist. That is almost exactly the same as Franklin D. Rosevelt and very far from Stalin. When he is talking about "socialism" he is talking about public schools, social security, a fair tax system, and not for profit healthcare. It seems like when you hear socialism, you hear, gulags, intellectual imprisonment and general authoritarianism, which is not socialism.
1
Absolutely! Those of us who fled Indira Gandhi’s India, have memories of Maoism and Naxalites, have NO, absolutely NO desire to have Socialism come to the country we veld to that we thought was the last bastion against Socialism, Communism etc. The younger generation has NO idea of what the world was like and they haven’t been taught that history. We Ava Dem is are too busy teaching against colonialism and Marxism etc., making race, class, gender equity seem like it is our main priority and that somehow all this PC we are teaching will protect us from oppression! In the meantime, we’ve unleashed a monster that will destroy us all. As a Professor of Postcolonialism, I’m having a real identity crisis. Have I taught against the very America I treasure? Is all this literary and Marxist theory unmaking America, the bastion of freedom and democracy?
I'm a boomer. I have no problem with people who recognize that not all people and not all situations are either 100% wonderful or 100% horrible. This idea of showing people with online vitriol (at worst) or ghosting them (at best) at the mere mention of something some may find disturbing is nothing short of Spanish Inquisition territory. We live, I used to think, in the age of reason and rationality. But fear and uncertainty appear to be making us careen headlong back to a time of mob rule where a "if you're not with us, you're against us" mentality prevails. C'mon people, get a grip. Don't let Trumpism consume you; don't lower yourselves to their levels of ignorance and self-debasement.
12
Can we not use "boomer" or "millennial" or other ageist terms please?
8
@lancerp I think this is a myth that works to divide us. I am an aging boomer who is supporting Sanders and so are all my friends who are also aging boomers.
I took a ride with an Uber driver in Portland, Oregon the other night. He was middle-aged, spoke only a little broken English, had immigrated from Cuba seven years ago. Despite his limited English, he was able to tell me how much he hated the Castros and communism.
2
@Douglas Well, well, case closed then.
Seriously, are we making a mountain of a molehill? Cuba is no threat to us as would any nation in the Caribbean. They need our vacation dollars to get by and here we are acting like nasty neighbors getting even and still whining about unproven domino affects. Get over it folks! Let's be good neighbors and visit them with our dollars and make life a little less miserable for them while having a wonderful time. Those who have visited Cuba speak very highly about their wonderful people, fantastic weather and beaches.
3
Maybe the older generation remembers more about the depredations of so-called communist and socialist systems (they weren't socialist, really), as many were imprisoned or died for seeming to oppose their governments (they often hadn't). Also, they are more aware of how a backlash against the ideas of socialism can motivate voters against a candidate such as Sanders, and don't want to relive the experience of red-baiting. The backlash is stupid, but powerful and painful. Nuance is everything in this debate.
4
This manufactured outrage over the Cuba comments exposes some serious hypocrisy in many of our fellow citizens. We’re going to get upset about Sanders praising a literacy program when the US openly supports and is allied with Saudi Arabia, one of the most murderous, discriminatory and oppressive regimes in the world? Are we going to criticize senior members of the Obama administration who supported the rise of the murderous Sisi in Egypt? We’re going to pretend this is anywhere near as bad as Bloomberg’s praise of a dictator in China who has millions of Muslims in concentration camps? This is just straightforward red-baiting, and I trust that most Americans are too smart to be taken in by this nonsense.
1
@Andrew
Bernie's comments will haunt him in a few months. I like his ideas but will support someone that can unseat Trump. Like a Bloomberg and Kamala Harris ticket. Bernie must win in Florida but he won't.
Miami Cubans went for Republicans in 2018 in a big way. Like, not even close, 60 percent. I don’t remember Andrew Gillum making any comments about Castro that cost him the election. So do we really think this is the crucial constituency dems need to win the election? If so, we probably lost before primary season even started. They have traditionally supported Republicans and they still do, because older Cubans respond to red-baiting.
You know, it's funny.
After removing the corrupt Batista regime, Castro and Che came to NYC and got a TICKER TAPE PARADE down Broadway.
Only, when the wealthy Cubans, their American cronies, and the US Government, realized that Castro wasn't just another stooge, did the Embargo imbroglio begin.
The Cuban population of Miami and other areas is comprised mainly of the wealthy families and their descendants, who after their wealth and property was rightly expropiated (because, well, you know, the wealthy refused to share) did they "flee" Cuba.
They are Landesverrätern and should be treated as such.
8
@Raven , actually I know a lot of Cubans who were neither wealthy in Cuba pre-revolution, nor wealthy afterward in the U.S.
When my friend got permission to visit her family in Cuba, she was asked to bring soap, toilet paper, feminine products, aspirin, and the like. Why? Because these products were very expensive, and there were often shortages of them. I also have another friend who went to Cuba to see her grandmother in the hospital. Dirty sheets, beds, rooms, and surgery. Dried blood on the walls. Outdated equipment. Not enough physicians. The Cuban government won't show you those hospitals.
1
Anyone willing to overlook Castro's imprisonment and torture of his own people, his disastrous mismanagement of the Cuban economy or his complete disregard for free speech simply because he is supposedly a Socialist is profoundly ignorant of history. I think we would all be better off if the young were better educated.
6
@John Wallis Unfortunately our youth is educated by leftists
So, we should not ( because we are educated) give ANY PRAISE bout any American President during the slaughter of Native Americans, the legal enslavement of African Americans, the abuse and lack of rights of Chinese Americans, the emprisonnent of Japanese Americans, the killing of Korean civilians, Vietnamese, Iraqis?
That is a lot of presidents we cannot say anything good about, isn’t it ?
2
@John Wallis I think we would all be better off if the old were better educated and I'm not young by any definition.
I'm old. I know the history of Cuba and its relationship to the US. This red-baiting is absurd. The Cuban exiles living in Miami and Florida overwhelmingly vote Republican. They backed the US installed dictator Batista who disappeared his own citizens on a regular basis and ruled with an iron fist. They only complain about Castro because he confiscated their wealth given to them by the US and Batista. If Castro let the US keep running their Casino's he would be our best friend no matter how many human rights violation he committed. When it comes to Foreign Policy the US loves dictators. Just look at our cozy relationship with MBS who had a Journalist slaughtered and dismembered. Our government maintains the best relationship with him. We love murderous dictators as long as they let the US do what it wants. This is entirely an irrelevant distraction and completely hypocritical.
5
@Steve
Castro and Che killed far more Cubans than the previous corrupt administration.
Yes, Bernie may have made a mistake is calling himself a socialist Ior is it Socialist) in the USA - but anyone with familiarity with European "Democratic Socialism" will know what he means. All the progressices agree about the European style "democratic socialist" measures he supports.
Many older liberals like me understand completely why he supports what Castro did in Cuba. NYTimes reporting should remind readers what Cuba was like before the revolution. Many of the Cubans who came to the US were the oppressors and their kids need to deal with that. The Florida/Miami Cuban community is well kn own as being Republican - its good to learn that some of the younger generation have become Democrats. They must have had to deal with how the wealthy Cubans treated to poor there before Castro. Much like how many wealthy capitalists treat the poor here now. I support them in their fights with their parents!
NYTimes please give more historical background on this issue in future reporting!!!!!
Virginia Roehrig Kaufmann
3
@virginia Kaufmann
I'm coming around to the opinion that Sanders' adoption of the "Socialist" moniker was a good idea, in that it has/will gradually condition the voters to the concept.
50-plus years later conservatives still spread around “Hanoi Jane” email stories and memes, even after Jane Fonda has long-apologizes for her youthful dalliances in Vietnam. Can you imagine what they’ll do to Bernie Sanders and his continual admiration for communism and anti-capitalism? This is madness. I’m a Gen-X Democrat and can’t stand Sanders and his pseudo-Marxist idealism. I’ve told friends this for months: Do NOT make me decide between Sanders and Trump. I will not be responsible for putting a communist into office.
3
@Robert Salm you would prefer a child kidnapper destroying families. Understood.
@Steve What a cheap, pointless hyperbolic shot. I don't believe in voting for the worst case scenario unless I can find something likeable in the lesser of the two evils. Both candidates' views (Sanders & Trump) are repugnant to me enough that--unlike other candidates with whom I am able to find enough to approve against my own ethos--I would rather abstain from voting for the office of the presidency than simply chose Sanders.
I'm GenX, so I'm squarely in the middle of this (supposed) intergenerational divide. I guess I'm discouraged that our political discourse is so degraded and frankly, stupid, that saying Cuba was effective in teaching people to read or providing basic healthcare somehow translates to a full endorsement of communism. So, put me in the "boomer panic" column.
2
@Christine O
Go and listen to this interview on NPR and see if you feel the same.
https://www.npr.org/2020/02/26/809741233/examining-bernie-sanders-comments-on-literacy-in-castro-era-cuba
An old Bernie Boy, I've observed the gusanos yield to the gusanitos and wonder how long people can hate their homeland. The misery these expat Cubans have caused to their country is remarkable. ¡Basta!
Fidel Castro destroyed the miserable dictatorship of Fuljencio Batista, and for a while looked to create democracy. That failed,and another dictatorship took hold, but in many ways better than the old.
Let's hope the gusanitos' pall has waned.
¡Cuba sí. ¡Yanqui sí!
1
The NYT falls to new lows every day in its coverage of Sanders. Sanders did not offer praise for "Cuba" as the article states, but for its literacy and health care programs which by most standards are better than those in the US. What he specifically disavows is their authoritarianism as he does for many other countries that this country does major business with, not to mention outright supports. The US has a history of supporting authoritarian right-wing regimes around the world. Are you so disingenuous or ignorant that you cannot see the difference?
1
@theresa
Try to get a hip replacement there, unless you are a foreigner willing to pay cash.
@theresa , do you know Cubans that have recetnly moved here, or recently visited families there? y
Cuba's healthcare stinks. Go there and ask someone to show you the typical Cuban hospital, where my friend visited her grandmother. Dirty linens, dried blood on the walls, outdated equipment, a shortage of physicians. My friend brought cleaning solutions and stuff to clean the room, and sheets so her grandma didn't have to lie in a dirty bed. As far as the literacy issue, did you not read that Cuba had an 80 percent literacy rate at the time of the revolution. Cuba was in bad shape before the revolution, and it still is. They JAIL dissidents.
So... Bernie's documented comments favorable to dictators don't matter, but Bloomberg's comments about women are disqualifying? Hmmm... sounds like hypocrisy to me.
1
Obama praised Castro's literacy program, Trump praises Kim Jung Un, this new anti-bernie angle is very weak.
1
@Walter
Go and read the full Obama speech.
Please!! Everyone read Thomas Friedman’s February 25th common sense, country saving column!!
From Friedman’s computer to God’s ear before it’s too late!!!
1
Bernie says it was good Castro helped Cubans learn to read. Donny literally said he was “in love” with Kim Jong Un. It’s time we throw trump back in republicans faces.
1
Young people don’t care about the moronic shibboleths of the Cold War, and incidentally they don’t care about the shibboleths of the war on terror, the Israeli occupation or the sanctity of capitalism either. And young people are the ones who matter, period. Boomers bleating that young people don’t vote are either out of date or lying in an attempt to make their desiccated, meaningless concerns relevant again.
1
The voting statistics don’t lie. From Census.gov:
In 2016, this was once again the case, as citizens 65 years and older reported higher turnout (70.9 percent) than 45- to 64-year-olds (66.6 percent), 30- to 44-year-olds (58.7 percent) and 18- to 29-year-olds (46.1 percent).May 10, 2017
@Towansa Whitby OK boomer
Regardless of what one thinks of Castro, it was plainly stupid to talk about Castro during the campaign.
Talk about an unforced error. Way to lose Florida.
While I don't disagree with Sanders' critique of our political and economic system, I have zero trust in Sanders' judgement. And the fact that he has precious few allies is concerning.
4
Whatever else it was, it was tactically stupid and careless, and it reflects poorly on his judgment and an apparent inability of his advisors to help him frame things in the right way. For him to have any chance of selling his views to a broader public his explanation must be--in simple, layman's terms--that from his early years mainstream liberalism hasn't seemed enough to correct for the injustices in society that affect everyday, normal people, and that his own constructive proposals could also be seen as congruous with a part of FDR's legacy that was not realized.