He's an interesting candidate. From what I've seen he's not your typical politician, and he seems to mesh well with the current twentysomething crowd despite being from the tail end of the "Greatest Generation" himself.
I don't know how much of a chance he has to win the presidency, but I can say that I like him much, much better than any other candidate (and I'm not a political kind of guy).
> I like him much, much better than any other candidate (and I'm not a political kind of guy).
I think that might be what relegates him to second place. The people who like him might go out and vote during the primary but that's it. You need to attract a lot more than votes or bodies at rallies to win the primary. You need to attract supporters willing to volunteer and get out on their streets all over the country.
I don't know...I have a lot of friends on both sides of the fence who like him and have pledged to support his campaign with more than just votes. I've been described as a "fiscally conservative, socially progressive independent" by many acquaintances, and I can see myself voting for him all the way through. As I said, I don't really get political (I know, how un-American of me) but he's someone I would consider getting off the couch and knocking on doors for. He hits all the right points as far as I'm concerned, and he does it without grandstanding and deflecting like all the others.
Of course it's early in the campaign yet, things may change for the worse and he may be revealed to be just another scummy politician. But from what I've read, he's been consistent throughout his career, so there's that.
This kind of weaselly divisiveness is exactly why I don't get political. There is no answer to your question that can't be twisted into calling me a socialist/Marxist/communist/Nazi/pinhead just because I happen to like a certain candidate who does things differently than the usual Clinton/Trump types.
Socialist or not, I'll gladly take him over the various fascists (Clinton, half of the Republicans) and theocrats (the other half of the Republicans, save for Paul and Trump). Yeah, I'm a bit leary of the single-payer system he's advocating (I know they're great in Europe and all, but that's a pretty big jump, and I don't know if Americans are ready for it), but I'm otherwise more-or-less in agreement with most of his stances, and I certainly swing farther toward capitalist than socialist in my own stances.
> Are you comfortable with a socialist leading a capitalist society?
The US isn't a capitalist society, and hasn't been even approximately for most of a century. Like most advanced Western countries, its a modern mixed economy, which features some elements of capitalism -- a system named by its nineteenth century socialist critics for its focus on the interest of the capital-holding class -- but also mixes in many elements of socialism specifically to mitigate the very problems with capitalism that were identified by the critics that named it. This model has -- in a process that, while it started earlier and never really ended, was focused in the early-to-mid-20th Century -- displaced capitalism as the dominant system of the advanced economies of the world.
I'm not sure why a socialist would be less appropriate a leader for a country with a modern mixed economy than a capitalist.
What do you have against Nelson Mandela's leadership of South Africa? Of Olof Palme's leadership of Sweden? François Mitterrand's leadership of France?
All of them were socialists who lead a capitalist society.
What makes you uncomfortable about them or their leadership?
I don't know how much of a chance he has to win the presidency, but I can say that I like him much, much better than any other candidate (and I'm not a political kind of guy).