Thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt! 8^)
I tend to think Sanders is best viewed as a storm trooper or, perhaps, an early adopter if you don't like the war metaphor, whereas Obama seems more like a 2nd round person. If that view works, then it should be obvious that they work best as a team. Sanders-types may be light on the details, but all the front line advances they make would be (if possible) maintained or conservatively progressed by the 2nd line Obama-type. As a front-line member, Sanders sees how our advances can go wrong. If we stretch ourselves too thin (take the wrong hill, or take the hill too soon), things can go terribly wrong (like prematurely advancing on territory we don't yet understand, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_Infrastructure_Investment_Bank). Obama, given his perspective, probably knows more about (and has more confidence in) the infrastructure required to maintain any ground captured. Further, Obama is much more a credible _cog_ in the depths of the machine, whereas Sanders is more like an exploratory appendage of the machine. As such, Obama-types will see (or think they see) the larger -urgic progression of the machine, whereas Sanders-types will see the ways in which their more agile and fragile actions can be misleading or broken. Again, they're part of the same machine, just playing different roles. In the end, Sanders-types are more plentiful and sacrifice themselves in order to realize the stodgy progress headed up by the Obama-types. I think they disagree on the front line tactics, but agree on the medium- and long-term objectives. On 08/04/2016 02:09 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
Having followed you over the years, I don't think you know what a shallow answer is. It's just not in your blood. I was trying to head off cheap attributions of Obama's motives. Whatever else one may say about Obama, I think he thinks hard about stuff, as does Sanders. So how do they come to disagree? In [ancient] psychology [the psychology of the 50's], there was something called Heider's Balance Theory. Basically, if I like Obama and I like Sanders, Obama and Sanders ought to like each other. So when they disagree about something as fundamental as trade policy, it creates, for me, cognitive dissonance.
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