On Bernie Sanders, Kılıçdaroğlu and how to stop losing

Last year, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders ran against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for president and lost. Then Hillary Clinton lost the presidency to Donald Trump. Having already lost the Senate and the House to Republicans long before the presidency, the political influence of the Democrats in the U.S. politics shrank drastically after the narrow defeat in the 2016 election. 

Sanders recently penned an op-ed for the New York Times titled "How Democrats Can Stop Losing." That title immediately grabbed my attention since I thought it is quite resembled the discussions that have enveloped the Republican People's Party (CHP) in Turkey after each election in the last decade. 

In his op-ed Sanders discusses that for the sake of his country - and also the world - the Democratic Party must change direction in a fundamental way. Sanders' recipe for change is to come up with a fresh economic agenda that would win the hearts and minds of millions of Americans who work long hours for low wages. "The party must be prepared to take on the right-wing extremist ideology and the billionaire class and fight for an economy that work for all, not just the 1 percent," suggests Sanders. For this aim, the Democrats should also appeal to moderate Republicans who are disgusted with Trump's presidency, according to Sanders. 

It is worth noting that as a method for awakening the resentful masses, Sanders has always championed nationwide rallies, most recently in the context of saving Obamacare, which President Trump has vowed to terminate.

While I was reading Sanders' piece, the news broke that a lawmaker from Turkey's main opposition CHP had been arrested and sent to prison for "leaking state secrets" to daily Cumhuriyet, which reported...