I think I'd add that he has some ideas that I like - and he has a lot of really good "sound bite" plans - like free college, health care for all, anti-Wall Street, etc. that sound great, especially to a more liberal Democrat - but to me, a lot of it is just totally unrealistic.
I find it remarkable how our history has been lost. Sanders has so much in common with Franklin Roosevelt from a policy perspective it's remarkable. And yet, only what, 60 years after Roosevelt, the post 1996 telecom merger act media has us convinced that he is Karl Marx, transported here from hundreds of years ago.
I'd like to address a lot of things here:
1. Where is the money going to come from??
a) His healthcare plan - the conservative economist who said it would cost 15 trillion over the course of his presidency sort of slipped in that over the same time period, it will cost us 25 trillion going the current private route.
So, before we even talk about any cost of anything he wants, just go ahead and add roughly 45% of our annual revenue back into the pockets of all of us. Yes, I know, the poor sorority girl who got a job as a project manager at Advocate and worked her way up to VP of something will have to find another job. I'm crushed.
b) free college - I've heard Bernie on Thom Hartmann talking about free college and the best I can gather is that he's talking about governor's State and places like that being free to everyone… places you can go to for a few grand. I'm sure in his wildest dreams, Purdue would be free if you got a 3.5 GPA, etc. Now, I know that terrifies the well to do, because they aren't interested in systems that work better. They're interested in systems that work worse overall, but systems in which THEY'RE RICH or where they do better. They don't want actual achievers from the lower middle class to compete with their kids. That's not fair. Again, cry me a river. So yes, this is a cost, but not nearly as bad as people are making it out to be.
c) Defense - when the cold war ended, this really should have been cut by 1/2 or more. Instead it's doubled and tripled. How much college can you pay for when you cut defense back to $300 billion and make the world pitch in to help with our problems.
d) Higher taxes
Did you know the wealthy used to want high taxes? The logic in the 70s was, "if they don't have money to spend, how will they buy our products?" You don't get to come back to me 40 years later and say, "well, we figured out how to sell our products in Ho Chi Minh City and Seoul, so that's not a good idea anymore."
Also, most people who think higher taxes, like the 90% progressive taxation from Roosevelt to Reagan (I had a conservative argue with me and say that rich people then only actually paid 40 with all their deductions.. I'd be ELATED with 40 now, believe me, actually paying 90 is too high) are bad, are just unfamiliar with Pareto economics. By the way, when I told that guy I'd be elated, I never heard from him again.
Pareto theorized that more people who engage in transactions meant more activity and more movement of money, which creates wealth all on its own. You see evidence of this for example on Wall Street, where bad things happen on CNBC when money is sitting still.
But, here's the thing… today's conservatives don't want an overall better economy with greater transactional wealth… they want an economy that doesn't work for most people, but one in which THEY'RE RICH, or at least they can fantasize that they're going to be.
The thing about radical concepts like higher taxes is, it's not this new thing that's never been tried… it's been tried during the most prosperous time in our history, or any nations history for that matter. I had a conservative buddy tell me, "yeah, that's cause we had a war! That created that development." When I asked him what we've been in for the last 15 years, curiously, he changed the subject.
I don't think Bernie has ever mentioned creating an America where things will just happen for you if you don't work. He's trying to create an America where more than 1 in 7 families has the old American dream of the last generation (a study showed that is sadly the case now.. 1 in SEVEN).. because plenty of people in this country do want to work, do work, and don't prosper.
My girlfriend is the worst nightmare of economically conservative Americans. She works produce at a grocery store where she makes $17/hour. She works so hard breaking pallets that most guys that work there can't keep up. And if she wasn't living with me and my much higher pay, she wouldn't be making it with my her (and now ours after so many years) sons (that she had while married 14 and 15 years ago). I know because before we moved in together, despite her never asking, I had to bring her groceries many times to stop her from trying to live on laughable ingredients.
In the meantime, before Reagan's policies had really taken hold, the freaking janitor at my elementary school had a house, two cars, his wife didn't work, a retirement, a savings and two vacations a year.
A few other things here…
2. Why do you guys think you perceive Bernie as this wild card or exotic animal?
Well, for one, most "liberal" politicians have turned into the kind of people who sell most of the country out just slightly less than conservatives. I expect a conservative to sell me out.. he's conservative. He is supposed to fight for the interests of those who pay him legal bribes (that's a much bigger problem than anything we're discussing here). What I don't expect is for Bill Clinton to sign NAFTA. So, when the behavior of so many democrats becomes "signing NAFTA" like behavior, when someone comes around and says "you're being sold out" .. the media can point to the sell outs in nice suits with nice smiles and say "look at that one lone wild animal over there."
When, in reality, the coverage of Franklin Roosevelt (if he ran as the President he was, not as the candidate; he was a political insider as a candidate).
This by the way explains the appeal of Donald Drumpf. Many people don't know why Drumpf is so appealing to Republicans, but it's because many well meaning Republican people don't realize that there's a reason why Bernie crushes the conservative vote in Vermont. It's because it's not a D and R world anymore. It's a world of political insiders and political outsiders. It's easy to cast Bernie as something close to Jack Nicholson in Batman because there are so few outsiders who can function at all in Washington.
Many conservatives know that they're being sold out too. They have the wrong savior, for all of the reasons that John Oliver gave in his brilliant show on Sunday, but their general idea is coming from their subconscious aware that Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, etc. are all on the same team.. and in their deep mind, they know that it's not a team where they get a palatial estate; more like a trailer.
1996 Telecom Merger Act
When I grew up I delivered newspapers for the Star in Chicago Heights. I wouldn't have that job today.. no, not because some desperate adult with a car would be doing it for peanuts. That's also true. But because after this piece of sell out legislation.. legislation that CNN was unwilling to air commercials against for any price.. has changed the media from a localized media to a media where you get your news from like 5 ultimate sources, owned by the same people who own all of the dog food boxes, I mean fast food restaurants that have popped up near your house.
Today, the Daily Southtown, which is owned by the Tribune gives the people in Chicago Heights and the rest of the south burbs their news.
Ultimately, those people have two aims when it comes to Sanders. They ignore him because
a) What he advocates is bad for major stockholders and executives at the big companies who share their corporate interests and agenda. What Sanders would mean is less prosperity for these royalists and an actual fighting chance for those who are in the 20.1-80% income range to actually have some upward mobility.
They don't want that. They want .. and burn this into your mind.. an overall society that is less effective, but one in which they're the king. This is, by the way, what guides free traitors.
But, it could also mean the thing they fear more than anything..
b) Actual enforcement of anti-trust law, which would lead to big media being broken up and coverage going back to being localized and ultimately, coverage that gives information that the average person needs.
I'd like to take this break to say that if you profit immensely from the current structure, I am more than in favor of you wanting what's good for you. What I'm not in favor of is the corporate media giving us news that is designed to make the other 80% of us think it's what's good for us too. If you're part of the working poor, and I've been there, you should get to want what's good for you. And you should have credible information with which to decide…
You should not get CNN acting like Bernie doesn't exist to help out political insider Corporate Shillary Clinton.
3. "Bernie doesn't do good with black people."
Well, for one, he does do good with those under 40. He won that group of black people in SC. Ironically, those under 40 are much more likely to get their news via seeking it out on social media than to get it from TV.
But there's something else with Clinton. She's an insider, so you know she's going to go into churches and promise all kinds of things to pimpy pastors, white and black. If I were black and I could see the pictures of Bernie marching with King while Hillary campaigned for Goldwater, I'd be much more likely to want Bernie and ignore the Southside Circuit.
4. Bernie "just has one issue."
That's what's been so terrible about being a liberal. It's not okay to fight for economic justice. You can, in the D party, fight for it for the ultra poor or for black people, and I love standing with those groups.. but as a lower middle class and middle class white man, it's not okay within the D insider groups to want better conditions for myself.
What these people don't realize is that that WAS our issue. Without liberal people prospering for decades due to Roosevelt, there is no movement for black people, hispanics, gays or anyone else.
If you're in the top 20%, your interests are best served by keeping everyone down. If you're in the bottom 80%, that IS the issue in this country.. the issue through which we can better fight for all other issues.
I want to stand with gays in their fight for equality, with pro choice, with black people and hispanics, but they have to stand with me too… on an issue that ironically is good for them.. wealth equality.
By the way; I don't think Bernie's most effective accomplishment would be winning the Presidency… it would be bringing up, certifying and helping to seek funding ...a whole new wave of national, state and local progressive candidates.
