Sanders Channeling His Inner Madoff
There's actually quite a bit of similarity between the two Bernies. That's to be expected of grifters.
There's selling a product that doesn't really exist to people who think they're part of an elite group of people who have the inside track on the way "things really work." There's the belief that the Bernie is a magician, a messiah who works in mysterious ways and gets things done.
But most of all, there's the imperative to keep up appearances, lest the scam come tumbling down. With Madoff, it was the over-the-top display of wealth - the homes, the cars, the jewelry, etc. Anything and everything that would plant the idea that Madoff just HAD to be everything everyone said he was to be able to afford all that stuff and pay his elite clients those high dividends.
With Sanders, the appearances scam revolves around getting thousands of people to show up at his rallies, even if most of them can't vote in the primary. It's to posit that there's a path forward to the nomination when there isn't. But most of all, it's putting on airs that you are the front-runner in the contest, even though you are losing big time in every measureable metric. So, you try to dictate terms of what will happen at the convention. You treat things that have no bearing on winning the nomination - like the size of your rally crowds - as if they do have a bearing on the process. You basically hold up a shiny object and tell everyone to "look over here," when over here has nothing to do with the process. You try to change the very currency of what matters (delegates) by arrogantly proposing that the nomination should be given to you because, well, because, why?
And like Madoff - who had no assets in the bank and who made no actual deals for his clients - you don't have enough of the only asset that matters in a presidential nomination process: delegates. Yes, when it comes time to spend the real electoral currency that is supposed to be underwriting your path to victory, the assets just aren't there. You may have all the glittering surroundings that give people the impression that you have what's needed to win the nomination, but you don't.
In the end, you're a grifter, taking people for a ride, selling them a bill of goods and costing them money, all while lining the pockets of your partners in grift.
I can't wait for HBO to get to work on this miniseries.
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