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Bernie Sanders Refuses to Melt
Bernie Sanders keeps refusing to run the way that the pundits think he should -- that's what makes this primary so interesting and perhaps a turning point in American politics.
You could see it last night in the Democratic town hall. Before they let, you know, sensible people ask questions, there was CNN moderator Chris Cuomo. Cuomo, of course, wanted to know if Bernie Sanders was going to "bring back the era of big government." This is exactly the kind of frame that pundits have been trying to put on American politics for about as long as I can remember, which is at least back to the Carter era.
This question is supposed to be a kind of kryptonite that causes Democratic politicians to sweat and turn pallid and immediately explain that no, they're for efficient government or some such. It's the kind of question that turned Bill Clinton into a triangulating centrist who cut welfare to the bone and elevated corporate power with a series of disastrous trade agreements. Everyone in Washington knows that "big government" is always bad.
But Bernie wasted no time in saying that he was going to bring back the era when government helped care for people. He thinks government should help people go to college and pay for their medical care, which is what big government does in every other industrialized country in the world. He even -- in an ad released earlier in the day -- dared to advocate that people who have spent their lives working might deserve the chance to relax and be grandparents at the end of the day.
This kind of stuff makes the keepers of our political order crazy. In the last few days, we've seen folks such as Paul Krugman in the New York Times and Paul Starr in Politico patiently explain that Bernie is too far to the left to be president. It's like they're dumping water on the Wicked Witch of the West and waiting for her to shriek, "I'm melting!" But actually, he's just shrugging it off, like a duck. As Cuomo tried to get him to confess to his socialism, his team just tweeted out a list of "socialist" accomplishments: Social Security, the minimum wage, Medicare, the 40-hour workweek.
You could see it last night in the Democratic town hall. Before they let, you know, sensible people ask questions, there was CNN moderator Chris Cuomo. Cuomo, of course, wanted to know if Bernie Sanders was going to "bring back the era of big government." This is exactly the kind of frame that pundits have been trying to put on American politics for about as long as I can remember, which is at least back to the Carter era.
This question is supposed to be a kind of kryptonite that causes Democratic politicians to sweat and turn pallid and immediately explain that no, they're for efficient government or some such. It's the kind of question that turned Bill Clinton into a triangulating centrist who cut welfare to the bone and elevated corporate power with a series of disastrous trade agreements. Everyone in Washington knows that "big government" is always bad.
But Bernie wasted no time in saying that he was going to bring back the era when government helped care for people. He thinks government should help people go to college and pay for their medical care, which is what big government does in every other industrialized country in the world. He even -- in an ad released earlier in the day -- dared to advocate that people who have spent their lives working might deserve the chance to relax and be grandparents at the end of the day.
This kind of stuff makes the keepers of our political order crazy. In the last few days, we've seen folks such as Paul Krugman in the New York Times and Paul Starr in Politico patiently explain that Bernie is too far to the left to be president. It's like they're dumping water on the Wicked Witch of the West and waiting for her to shriek, "I'm melting!" But actually, he's just shrugging it off, like a duck. As Cuomo tried to get him to confess to his socialism, his team just tweeted out a list of "socialist" accomplishments: Social Security, the minimum wage, Medicare, the 40-hour workweek.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-mckibben/bernie-sanders-town-hall_b_9077552.html
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