All Bernie Sanders needs now is a hat.
Not a red one, of course. Red’s been taken. But a nice shade of blue would suit him. That way you’d know for sure whether it was the Republican or the Democrat-by-convenience running around spewing nonsense.
Four years ago, when Sanders began campaigning, he did a nice spot with Simon and Garfunkel’s “America” as the background. For me, it hit the spot. I love everything to do with Americana — which, to me, is a celebration of heritage and togetherness and not all this flag-waving and “U-S-A” stuff.
He drew me in. I was lukewarm about Hillary Clinton. As a matter of fact, before Donald Trump exploded onto the scene, I thought for sure that she’d be running against Jeb Bush and that the campaign slogan would be “warmed-over hash.”
Sanders offered us a way out of that, and I was certainly on board. He spoke about ruinous student loans, the inequities of health care. He was refreshing.
But something happened over the course of that campaign. He caught fire in a way even he could probably have never imagined. He got too close to the sun, I guess, and actually thought he could pull this off. That’s when he became the caricature that Larry David has made famous on “Saturday Night Live.”
He also developed a cult-like base that swore allegiance to him and only him. But when it became obvious that Clinton was going to get the delegates needed to win the nomination, Bernie did not go away. Neither did his people. Not that it was required. It wasn’t. But it would have been nice had he thrown his support to Clinton and worked to unite the party for the final campaign.
He didn’t. And it’s apparent that a lot of his followers didn’t either. Now, we have Trump in the Oval Office tweeting like he’s Alicia Silverstone in “Clueless.”
What struck me as odd (and disappointing too) is that Sanders could have gone to Wisconsin and Michigan, two states he took in the primaries, and helped her there.
He didn’t. And she lost two states that she, and the Democrats, needed in their column to win.
That’s water under the bridge in the grand scheme of things, but if you want to know why there’s so much hostility when it comes to Sanders, you can start there. He took his bat and his ball and went home.
But …
As Joan Baez once sang so famously, “well I’ll be damned/here comes your ghost again.” Bernie’s back. Still using the same slogans. Still the fiery orator, bloviating with barely-controlled rage. He’s not going to let anything minor like a heart attack slow him down.
Only this time I’m not buying. If there’s one thing this country does not need, it’s to be screamed at for another four years.
We also don’t need a continuing debate over the definition of “Socialist.” Sanders is trying to put lipstick on the word (though I don’t know why) by calling it “Democratic Socialism.” But a rose by any other name … ya know?
It’s fine with me if he’s a Socialist, by the way. It’s not his fault that the average person hasn’t bothered to distinguish the difference between “socialist” and “totalitarian.” These are the people who called Barack Obama a Socialist when he wore a tan suit.
What do people think? That the minute he’s elected, Sanders is going to erect gulags everywhere? If you’re going to go down that road, exhume FDR’s body and scream at that. He’s the one who started that, and while you’re at it, scream at LBJ too. Both the New Deal and Great Society were euphemisms for programs that had Socialism written all over them.
This is not a bad thing. And my antipathy for Sanders isn’t really connected to his being a Socialist.
Here’s why: Watch him in debates. He looks and sounds deranged. We’ve had more than enough “deranged” over the last four years.
He’s taken a dialogue we need to hear and turned it into something that sounds as if it’s coming from your crabby old uncle who argues with everybody over everything.
Elizabeth Warren was doing a fine job providing at least a measure of rationality articulating the progressive position, but Sanders started asserting himself, and boom! Instant rancor.
There’s not much difference between Sanders and Trump. They know how to connect with disgruntled people, and they know how to entice them with all kinds of words that sound great coming out of a loudspeaker, but ring hollow otherwise.
They are true populists. They’re just on different sides. The words may be different, but it’s the same old snake oil.
