Someone said there was so much more about Bernie than the $15/hour that I dismissively attributed to him. I agreed but I thought that I should also take some time to revisit his stands now that the heat of the election was not upon us and the next election is far enough away.
First, his famous $15/hour. To say that that was not the lodestone of his campaign is disingenuous. Every pro-Bernie person I heard from brought this up first and up front. Even here, this defining issue, was not quite true. His actual promise was $15/hour by 2020. Not quite the immediate solution one would have thought – and if I could be sarcastic, just in time for reelection. And when he unsuccessfully proposed it in 2017, the timeline had extended from 4 to 7 years. So much for his cornerstone promise. To make matters worse, a dollar figure does not answer the basic issue of a living wage, indexed to the cost of living.
Now, what kind of politics does Bernie espouse? You will get some argument there. Depending on the source, he is a socialist, a social democrat, or a democratic socialist. It is a little hard to pin down. What is obvious is that the does advocate the redistribution of wealth. Generally speaking it seems that his primary plan for doing so is through regulation and taxation of the wealthy. Some examples are 90% top marginal taxes for wealthy earners, 52% top income tax bracket, and 65% top marginal rate for federal estate taxes.
His vision seems to best be emulated by the vision of the Scandinavian countries of social treatment.
In addition, he wants to incent companies to bring jobs back to America and rebuild the infrastructure of the country. Ironically he seems to dwell on bridges but why not, it is as good as anything.
Before I go any further, I want to say I find some of these ideas interesting this iand laudable. I do, however, question some of the practicality of some of it and how well it will actually work with American sensibilities. I can see how it sold, and is still selling, with the young and disenfranchised. I do wonder how well it will ultimately sell with the general population. In fact, I can see why he has had difficulty selling his vision to the middle class and will continue to do so.
And looking at his foreign policy history I find it to be generally light as well. I do not see very much in his background to show much in the way of his involvement in international relationships. The only major exception is that he is wanting to repeal all of our foreign trade alliances as they are deleterious to our economic health. Oh, and he thinks that Cuba really isn’t all that bad after all.
The biggest problem is that he has all of these desires but I question the how. Think about it. He wants to raise wages, bring jobs back to America, tax the wealthy, and rebuild our infrastructure. At the same time eliminating our trade treaties. How we are going to do this and competitive and sell our stuff, both domestically and internationally, is beyond me and beyond Bernie as well, I am afraid.
And let’s face it, he is not a political juggernaut. Forget the caucus states, that travesty of democracy, and look at what he did in 2016. He was unable, with a single exception, to win a single primary, in a state where there was a large minority of voters. The states he won were white bread liberal states. And before you think I am dismissing caucuses to quickly, look at the two states that had both caucuses and primaries; Bernie won the caucus, lost the primary. Before you bring up the voting irregularities, even if they all went Bernie’s way he would still have lost – big time. Before you say the primaries, with Bernie getting 43% of the vote. we close; remember Hillary outpolled Obama in 2008 and still conceded – earlier and with more class.
Finally, just how many idiots who voted for Trump would move far enough left to vote for Bernie, even with Trump being such a crappy piece of work? Sure liberal will vote for Bernie but we need middle-of-the-road voters this time. Not a good fit.
Like I said, I like Bernie in theory. In fact, not so sure.
