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Weekend with Bernie: A Fresh Dark Horse

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Going into 2015, news media mavens had all but declared the race as settled: Jeb Bush vs. Hillary Clinton. But voters didn’t cooperate with their “betters.” Republicans flocked to Donald Trump, a weirdly charismatic figure, and Democrats fell enthusiastically for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-​designated socialist.

Why hordes of regular folks prefer Trump over most of his rivals hardly needs extensive analysis: Trump is funny, appears “his own man,” and serves as a sort of wild card.

But why Bernie?

Over at The Hill, H.A. Goodman offers three reasons … sort of. The first reason is a confused mishmash of polling blather. But check out Goodman’s second and third reasons.

“Clinton can’t win the Democratic nomination or presidency with the FBI as a running mate,” Goodman notes in bold face type. And “Classified information has already been found within Clinton’s emails and there’s a great likelihood of more revelations pertaining to breaches in protocol.…”

So, the reason for Bernie’s popularity is that Hillary is so bad a candidate?

Well, duh. She’s always been a bad candidate.

Indeed, Hillary’s a corrupt insider, while Sanders, like Trump, can be plausibly construed as an outsider. But, like Trump, that plausibility is superficial.

Sanders is a lifelong politician, and when challenged about this, his retort was that he has always stood against the monied interests. He thinks that doesn’t make him a “career politician.”

Maybe being a career politician means never having to look up the meaning of “career” or “politician.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Weekend with Bernie Sanders

 

4 replies on “Weekend with Bernie: A Fresh Dark Horse”

slight correction. I would argue logically that the Republican candidates all hold various degrees of collectivist thinking and therefore would logically well fall under the socialist category. .

.…. Maybe being a career politician means never having to look up the meaning of “career” or “politician” .… 

Or maybe being not a career politician means never having looked up the meaning of “career” or “politician.” 

Or maybe call Debbie Wasserman Schwartz?

Bernie may be a socialist, but he is refreshing and I always watch when he is on C‑SPAN’s Washington Journal. He responds frankly to callers and doesn’t pull punches. Although I agree with few of his policy positions (except for outsourcing /​ free trade, which is a pet peeve of mine), I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. If the choice was between Bernie and Jeb, Bernie would get my vote.

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