Bernie manages to pack quite a lot into one statement…
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Tag: Bernie Sanders
Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders winning in New Hampshire is as good an indicator as any that Americans — or at least Live Free or Die staters — are tired of the bipartisan Establishment. Victories for a billionaire iconoclast and a self-designated socialist.
Both are “players” in their distinct ways: the former a publicity-minded entrepreneur who boasts of having been a briber of politicians, the latter as a long-term senator with a consistently pro-government-growth voting record.
But both are plausibly outsiders, too. Trump speaks off the cuff and in an entertainingly anti-PC manner, and Sanders proclaims a love of government so strong that he willingly embraces a label with a very negative record throughout the last century.
Indeed, Trump’s many words and Sanders’s One Word serve to negate these two candidates’ “establishment feel.”
But if elected, would either rock the Establishment boat?
Based on his voting record, Sanders is liable to continue the bipartisan “War, Always War” strategy abroad, along with the same domestic policy of “Spend, Always Overspend.”
That is Establishment.
Trump is less of a warmonger than Sanders, oddly enough: The Donald has criticized the Iraq War, argued that Russia should take care of its nearby Syria problem, and offered that China should worry about North Korea . . . in other words, he can conceive of foreign areas being outside of American purview.
But Trump is as protectionist as Sanders, and loves taking property from private individuals (with “just compensation”) and giving it to developers . . . like himself. You cannot get more Establishment than that.
Still, New Hampshire voters know something, and that something is undoubtedly that something must change.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
According to a weekend CNN-WMUR poll in New Hampshire, Sen. Bernie Sanders leads former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by eight percentage points.
Among women.
“Hillary Clinton’s quest to become the country’s first female president has encountered an unexpected problem,” begins a Washington Post report on Hillary’s “trouble persuading women, young and old, to rally behind her cause.”
Younger women seem to pose the biggest “problem.” The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC/Marist College poll of New Hampshire Democrats found Mrs. Clinton nine points ahead of Sen. Sanders among women 45 and over. But Sanders bests Clinton by a remarkable 29 percentage points with women under 45 years of age.
Not to worry, the faces of establishment feminism have been mobilized. Madeleine Albright, appointed to be the first woman Secretary of State in 1997 by then-Pres. Bill Clinton, stood at a Granite State rally with Hillary to shout, “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.”
Persuasive?
On his HBO show, comedian Bill Maher asked feminist icon Gloria Steinem to explain why younger women “really don’t like Hillary.” Ms. Steinem postulated, “When you’re young, you’re thinking: ‘Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie,’”
In her subsequent Facebook “apology,” Steinem claimed she “misspoke” and had “been misinterpreted as implying young women aren’t serious in their politics.”
Imagine that.
Dana Edell, the leader of an “anti-racist gender justice advocacy group,” offers a less controversial explanation. “While the historic aspect of the first woman president is hugely powerful and important,” she told the Old Gray Lady, Hillary Clinton “might not be the right first woman.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
He’s never met a government monopoly he didn’t love, or a free market service he didn’t distrust or despise…
…but don’t worry, he’s not really a socialist!
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The Iowa caucuses were pretty much a dead-heat for the Democrats, with Hillary Clinton winning a number of precincts by the flip of a coin and barely edging out Sanders.
Leaving aside conspiratorial notions like trick coins, the Democratic results are most interesting in one obvious way: half of the Democratic activists in this Midwestern state proved themselves just fine with voting for a self-proclaimed “socialist”; the other half were apparently hunky-dory to cast their ballots for an ethically-challenged political insider most often described by voters in an ABC News survey with the word “liar.”
No red flags, Dems?
Though Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly keeps talking about Mrs. Clinton’s possible indictment, partisanship being what it is, how is that going to happen? Despite a rising swell of support for Sanders, Clinton’s juggernaut seems fated to roll over the land.
But really, which is more disappointing:
- Lack of revulsion or censure for Clinton’s haughty incompetence and disregard for the law? or
- Lack of incredulity at someone identifying his Big Gov redistributionism as “socialist”?
Monday wasn’t a red letter day, it was a red flag day.
On the Republican side, the establishment took a drubbing. Former Gov. Jeb Bush, son and brother of former presidents, received less than three percent of the Republican vote — even though, including SuperPACs, he has raised the most money. By far — his campaign shelled out $2,884 for each Iowa vote.
Moreover, Ted Cruz, the GOP establishment’s worst nightmare, won. Let’s hope his success overcoming attacks from the governor and the crony corn lobby will help others find the political courage to oppose ethanol subsidies and mandates.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Democrats aren’t very good at democracy.
Consider the party’s presidential contest, as I did yesterday at Townhall.
As an appetizer, I noted the Democratic National Committee policy of hiding their debates from viewers by placing them on weekend evenings pitted against major sporting events.
For meat and potatoes, ponder my warning of the very ugly scenario of Sen. Bernie Sanders capturing as much as 58 percent of the primary and caucus vote and resulting delegates, but still losing to Hillary Clinton.
How could that possibly happen?
Because of folks designated as “superdelegates” — those awarded voting delegate status for holding a party office or being an elected or former elected official.
Democrats brag that they’ve reduced these insiders’ impact. Democratically-unaccountable superdelegates once accounted for 30 percent of Democratic Party convention delegates; now it’s only 15 percent of the total. Still, Clinton leads Sanders 380 to eleven among superdelegates.
At that rate, she could lose the actual state elections and still win the party’s presidential nomination.
The Democrats’ dereliction of democratic duty doesn’t end there, either.
The process by which various powerful party “interests” endorsed either Sanders or Clinton is quite telling. Journalist Zaid Jilani reports in The Intercept that, “Every major union or progressive organization that let its members have a vote endorsed Bernie Sanders.”
“Meanwhile,” Jilani found, “all of Hillary Clinton’s major group endorsements come from organizations where the leaders decide. And several of those endorsements were accompanied by criticisms from members about the lack of a democratic process.”
Seems the insiders have decided Mrs. Clinton will be on the Democratic Party presidential menu, whether Democrats like it or not.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Bernie Sanders has risen in the polls. He may even beat Hillary Clinton in the first caucus and primary contests for the Democratic presidential nomination.
A cause for celebration! Witnessing a huge hunk of Americans accept Mrs. Clinton, the consummate and corrupt insider, is too disheartening.
Bernie Sanders, for all his faults, is at least not an insider like Hillary.
And even when he’s obviously wrong, he’s a breath of fresh atmosphere. Take his recent call for turning the credit ratings institutions into non-profits, or into government-run bureaus. It’s good to hear someone on the left blame something other than the partial repeal of Glass-Steagall as the cause of the Crash of 2008, and (thus?) of the current “Great Recession.” Glass-Steagall was utterly irrelevant to the institutions that were hit hardest in 2008’s collapse; it has, nevertheless, served as leftists’ idée fixe for years now. Embarrassing.
The ratings agencies, on the other hand, did play a part in the crash.
Still, remember: their prominence and importance (and very existence) in financial sectors rests entirely upon one provision of FDR’s New Deal.
More importantly, Bernie’s favored solution — government bureaus — is no solution at all. Europe’s ratings system failed in 2008, too, as Mark A. Calabria has noted, and “it was the international financial regulators, not the rating agencies, who decided that Greek debt was ‘risk-free.’”
Earth to Bernie: government regulatory failure is normal.
Calabria agrees that we need to have a political conversation about the ratings agencies, but insists it be “based on facts,” not ideology.
I’m all for the facts, but ideologies are inevitable. And ideologies promoting Big Government inevitably fail.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Bernie Sanders promises universal health care, but, up until the other day, just waved his hands in the air, without specifics. Now he has a plan.
Sort of.
Ezra Klein, writing at Vox, says Sanders’s “Medicare for All” is not a plan at all. It’s a “gesture towards a future plan.”
But that doesn’t mean that the thing isn’t “well sold.”
After praising the Obamacare/Affordable Health Care Act for giving “health insurance” to more than 17 million people, the preamble of Sanders’s proposal made its most predictable statement: “Twenty-nine million Americans today still do not have health insurance and millions more are underinsured and cannot afford the high copayments and deductibles charged by private health insurance companies that put profits before people.”
Forget that deductibles are integral to the very idea of insurance. Forget that profits are absolutely necessary for the success of an industry. Forget that profits come from serving people.
Remember, instead, the leftist clichés.
Sanders’s plan, such as it is, is a lie — or, in Klein’s phrasing, “has nothing to do with Medicare.” Sanders aims to get rid of deductibles and copays, on which Medicare depends. It’s what makes Medicare distinct from, say, socialized medicine.
Insurance covers individually unforeseeable but actuarially manageable risks. Socialized medicine gets rid of the idea of “payment for service” on every level — and thus the very idea of insurance — and turns the whole thing over into a tax-and-spend program, i.e., what Sanders really wants.
That won’t be cheap, as Megan McArdle demonstrated some time back during the Vermont “single payer” kerfuffle.
The only option for increasing value while lowering prices? Go the opposite direction from socialism.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Categories
So Now We Know!
Bernie’s health plan will WORK (and save money!) through (wait for it!)…
GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY!
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On Tuesday, former (and perhaps soon to be again) First Daughter Chelsea Clinton attacked Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, her mother’s chief rival in the presidential primaries.
“Sen. Sanders wants to dismantle Obamacare, dismantle the [Children’s Health Insurance Program], dismantle Medicare, dismantle private insurance,” Chelsea charged, telling an Iowa audience that he “would strip millions and millions and millions of people off their health insurance.”
The Sanders campaign quickly fired back that the young Clinton was “wrong” and disingenuously ignoring the fact that Sanders would bestow government-paid healthcare coverage on every American. For free! (Unless you happen to pay taxes, that is. Then, it’d be very expensive.)
“It wasn’t an honest attack,” declared Democratic strategist David Axelrod on CNN.
But on ABC, Hillary defended her daughter, doubling-down by arguing, “that’s exactly what he’s proposed. To take everything we currently know as health care, Medicare, Medicaid, the CHIP Program, private insurance, now the Affordable Care Act, and roll it together.”
Strange, in 2008, when Hillary was promoting a single-payer system and Barack Obama took issue, Mrs. Clinton decried “tactics right out of Karl Rove’s playbook,” asking, “Since when do Democrats attack one another on universal healthcare?”
“This is wrong and every Democrat should be outraged,” the 2008 Hillary declared. “So shame on you, Barack Obama!”
Now it’s Hillary Clinton who knows no shame.
“More striking perhaps,” lamented Mark Halperin, a senior political analyst for MSNBC and Bloomberg News, “was a lack of interest that most of the news world had to [Chelsea’s] remarks.”
Maybe when Clintons “dismantle” the truth, it just isn’t news anymore.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
