The Sanders Revolution Fails Itself

Bernie Sanders’s ride has come to its end. Finally. Or has it?

When Senator Sanders launched his nascent bid for the presidency last year, my initial thoughts were not complimentary. Here was a perennial outsider and nonconformist (qualities I actually could respect), who had charmed my home state of Vermont into thinking he could accomplish something in the Senate, casting aside any notions of political independence in signing on to the Democratic party machine. Why? “It is the only way to get elected,” he claimed at the time. If that were true, then Jill Stein and Gov. Gary Johnson would have to be at the party doorstep, would they not? The truth is, that was never the reason.

Playing the Trump Card

Though it was nearly twelve years ago now, I can remember it like it was yesterday. I sat around a lunch table with a bunch of coworkers in my new job and one of them picked up the newspaper to look at the election results. “I just don’t understand how anyone can vote for them?!” Them, in this instance, being Republicans. John Kerry has just been beaten handily by incumbent George W. Bush, despite all attempts to make the latter out to be the cronyist incompetent that he had become. The sentiment was widespread, and not just limited to our lunch table. But if you look at the map from that election, the widespread nature of this sentiment was limited to geographically small, but very densely populated sections of the country.

Fast forward to 2016, and those same areas of the country are bewildered at how anyone could vote for Trump in their own backyard. Let me say this at the outset – I would never, ever vote for Trump. I don’t think he’s a good human being, never mind a good presidential candidate. But deep down, I have to admit something: I understand why people are voting for him. 

The Unequal Arguments on Income Inequality

There has been, for a few years now, a lot of hue and cry about income inequality. The obvious solution of those who think this is a drastic problem is to reallocate the funds of those with the most money to those who have the least. After all, they say, in the richest country in the world, why should anyone go without?

But wait – why stop there? Why can those in the richest country in the world not afford to provide for all? And by all, let us be truly inclusive. The ‘income inequality’ crowd like to crow about the 1%, but fail to acknowledge that the overwhelming majority of Americans fall within the 1% themselves. An American with a household income of $37,000 is better off than 99% of people in the world. In fact, according to a World Bank economist, the bottom 5% of Americans are still better off than 68% of the world. Yet we don’t see that same hue and cry to address this global issue from the folks on the streets wanting $15 per hour as a minimum wage. Why is that?