I know that’s not much of a prayer, but that’s how I feel. But, even if my wish comes true, and Hillary Clinton can earn a majority of delegates prior to the convention this summer, Bernieismo has already taken its toll on the Democratic Party, pushing a donkey that was not terribly “progressive” in the first place deep into paleo-liberal—or perhaps that should be “Neanderthal-liberal”—territory.
It’s “arguable” that Bernie is just the latest in a succession of “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party” challengers to the mainstream candidates. He does sound a lot like Howard Dean, and a whole lot like Ralph Nader, who greatly helped George W. Bush become president. After eight years in office, a president does a lot of compromising. The favors he can do to the faithful he has done many years before, and there’s no reason to be “good” any more.
It’s also more than arguable that Hillary Clinton is a lousy candidate. Every eight years, Americans want “new” in a candidate, and Hillary is as old as they come, and up to her old, old tricks, shooting herself in the foot and then denying and dissembling for months afterwards. If Hillary had only used the State Department server for her emails, it’s, again, “arguable” that she’d have the nomination won by now.
But even if she had, Bernie would have made his mark, because, unfortunately, a large chunk of the Democratic Party has already bought Bernie’s rap. The $15 minimum wage, now the law in both New York and California is a terrible idea. Instead of alleviating the high cost of living in those states, the increase will add to it. The proper tactic, of eliminating all the barriers to housing construction that generations of liberals have labored to put in place, is regarded as well, you know, “batshit insane”.
The massive growth in both the size and the wealth of America’s upper class—the top 5%, the top 1%, the top 0.1%, and the top 0.01%—has left the old “knowledge workers”—journalists, school teachers, college professors, government workers, etc.—feeling humiliated and bereft of power.1 Sanders exemplifies this resentment with his endless complaints about the power of money to corrupt society. What Bernie is preaching is more revenge than economics. He doesn’t have a rational plan for reforming the banking industry or campaign finance. He just wants to “get” the big shots, make them suffer, teach them a lesson.
Young people buy into this because they feel left behind as well. They grew up in an era when college was supposed to be fun, where you would get to hang out and do cool stuff and then eventually go to graduate school, when you would actually get your act together. Now they feel they’ve wasted years of their lives, watching the interest on their student loans swell into mountains of unpayable debt, with nothing to look forward to but a lifetime of poverty.
How do the Democrats turn this around? All the ideas that appeal most to young people—basically, make everything free and also spend trillions on utopian environmentalism—appeal because they are so unrealistic, because reality these days is so boring. We know how this movie ends. Let’s see another one: ignorance may not be bliss, but at least it’s entertaining.
UPDATE: God Listens!
A lot, actually. Not only did Hillary crush Bernie, but Donald Trump crushed Ted Cruz. I think Trump is clearly more beatable than Ted, and Hilary definitely needs a beatable opponent.
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In “hot ticket” cities like New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, and Washington, DC, liberals are in large part struggling to keep “affordable” housing in cities that are so attractive to the wealthy (both American and international) that, if the market were truly allowed to work its magic, they would, like Vancouver, be inhabited in large part by people with incomes north of $250,000. (In Manhattan, of course, it would be more like “north of $25,000,000.”) ↩︎
