I state here why I have come to support Bernie Sanders for President: Whereas Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — the modern Democratic Establishment — have been so conservative they might as well have called themselves “conservative” (and they didn’t say it because they needed to be able to win Democratic Party primaries), Sanders’s record shows that he isn’t like that at all; he’s an authentic democrat, and always has been, even when he didn’t call himself one (but only a “Progressive,” and a “socialist — like in Scandinavia”). I don’t care what a politician calls himself or herself, only what the person actually is, as the person has proven to be by the actual record as a public official.
The entire careers of Bernie Sanders, versus Barack Obama and both Bill and Hillary Clinton, display a stark difference. Whereas Obama and the Clintons were trying to win the votes of Democrats while secretly supporting Republican policies to redistribute even more wealth upward from the public to the aristocracy (and they did so) (and how!), Sanders has consistently been trying — and helping — to do the exact opposite: to redistribute wealth downward, from the aristocracy to the public. Taxes, and all of government policies, are inevitably wealth-distributional (who pays how much, and who gets how much of the benefits; and what benefits pay needs, versus what benefits pay mere wants). Any politician who says that government isn’t largely about the distribution of wealth, knows that what he is saying is false — he or she is lying about government. (Only their suckers can believe it.) The question isn’t whether government should redistribute wealth; it’s how. That’s reality, and every public official knows it.
If Sanders is a modern revolutionary, then politicians such as Obama and the Clintons (and all Republicans) are today’s version of the Redcoats — America’s enemies, the aristocracy that our Founders tried to outlaw but couldn’t. That’s the real difference between Bernie Sanders versus Obama & the Clintons — and all Republicans (since conservatism is the declared, and not only the real, ideology of that Party).
Bernie Sanders is aiming to return the Democratic Party to its FDR roots, which was when the Party had the most reason to be proud of what it stood for. Here is how Franklin Delano Roosevelt put it:
This is FDR talking: We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred. I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.
It’s a heritage that Bernie Sanders can proudly, and honestly, claim to be his own. Today’s Democratic Party Establishment, such as Robert Rubin’s Hamilton Project, and Bill Clinton’s Democratic Leadership Council or New Democrats, cannot. (In fact, to the exact contrary: both Rubin and Clinton ended FDR’s Glass-Steagall Act, and thus prepared the way for George W. Bush to crash the U.S. economy.)
There’s a problem in this country that goes deeper than ethnic bigotry, and it’s economic bigotry — the belief that a person’s net worth reflects his or her moral worth. When President Obama said to Wall Street’s CEOs, on 27 March 2009, “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks,” he was telling them that the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators were today’s version of the old KKK who had lynched Blacks — and that those CEOs who kept the fortunes they had made from bilking MBS investors were today’s version of the Blacks who had been lynched. FDR wouldn’t agree with any of that. Nor would Bernie Sanders. That’s what we need again, inside the White House.
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