Fascinated by Bernie

I am fascinated by Bernie Sanders' run for the presidency. Don't get me wrong, I am not particularly a supporter, but fascinated by his rise and primary run. He, truly, does have a solid base of followers which I find as fascinating as those of Trump. You see, Sander's base doesn't seem to grow or show up when it comes time to vote, and yes, I have the stats to support this. Trump's avid, dare I say rabid, supporters are solid too but also don't seem to grow in number. The difference is they do tend to show up.

Rivals of Sanders point to his inflexibility and how little he has accomplished in his 29 years in the House and Senate. Supporters point to him as a voice for the downtrodden and democratic socialism. It is true that of the 422 bills he has been the lead sponsor on, he has had only three become laws and two of those were to name post offices which is from congress.gov.  This, however, is not truly reflective of his impact. For example, he pushed for and added funding for community health care centers in the Affordable Care Act. In fact, Bernie's real success is in amendments. He has offered over 500 amendments, esp. while he was in the House. About one in five of his amendments ended up being added to laws, but many of those were stripped from the final product.  His power, especially in the past number of years, has been that he is an unflinching ideologue. He creates public spectacles and grassroots pressure to get his ideas across. In other words, while his legislative accomplishments are pretty thin, his cause for change is as much about changing the conversation as it is about pushing congress for legislation. The question is though as President, will this same inflexible, single-mindedness serve him without compromise? The answer is probably going to be "yes" if he can get his base to show up and "no" if he is only yelling to the choir and no one else.

This brings me to the statement in the first paragraph. At a rally just before Super Tuesday, he had 13,000 supporters show up in Massachusetts.  Yet, he lost the state in the primary to Joe Biden who not only had no rallies in the state but had no offices and hadn't spent one dollar on advertising in the state. Sanders frequently points to the number of new voters he brings to the party, but the fact is the statistics just don't bear that out. The percentage of votes he had in 2016 was significantly lower in the recent primaries. He lost Oklahoma to Biden which he won in 2016. His claim of bringing in younger voters just isn't accurate. The youth vote on Super Tuesday was down in comparison to his 2016 bid. Again, his argument that he will bring in new voters only rings true if they show up, but so far in the primaries and caucuses, he hasn't turned out the numbers he did in 2016.

Despite Biden's claims on the debate stage, Bernie does have a list of how he plans on paying for his democratic socialist dreams. I am not going to say I disagree. I, too, believe that health care should be a right. The tuition loan programs are a nightmare, and I know more than a few people who make the required payments, and the loans only get bigger. There is nothing wrong with making sure that people can find shelter and food. Do, however, Bernie's plans cover the cost. The simple answer to a complex problem according to a number of nonpartisan experts is "no." To do all that he wants to do, it will cost roughly fifty trillion dollars. This figure includes the 13.3 trillion deficit that is courtesy of things like the economic downturn in 2007 which was just starting to come down when the Trump Tax Cut was passed with no funding.

Here's a list and cost according to the Washington Post:

Sanders’s Spending, 2021-2030:

1. Deficits under existing policies: $13.1 trillion
2. “Free” college for all and the cancellation of existing student debt: $2.2 trillion
3. Expand Social Security and other retirement benefits: $1.4 trillion (estimated by the Progressive Policy Institute)
4. Housing for all: $2.5 trillion
5. Eliminating household medical debt: $81 billion
6. Green New Deal (programs to stop global warming): $16.3 trillion
7. Universal child care and preschool: $1.5 trillion
8. Medicare-for-all: $17.5 trillion
Total: $54.6 trillion

So, if the government maintains its current spending over the next decade, then that means with the Sanders' plan added, the size of the government will be about 80% larger. If we do indeed pattern these plans on the democratic socialist states in Europe, we have to remember a few things. The USA is a huge, unruly landmass with a population of about 327 million people. Norway who has a number of these ideals on the books has a population of 5.3 million. That's a huge difference. If we raise taxes on the billionaires, we can expect some very high-priced lawyers and accountants who will make sure that the new tax does as little damage as possible. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, if all spending were covered by deficit spending, we can expect the national deficit to grow to 66.8 trillion by 2030. The tax burden would have to nearly double to cover this. Now add the 50 trillion that Sanders' plan would add. The wealth tax would actually raise about only 4.3 trillion. You have to remember that the billionaires of the world don't just have their wealth in money it also in things that income tax doesn't include. Sorry, the math just doesn't bear fruit. 

And yet, Sanders' clear-eyed vision for a better world is what drives him, his followers, and my fascination for a 78-year old man who has captured the imagination of the young. He really does want to make things better and this brings me to another thing that fascinates me by this most unusual candidate. Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat and yet he runs in Democratic Primaries and Caucuses by registering as one in the states when he runs. He has, however, already filed for his Senate run in 2022 as an Independent. He actually did the same thing in 2016. There also is an actual party named The Democratic Socialists of America. Yet, Sanders will be the second person in what is now a two-man race for the nomination following Super Tuesday's results. 

I know many of his believers want to think of Bernie as the new center-left of the political spectrum. If you listen and read a lot of the Democratic base's statement, you might believe that the progressive movement is the only driving force in the party. But just as Trump's true believers think that their extreme position is representative of the Republican party, it isn't. If one actually looks at the main candidates that caught on from the original 20 plus running for the nomination, the math is very different. Biden, Klobuchar, Buttigieg, Bloomberg and even Steyer all who are recognized as center-left to center-right generally split 55 to 65 percent of the vote while Sanders and Warren, the far-left progressive of 30 to 45 percent. In the Iowa caucus Warren and Sanders took 44.1 percent and the middle of Biden, Buttigieg and Klobuchar took 54.3 percent. The outlier for Sanders has been Nevada where he took home 46.8 percent of the vote. Really, the support for Sanders doesn't really seem to grow. Even in California, his biggest win for delegates, he currently sits at about 33.8 percent. Admittedly, his vote totals would probably grow if Warren had dropped out sooner, but then again, so would've Biden, who currently sits at 25.1, if Bloomberg had dropped out and if Buttigieg and Klobuchar had also dropped out before early voting had started.

Perhaps the biggest problem that gets in Bernie's way, besides the socialist label and not really being a Democrat, is he actually is running against the party whose nomination he hopes to get. He runs an insurgent campaign that is fueled by idealism, perception and occasionally by

extreme supporters. He rails against the system often giving him the appearance of that stereotypical old guy yelling at kids to get off his lawn. Attacking the establishment of the party you want to endorse you is probably not a good idea. What's the old adage about biting the hand?

I don't know where you stand on Bernie Sanders, but I remain fascinated by him.