Dear America,
The Catholic sacrament of confession is premised on the belief that confession cleanses the soul. I am not Catholic, but I also believe that confession has a cathartic, soothing capacity, so I'm going to take this opportunity to do so. I committed to voting for Bernie Sanders when he announced, both in the primaries and in the general election, but I had been wavering lately because of fear that he had less of a chance of beating Donald Trump or Ted Cruz than Hillary Clinton did. Given the menace that those two represent--a stark raving egotist and a stark raving conservative--I was willing to be pragmatic in the spirit of patriotism and vote for her. Though she is flawed with the same kind of expediency as her husband was, she isn't that bad...certainly not as bad as Trump and Cruz. And I would have voted for Sanders anyway, I think, but with trepidation, and thus, I wavered. But Bernie won Michigan yesterday: a surprise, upset result. Then this morning, I looked up the most recent general election polls, and I was shocked, but very pleasantly surprised. CNN's poll indicates that Bernie Sanders would do better in the general election than Hillary Clinton, whom the poll shows as a loser to both Cruz and Rubio, although not to Trump. Bernie, on the other hand, beats any one of the three handily...according to CNN anyway. I am ebullient.
My guess is that the contest between Sanders' near radical demand for change and Clinton's subdued request for it has been a plague to most Democrats. Most of us aren't oblivious to practical realities, and we feel more now than ever that it is imperative that a Democrat be the next president. If a Republican wins, his party will run rampant through all of the gains we have made in the name of progressive, compassionate governance and much, if not all, of the social awareness that such governance constitutes will be in jeopardy. The repeal of the Affordable Care Act would likely be the first conservative purge to afflict us, but right behind us would be marital rights, religious deference at the expense of the civil rights of the rest of us, voting rights, balanced federal budgets at the expense of social programs, privatization of Social Security and Medicare, and the list goes on and on. Much of the Great Society of LBJ has already been undermined, but it would all go in deference to some Calvinist brand of sanctimony, what I am not calling didactic positivism. Ronald Reagan would be officially deified via an obsession with the "supply side," and getting wealthy, no matter at whose expense or at what environmental cost, would become the holy grail. Forward to the future, I say, not back to it.
It is fascinating to me that conservatives extol the Reagan era by pointing out that millions of jobs were created during his administration, and they attribute those jobs to one thing: tax cuts. But they fail to mention that even more jobs were created during the Clinton administration...by two million if my recollection is correct...and taxes on the well-to-do were increased during Clinton's eight years. And we haven't had a scandal like the Iran-Contra affair and Ollie North since Reagan, though his ethical and philosophical scion, George W. Bush, did get us into a pair of wars under false pretenses and we're still paying the price. Of course, where North was Reagan's minion, Bush was Cheney's, but the roll reversal doesn't exculpate the latter president. While we have had Reagan epigones put themselves forward as leaders since Reagan, they have all been nothing better than mimics, but the risk with Trump and Cruz, even Rubio to a large extent, is that a new kind of political abuse of our democracy would come to the fore, and we would all suffer for it, possibly resulting in another thirty years of misguided policy. Even Barrack Obama has been influenced by that supply-side nonsense, and by the notion that yielding on the progressive agenda by giving the Republicans what they want is compromise. It isn't. It's just yielding.
So, here comes Bernie Sanders with a new political paradigm. Stand for what you believe is right for the great majority of the American people and you can win even though the rich have had all the power for more than three decades. Instead of basing his philosophy on the supply-side, he is considering all sides, even the rich, because a more balanced economy will be a more productive one: fairer, more universally prosperous and thus, more stable in its progress toward a future in which everyone does well and no one has to suffer fear and indignity because he or she doesn't have enough money. We will mind our own business under Bernie, though we will still be available to join in noble, international causes. No more "American exceptionalism." Just American nobility of mind and spirit.
So, while pessimism waxed in me until I read that poll, I am healed. I can vote for Bernie Sanders without fear. I hope everyone else can too.
Your friend,
Mike
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