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The White Hot Rage of Bernie Sanders
Surrounded by tens of supporters, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders announced his candidacy for the White House Tuesday. Though his entry has been rumored for months, the very old, very white socialist shocked observers by delivering the most searing indictment of Obama’s America that has ever been carried on basic cable.
Looking grimly upon six years of Obama’s failed leadership, Sanders characterized the United States as a Hobbesian hellscape run by greedy oligarchs, double-dealing pols, and shadowy special interests. Delivering his speech in a state that is only one percent African-American, the white-haired, pink-skinned 73-year-old angrily denounced an America that has passed him by.
I have gathered Sen. Sanders most incendiary attacks on the leadership of America’s first black president:
Obama’s America is utterly corrupt.
“Enough is enough. This great nation and its government belong to all of the people, and not to a handful of billionaires, their Super-PACs and their lobbyists.”
“Stale” Obama offers no new ideas.
“Now is not the time for thinking small. Now is not the time for the same old – same old establishment politics and stale inside-the-beltway ideas.”
Obama has destroyed the middle class and sacrificed America’s leadership in the world.
Now is the time for millions of working families to come together, to revitalize American democracy, to end the collapse of the American middle class and to make certain that our children and grandchildren are able to enjoy a quality of life that brings them health, prosperity, security and joy – and that once again makes the United States the leader in the world in the fight for economic and social justice, for environmental sanity and for a world of peace.
Obama has driven America to its lowest point in modern history.
“This country faces more serious problems today than at any time since the Great Depression and, if you include the planetary crisis of climate change, it may well be that the challenges we face now are direr than any time in our modern history.”
“In America we now have more income and wealth inequality than any other major country on earth, and the gap between the very rich and everyone is wider than at any time since the 1920s.”
“In recent years, we have seen a proliferation of millionaires and billionaires at the same time as millions of Americans work longer hours for lower wages and we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on earth… This grotesque level of inequality is immoral. It is bad economics. It is unsustainable. This type of rigged economy is not what America is supposed to be about.”
Obama is lying about unemployment.
“The truth is that real unemployment is not the 5.4 percent you read in newspapers. It is close to 11 percent if you include those workers who have given up looking for jobs or who are working part time when they want to work full time. Youth unemployment is over 17 percent and African-American youth unemployment is much higher than that. Today, shamefully, we have 45 million people living in poverty, many of whom are working at low-wage jobs. These are the people who struggle every day to find the money to feed their kids, to pay their electric bills and to put gas in the car to get to work.”
Obama has caused citizens to lose hope, abandon democracy.
“It is no secret that there is massive discontent with politics in America today. In the mid-term election in November, 63 percent of Americans did not vote, including 80 percent of young people. Poll after poll tells us that our citizens no longer have confidence in our political institutions and, given the power of Big Money in the political process, they have serious doubts about how much their vote actually matters and whether politicians have any clue as to what is going on in their lives. Combating this political alienation, this cynicism and this legitimate anger will not be easy.”
Obama is literally starving Americans:
Let us be honest and acknowledge that millions of Americans are now working for totally inadequate wages. The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is a starvation wage and must be raised.
As you can see, Sanders’ announcement was a 35-minute dog whistle playing to the worst fears of the angry, all-white crowd. His croaking screams for “revolution” would make a rock-ribbed constitutionalist like Ted Cruz blush.
Only time will tell if the Father Coughlin-style jeremiads of Sanders’ youth can still motivate a modern, pluralistic America. But at least in one corner of White America, there are tens of people who will never accept the leadership of Barack Obama.
Published in General
“Tens of supporters”. That was just cruel, Jon.
I would vote for Bernie Sanders long before I would vote for Jeb Bush.
There are dozens of them! DOZENS!!!
I know people on Ricochet think I’m nuts, but I’m concerned about this guy. He is a Chavez candidate.
“Yes, things are bad for you, and it’s all their fault.”
We can’t argue that things are not bad for a lot of people–I saw on a Yahoo! news site yesterday that a third of millennials are living with their parents. That’s just one indicator. It’s the Democrats’ fault, but they won’t say that. Nor will they offer any intelligent solutions. The Sanders campaign will do what communists always do. Sanders will offer demagoguery.
He will force Clinton and/or Elizabeth Warren to tack harder left than they would otherwise.
Republican candidates are going to be thrown for a loop by the Sanders campaign.
And what the Republicans are facing in 2016 if they should win will be piles of unpaid bills, a decaying infrastructure, and a demoralized and underfunded military. Oh, and did I mention the rise of ISIS.
There won’t be any tax relief for a year or two. Maybe three.
I wish Sanders would go away, but that’s not going to happen.
Amen, brother!
No dynasties please, we are Americans. Something is broken in the system if we have to suffer through a Ma Clinton and Jeb Bush match up.
Love it, Jon! Biting.
Three’s a crowd.
Somebody tell Bernie that the first four Internationals called. They said the Fifth has been postponed indefinitely because Socialism doesn’t work.
Bernie, if you don’t believe that take a road trip to Venezuela and have a look around. Bring your own toilet paper.
Sanders is a true believer, which puts him at odds with the prep school, faculty lounge lizard currently occupying the White House and with the money-mad scheming phony who was our Secretary of State. He’s the Code Pink candidate of a party whose base is trending redder and redder.
Sanders has all the illusions and utopian ideas of his ancestors, illusions and ideas born in Brooklyn, but which have been free to grow undisturbed by reality in the hot-house political environment of all-white and all-liberal Vermont.
He’s old, stale, backward-looking, obnoxious and utterly lame. Even in the 1970s when I lived on the Upper West Side the Bernie Sanders-type was already a joke, “Mr. Sammler” notwithstanding. There’s no point trying to debate him – just let him rant and enjoy a good laugh.
Even if he wins, he will find it very difficult to actually push through much. Not only will a near super-majority of state governments oppose him, thanks to Republican success at that level, but the federal bureaucracy is so sclerotic that anything large he wants to implement will get bogged down just like the healthcare exchanges. Further, though Sanders is well-known as a principled man, he has no natural base of support in the legislature, and no motivated consigliere like Harry Reid to whip votes on hard-left proposals that even some centrist Democrats will be uncomfortable with.
It doesn’t matter who the next President is, not really. The important issues will be fought out at the state and local levels.
The most telling insight into Sander’s ossified worldview: his contention that there is no moral justification for having 24 varieties of deodorant in the store when children are going hungry. It’s really a new wrinkle on the zero-sum idea. You’d love to ask: “How many varieties would have to be eliminated to reduce child poverty by ten percent? How would you do it? No, don’t tell me about ending tax breaks to corporations – if you think we have too much choice in underarm deodorants, how would you use the power of the state to shift resources? Would you pass a law forbidding new brands unless another one is sunset? Would you require certain companies to exit the market and direct all manufacturing, promotional, and administrative costs related to that brand to be given to the poor? Would you extend this idea to soda, potato chips, music, toothpaste, detergent, light bulbs, and the rest? In short, how much product variety does a just society have? Do you support nationalization of industries to reallocate resources by force? Be specific.”
But of course he wouldn’t be able to answer any of that.
“OLD SPICE WAS GOOD ENOUGH FOR MY PAPPY DURING THE WAR, AND IT’S GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU YOUNG WHIPPERSNAPPERS TOO!”
Good points. I learned everything I ever needed to know about government on Yes, Minister. You’re right. Not even a card-carrying Socialist can move them. :) Maybe the bureaucrats serve a stabilizing purpose after all.
My husband pointed out over the weekend that the Feds can’t raise the interest rates because they’ll get hit too. That trillion-dollar debt. What a thought! Maybe the citizens and the bureaucrats have more in common than I thought. :)
That’s the spirit! Optimism and hope (even if it comes from sclerotic bureaucracy and a massive public debt)! Hehe.
Also, I just started watching “Yes, Minister” a few days ago and I am in love. It’s amazing.
I have a lot of lib friends that love the 90% interest rate and have been talking about it for years. They dream of the good times of the 50s and believe the 90% rate was the cause of it. I have not talked to all of them but those I have are giddy with Sanders plans. While they may not love Sanders they will push to get his plans as part of the Democratic Party planks.
It is an amazing cast. And I read somewhere that it was Margaret Thatcher’s favorite show. Several times I had to pause the show because I couldn’t stop laughing. My favorite episode is the one in which the hospital gets all these awards and it has never treated a single patient.
It’s the one show I wish I owned. Absolutely loved it.
He is probably mostly right about the problem statement, and most likely completely wrong on what he thinks we should do about it.
The Party had decided you will have one deodorant and it will be dur deodorant.
“I would vote for Bernie Sanders long before I would vote for Jeb Bush.”
Wait — you would do what? Really? I’m no fan of Jeb — far from it, in fact. But this statement seems a bit…extreme. Surely a squishy RINO would be better than an outright socialist.
His youth outreach strategy could use a little work.
I can see Bernie on that Vermont mountain top now…
Hillary might adopt this tactic, but she could add her own twist, of course: “Mr. Sanders, do you really want to deny women ten different varieties of tampons?”
In Sanders’ defense, he is and always has been an economic illiterate. He calls for radical new ideas to tackle the unemployment problem, through the novel approach of…..a federal jobs program.
https://dangerwaffles.wordpress.com/2015/05/25/bernie-sanders-apocalypto-economics-part-1/
But that’s just one – one! – on a list of action items our President-In-Waiting hopes to bring to Americans.
In a way, I celebrate this lunacy. It shows how very, very little personal ability and skill can be translated into $174K per year, to do, basically, nothing.
Bite your tongue. Jeb has much better hair than Bernie.
Sorry about that, but this Micmac isn’t liberal.
He’d have an answer for it, but it would be wrong. The better question is “How many brands of deodorant were on the shelves in the nationalized economics of say, the former Soviet Union? How many on the shelves in Cuba right now? North Korea?”
Are kids doing well in those places?
I’ve always wanted one of these: USSR Vintage Men Man Stick
I agree completely. there is a great deal of room between Jeb Bush and Sanders.
If Bernie will be outlawing Axe Deoderant I will give his canidacy due consideration.
We could update it for the 21st century and call it “derp”.