What Makes Bernie A Radical?
Bernie Sanders loves to say that he doesn’t believe what he is aiming to achieve for America is all that radical. After all those Northern European countries have a much higher standard of living for their average citizens than their American counterparts. What’s wrong with wanting that for Americans too? There is nothing wrong with that. Bernie, nothing.
The problem is not what you profess to be aiming to achieve, Bernie. It’s the stubborn, blockheaded way you go about it. Did no one ever explain to you that politics is the art of the possible? Every play called in a football game need not end in a touchdown in order to eventually win the game, or every swing at the ball be a home run in oder to beat the other team.
You, it turns out, keep on insisting on being dead right, meaning that what you aspire to politically always ends up dead. You’re like that fellow entering an intersection in which he has the right of way. But as he approaches the crossroad, he happens to notice that there is a truck racing to go crossways through the intersection, right through a stop sign. Now a prudent man would give way realizing that there is not much point in being dead right, but politically speaking not you, Bernie. You plow ahead and get run over every time.
Some would say you are a slow leaner, not me. To me you’re one of those guys who needs an endless quest to feel alive. The last thing you want is to find practical solutions that would end your need for the quest itself — a pure dreamer must never stop dreaming, right?
Take Medical care for all for example. There is a relatively easy solution to giving healthcare to all Americans, but you absolutely refuse to take yes for an answer. For starters all that needs doing is to improve Obama care as a public option. That’s it — full stop. Eventually everyone will likely switch over from their private health insurance to the public option as they see fit, meaning you end up with the single payer healthcare system you profess to want.
But, no, allowing folks to go into a single payer healthcare system at their own pace just cuts across the grain of your all or noting radicalism, not because it wouldn’t be a good fix for the country, but because it would kill your personal need for an endless quest. That, Bernie, old boy, is why you are a radical, and why you will end up losing to a man of real solutions.
