Eschew Obfuscation –
By Michael Douglass –
What I hate about Americans is our notion of what is presidential.
Michael Wade Douglass
Tall, calm and graying at the temples.
Bill Clinton, Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan etc., all very presidential.
The cult of political celebrity.
Whatever.
Bernie Sanders is not presidential but I’d like to have a drink with him.
Bernie shows up on TV looking like he combed his hair with a sharp rock. His suit is wrinkled and his tie is cheesy. He sounds like a cab driver from Brooklyn and he has the on air presence of an assistant district attorney from south Boston. His Achilles heel is AIPAC and all matters Israel and he’s got gun issues.
These things give me pause.
He’s not ideal.
But he is smart and completely unafraid.
No candidate is perfect. None will ever be as far as I’m concerned. None will ever be as far as you are either. Look in the mirror. That’s as close as you are ever going to get and you will never run for president.
He’s not a choice because of what we’ve learned to picture on our screens. It’s the only test he doesn’t pass. Otherwise, he’s been consistent from the day he walked on. He’s a socialist. Our republic is a failing model because of unchecked capitalism. It survives only because of some modicum of socialism.
It’s why we don’t don’t actually enslave the migrant workers that clean our hotel rooms or why our salads aren’t $50 a pop. Instead, the bigots bitch about them taking jobs none of us would ever consider and they get to go to the emergency room when it’s a matter of life and death. It’s a better deal than most of them will ever admit.
Bernie Sanders is a socialist. That very word is so polarizing it will probably prevent him from ever being elected. Nevermind the socialist constructs in this country that we all take for granted everyday. Fire departments and libraries, medicare and social security. For whatever reason Americans have been taught to fear that word so profoundly that we imagine it threatens our existence.
It’s sucks because it is why we aren’t a third world country.
Or a theocracy or plutocracy.
All of the above
Can Bernie beat Hillary?
It’s unlikely.
Hillary’s support is broad but shallow. She’s hawkish and corporate cozy. Her path is trickier than most estimate. She’s got baggage and skeletons and a lot of Americans think she’s a bitch.
She is vulnerable.
She has the amps but maybe not the volts.
Bernie has voltage. A long history of consistent values, beliefs and actions that amount to a rare integrity. It’s formidable. His support is deep. But he needs amperage. Broader support. Crucial and hard to come by. Wattage.
He is not presidential and that might just be the best reason to vote for him.
He is the best person to run for president in my lifetime.
Thom Hartmann says Bernie is not kidding. He’s not here to pull Clinton to the right. He’s in it to win it. I hope he’s right. He probably won’t get the nomination and what pisses me me off is he won’t get taken seriously by the media. We deserve him. This man says every single thing I crave to hear on every issue that every other politician has avoided for the entire time I’ve been paying attention.
He goes right at it.
Fuck big banks, fuck big pharma, fuck big energy, fuck the military industrial complex.
Fuck everything that fucks with most of us every fucking day.
Goddamn I love that. He is a no bullshit, unapologetic liberal. He is a socialist.
We need socialism because capitalism is running amok. Capitalism is why an education costs as much as a house. Capitalism is why a $1 bag of saline costs $700 in a hospital.
Capitalism is why I pay $1.30 more a gallon for gas in California than the rest of the country despite oil being less than $50 a barrel. The minimum wage used to be a living wage and capitalism is why it is now not enough sustain an individual. Capitalism is why, despite all of this, corporations are far richer than they have ever been while worker productivity is at an all time high and wages are stagnant.
Capitalism is why they are no longer embarrassed to buy and sell our elected representatives on television.
Bernie Sanders has been talking about this shit his entire life.
What more do you want?
He has my vote.
Then I’ll vote for Hillary in the general because the GOP offers nothing but filthy idiots.
Drinks for my friends.
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