Skip to main content

Weekend with Bernie

By


Looks like the Bernie for President campaign might not be a joke after all.  His campaign reported it raised $1.5 million in the 24 hours after his announcement, outpacing Republican hopefuls on their first day of campaigning.  Hillary didn't disclose her first day contributions.   Bernie is running a grass roots campaign much like Jesse Jackson and Jerry Brown ran in 1984 and 1992 respectively.  Being a vehement critic of big money in the campaign, there will be no Bernie Super PAC raising money for him on the fringes.  As a result, he will find himself at a distinct disadvantage financially versus Hillary.  That might actually work for him, like it did Jackson and Brown, who scored big primary victories in their campaigns, although they were eventually routed by Walter Mondale and Bill Clinton.

Bernie comes across as Howard Beale from the movie Network.  Glaring at the camera with his disheveled hair, Bernie looks angry most of the time, but every once in a while a smile comes across his lips as though he has driven his point home.  He wants a political revolution against the billionaire oligarchs he feels are controlling the election process.  No argument there, but is Hillary really a part of that "class?"  If so, he threatens to mount a Tea Party-like campaign within the Democratic Party.

Twenty-plus years ago I would have been attracted to Bernie, but today there is too much on the line to play around with insurgent candidates.  I would hate to see the Democratic primaries turned into a three-ring circus, which appears to be the case with the GOP primaries now that Dr. Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina have announced their candidacies.

Not that the Democratic Party doesn't need a little shaking up.  It has grown stagnant in the last eight years, failing to generate any viable candidate for President other than Hillary Clinton, which has left many rank and file Democrats feeling they have been shortchanged.  Can Bernie tap into this dissatisfied mass?

Hillary has already adopted much the same message, aiming her campaign at a disgruntled middle class that doesn't feel its wages have kept up with the increased cost of living.  But, Hillary does come from the moneyed class, so you have to wonder how far she would go with reforms.  She certainly isn't going to exclude Super PACs from her campaign.  Ready for Hillary may look like a grass roots movement but it is a well-funded Super PAC.

Bernie estimates he will need $150 to $200 million to mount a serious challenge.  Even with this kind of money, he will be well short of the political juggernauts Hillary and Jeb Bush are assembling.  However, if he turns out to be the only one running against Hillary in the Democratic primaries, he should generate a lot of free publicity in the news, which he has already done.

Mostly, I think he is there to keep Hillary honest, as I don't think he feels he has a real chance here.  At 73, he represents the graying ideals of the Democratic Party.  Hillary isn't exactly a spring chicken, but she is more in step with the current nature of the electorate.  It would have been nice to see a younger candidate, say Julian Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio, who gave the keynote address at the 2012 Democratic Convention, but he like many others chose to stand aside for Hillary.  Not Bernie.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dylan in America

By
Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan.  Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose.  Looks like only yesterday.  Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.
182 comments
Read more

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro
228 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more