Charlie Pierce on the media bobbleheads’ attack on Bernie Sanders:
Bernie Sanders won’t be president? No kidding, Bob. What was your first freaking clue? But, as I said, here’s the thing. Chris Christie won’t be president, either. Rand Paul won’t be president, either. Nobody’s out there in 2014 reminding their supporters that they’ll have to come to their senses some day. There is nobody telling Martin O’Malley’s supporters that they all should lay in some “READY FOR HILLARY” buttons against that inevitable day when the campaign craters. It is not a disqualifying flaw in a candidate two years before the election that the candidate is unlikely to win — or, even, that the candidate is very unlikely to win — because, if it were, nobody would be qualified to run. This is all understood, if rarely spoken, by the people who judge such things. But, so far, it’s a standard that has been openly applied only to Bernie Sanders. (Jesus, there are reporters out there who still are seriously talking about bringing back Willard Romney.) Why is it that Bernie Sanders is only in this to “push the dialogue to the left,” while Ted Cruz, who is a fking nut six ways to Sunday, is running because he has a “substantial constituency within the party”?
What is going on, I believe, is not an effort to marginalize Sanders but, rather, to marginalize what he’s talking about, because making a presidential election purely about class is something we don’t do any more. It really isn’t funny that Sanders talks incessantly about “the middle class,” because people who perceive themselves as middle class are finding themselves broken and sinking into poverty. Income inequality, and its pernicious effects on our people and our politics and our entire culture, is worth discussing, in detail, in a national election, and if Bernie Sanders wants to be monomaniacal on the subject, so what? Rudy Giuliani got months of great press as a potential president out of what Joe Biden famously called, “A noun, a verb, and 9/11.” Nobody accused Giuliani of running merely to push the conversation to the right, or into drag, or whatever. I’m old enough to remember 1979, when the smart money thought Ronald Reagan a superannuated joke. Right now, the 2016 election is nothing more than a vague national conversation about what’s important. If it’s all the same to everybody, for the moment, I’ll treat Bernie Sanders as a potential president the same way I’d treat Hillary Clinton or any of the others, thanks. It’s fking September of 2014. Nothing else makes sense.
In August the Consumer Price Index (CPI) fell .2%. That’s called deflation. Deflation leads to a Depression. Too few dollars, caused by low wages and high unemployment, chasing too many goods. Imported goods. From China, Mexico, Pakistan, etc. Our trade policy sucks thanks to Bill Clinton’s NAFTA. Bernie Sanders talks about that problem and even offers a solution. “Get rid of NAFTA.” Hillary? Well, Hillary supports the the XL Pipeline, the Asia/Pacific Trade Agreement, the Trans-Atlantic Trade Agreement and so on. Hillary apparently intends to make things much worse for American workers and far more profitable for the 1%. Chris Mathews of MSNBC scolded the Democrats yesterday for not falling into lockstep behind Hillary, but instead forming a Bernie/Warren insurgency. Thom Hartmann said yesterday that he would not take part in any Democratic circular firing squad. So both men are saying the same thing. To be a Progressive means never saying your sorry for supporting the most Progressive candidate. And Hillary ain’t that candidate.
Your story on GDP explains it all. America’s Royal families can’t have the topic of their destruction of the once great American society discussed openly. A significant portion of the 99% might become persuaded that the 1% need to be pulled from their mansions and limos and be set alight in the street.
Hopefully it will only be the limos and mansions that you intend to have set alight and not the people? Even that is a wanton act of unnecessary violence. There are much better punishments that can be meted out to the 1%. Like be required to live like the rest of us.