This thought occurred to me last night: Democratic presidential frontrunner Bernie Sanders is someone who asks all the right questions but provides all the wrong answers. Let me preempt the following screed by saying the following: No matter who the Democratic candidate is in November, this independent voter will vote for him (or hopefully, her) and not for the Republican incumbent. And I certainly will not Not Vote in protest. We should all vote, no?
But as for Bernie, it feels as if he’s appealing to the Get Off My Lawn! millennial crowd. See, what we older types find unappealing about millennials is that they seem immune to counsel; they’ve not experienced anything but they know it all. Whereas I imagine what they loathe about people like me is that we are completely useless around smartphones and iPads. that we’ll never acknowledge that LeBron is better than Jordan (he isn’t, but he’s very close), and that we’re stubborn and set in our ways.
Having gotten that out of the way, yes, it’s not fair that health care and college education have become prohibitively expensive. But just because your parents and/or grandparents enjoyed one standard of living does not mean that you deserve it, also. One thing you learn over the age of 35: “deserve” is a word for children, or adults who are emotionally children. You don’t deserve anything. And life’s not fair. Wear a helmet, as they say.
Here’s Bernie in an interview with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes the other night. This wasn’t some gotcha interview that Bernie didn’t see coming. He knew he was going to sit down with the most intrepid and well-prepared journalist this side of Ronan Farrow. Watch:
Again, Bernie brings up excellent points about social injustice. He just doesn’t have a realistic solution. In fact, even he doesn’t know how much his solution will cost.
One example of my being verklempt: Can we all agree that college education is too expensive and yet also agree that that does not mean it should be free? Like, I don’t not order the lobster because it’s too expensive and then demand instead to pay nothing for it. Whatever you’re paying for your smart phone usage per month, that’s a good start to what your college tuition should be on a monthly basis. At least.
The Bernie Bros attitude doesn’t surprise me because I’ve been on Twitter for awhile. There’s no one so intolerant as a millennial who demands tolerance. And these folks are hyper-attuned not to listening, but to striking back. So I ask, Who’s going to pay for all this? The wealthy? Good luck with that.
America can be a much fairer place than it is today. No doubt. But to insist that everyone is going to get everything they want on the backs of those who are dead set against that happening? The only revolution that’ll make that happen is a violent one. And even if Bernie’s elected, those proposals are never getting through Congress.
I like Bernie. I do. And I wouldn’t mind seeing Larry David portray him on SNL for four years. I just wonder how many people supporting him are doing so because they love the “Free Shit!” mantra and are living in their parents’ houses rent-free while doing so.*
*I’ve lived in my parents’ house rent-free for brief spells as an adult. It’s awesome. But I’m not proud of it.
Should health care and college be more affordable? Definitely. Is the concentration of wealth in the top 1% only becoming more concentrated and does that have long-term ill effects on the country? Of course. Is the man in the Oval Office, as Bernie said the other night, “a pathological liar?” People are saying.
But there’s a better way to solve this than going to the extreme opposite ends. Save the hard lefts for Daytona and Indy. America would be better served by someone less radical.
I like everything in this column-ette. I too will vote for Bernie if forced to – priority #1 is to get Trump out – but what he wants is not going to happen, nor should it. And I’m speaking as someone who would be among the bigger beneficiaries of most of what he wants.
I have a few outspoken Bernie Bros in my life. The two biggest supporters among them are people who very intentionally made no effort to succeed in this America. I don’t think this is a coincidence.
Here’s the thing about the whole “free stuff” concept:
It’s not free in terms of lacking a payment source. It’s free in that you don’t have to whip out your checkbook or credit/debit card, or a stack of 20s/100s, at the point of service.
A core concept of progressive policymaking is that universality of programs in which everyone pays in reduce barriers between elites and commoners. No, Pete Buttigieg or Barron Trump aren’t likely to go to public schools, but they would pay into the tax base funding tuition-free college and trade school, so if they wanted to go that way, they could. Everyone has access. Everyone has a stake in the progress and condition of public institutions. It doesn’t mean everyone will choose to attend them or be involved in them, but everyone is contributing. It’s not free in that larger sense.
On the specific matter of where/how Bernie will fund his programs, the answers have been out there for quite some time: taxing the sh** out of billionaires, reducing military spending, and — specifically on Medicare for All — eliminating administrative bloat and waste. These are all things Bernie has referred to in his standard stump speech at rallies on the campaign trail.
Will his legislation get passed — no, certainly not in the first half of his first term, with the Senate near 50-50.
However: No Democrat will get legislation passed as long as Mitch McConnell has anything close to a split Senate. Moderate plans won’t get passed, either–Mitch won’t play nice, which has been Biden’s very errant argument all along.
The play for Bernie — which he has been up front about — is to use executive orders on drug pricing and immigration in the first days of his presidency, and use those reversals of Trump policy to gain trust not just with his base, but a wider coalition.
In 2022, the Senate map is more favorable for Democrats. If the Dems pick up several seats and get something close to 60, then McConnell will have to recalibrate whether — and how long — he can stifle progressive legislation in the face of the movement politics Bernie hopes to continue to use to good effect.
None of what Bernie is proposing is going to be easily passed/achieved/realized, and the man who knows the best how difficult it will be to achieve anything is Bernie himself.
Final point: If a group of 10 Democrats sat around a table (or campfire, or a TV watching March Madness) and discussed this question — How can the Democratic Party win national elections for generations in the 21st century? — the best answer is to activate young people, poor people, minorities, and various other new or non-traditional voters. If the 100-110 million Americans who are eligible to vote, but stay home due to deep distrust/cynicism/apathy toward our political system, start voting, the game changes.
Is that hard to do? Heck yeah. Is it wise to *expect* those voters to show up at the ballot box? Hell no.
Is it what this country desperately needs in order to center working-class concerns? It’s the only real answer.
As usual, I appreciate the well thought-out and detailed rebuttal. I’m totally in favor of cutting military spending, of taxing the sh*t out of billionaires (you can fit every American billionaire on one subway train in Manhattan—not one subway car, but one subway train), and in reducing entitlements (to farmers and others).
But I just disagree that college should be free. Or that all health care should be free. Cheaper? Yes. Free? No. Time and time again I’ve seen that people are never less grateful than when you give them something they haven’t earned. They don’t respect it. They don’t treasure it. And it’s usually run poorly.
Health care, for example, is ass backwards in this nation. People eat sh*t, they don’t exercise half enough, they are recumbent far too often, and they don’t get enough sleep. And then they wonder why they’re sick. Are some illnesses unavoidable? Hell yes. Are many maladies and conditions a product of lifestyle? Yes. Healthcare should be much cheaper. It shouldn’t be free parking. You’re free to disagree.
At heart I’m not a Democrat or a Republican but a sportsocrat. I believe in two simple rules that I learned through sports:
1. The rules should apply the same to all
2. You should be rewarded for being the better team
Clearly, we don’t live in a sportsocratic society right now because Rule No. 1 isn’t being applied. Nor Rule No. 2. Bernie would be better about 1 but not about 2. Again, that’s my credo. I don’t expect it to be everyone’s.
Always love reading your comment, Matt. And if you want to write a full-on rebuttal column to this, you are invited to do so. I’d love to have it.
Not all in or all out on Bernie, but I do have this question – based on your reasoning that college should not be free, then high school should not be free either, should it? Why are we OK with paying for every kid to take up a seat through age 18, when many of them do not appreciate it and make minimal effort to take advantage of the educational opportunity? Probably because we still believe we benefit as a society from having (in theory) everyone with some basic skills and knowledge (or, I don’t know, maybe it’s just the easiest way to keep the little fuckers out of our hair a wee bit longer?) To me, college is the new high school. Not everyone is going to go, and not everyone is going to do the work required to get a degree, but if they do the work and earn the degree, we benefit as a society. My nephew in Spain is getting a degree in mechanical engineering. For free. Because Spain thinks it’s worth it to have another mechanical engineer in its population. And it is willing to ‘waste’ the tuition of those who won’t finish the program. It’s just part of the bargain.
Seems kind of smart to me.
But what do I know? I majored in English and haven’t contributed a single new word to the language.
I am all for sending kids who want to go to college for free to Spain….
I doubt many American high school grads could pass the entrance exam – Spanish kids choose a rigorous sci/math track at age 14. But let’s save that for your Special Education Edition.
More mechanical engineers? Awesome. But American kids will major in public relations or American studies…
And most Ivy League grads will go into finance. 🙂
Alas…
OK, I’m also going to respond to you on health care, because doing so is more interesting than grading these vocabulary quizzes. No offense, but your primary take seems oddly Puritan – people get sick because they don’t take care of themselves. This is true, but most astronomical medical costs I know about directly from friends and family were not caused by lifestyle or behavior at all: infant surgery for genetic blockage of ear canal / kidney cancer / hospitalizations due to mental illness / massive injuries from car-bike collision / complex surgery with metal plate for shattered wrist. (OK, that last was due to my clumsiness, so maybe my fault and I should have paid the $25K out of pocket).
It seems to me that your argument kind of defeats itself – if people would take better care of themselves and appreciate health care more when they have to pay for it, then we should be the healthiest country in the world. And countries that have free health care should have all kinds of unhealthy sloths riding electric scooters thru Le Walmart. But I’m betting that makers of seatbelt extenders and XXXXL t-shirts aren’t making their killing in the Scandihoovian markets.
Truth is, you and I and all the other hyper-fit triathletes already pay for your unhealthy freeloaders in the form of health care premiums. And if medicine wasn’t primarily profit-driven, doctors might be able to focus more on preventative care and behavioral coaching rather than booking high-end procedures to pay for the latest multi-million-dollar gadgets featured on the cover of Gouge magazine. (See, for example, “The Trouble With Dentistry” in the Atlantic).
I think it’s worth paying attention to the psychological toll of our health care system – people who are stressed because they can’t pay for it, so they don’t seek the help they need early enough. When I broke my wrist upstate, my sweet Trumpy neighbors were all horrified that Ann called an ambulance (I also gashed my head in the fall, so lots of blood, and Ann thought it was a head injury). They would never call an ambulance in an emergency, because they don’t think they can afford it. Another neighbor takes half the dosage her doctor prescribes to save money. To me, that is insane.
Big picture, I think you and I were born in a rare sweet moment when a wealthy country was doing pretty well by most (or at least an increasing number) of its citizens. It didn’t last long. Now we are seeing the cracks starting to tilt the building, and its too late to redo the foundation. Fortunately, as a misanthrope, I find this era of decline absolutely delicious and fascinating to witness.
Cheers!
Having said all that, I think it’s too late. Like other cracks in our country’s foundation (see slavery, military-industrial complex, property-tax-funded education, employer-based insurance), this one is beyond repair – too many enormous, entrenched interests, with too much money at stake.
We are mutual misanthropes, one of many reasons for our longstanding friendship. Another? You tolerate idiots.
On the road or I’d devote more time to replying. Also, I don’t wanna lose. The way your students are right now as you procrastinate.