How the Hell Did This Happen? by P.J. O'Rourke

Author:P.J. O'Rourke
Language: ara, eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books
Published: 2017-02-01T17:16:04+00:00

18

What They Stand for, and Can We Stand It? Part I

The Campaign Platform of Bernie Sanders

But enough of making fun of the candidates. Let us make unfun of them. If we’re searching for a seriously unpleasant, annoying, and irksome way to view the candidates, we should look at their campaign platforms.

Yes, the campaign platforms are lies. But these are important lies. They reflect the candidates’ interior monologues. The lies give us a picture of a candidate’s self-image because the first person a candidate lies to is himself. Not to mention herself.

Bernie Sanders is a socialist. Of course every Democrat running for office for the past eighty-four years has been a socialist. They’ve all promised to take money from people who have more than they need and give it to people who are needy.

Democratic politicians care about poverty. As well they should, since poor people vote Democratic.

In 1966, at the height of Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” the U.S. poverty rate was 14.7 percent and 28.5 million Americans were living in poverty. Now the U.S. poverty rate is 14.5 percent and 45 million Americans are living in poverty. Thus Democratic politicians care so much about poverty that—far from warring on it—they have become a kind of conservationist group, devoted to preserving it forever. Democrats are the Sierra Club of Poverty.

But Bernie Sanders is not merely a cynical political operative baiting the electorate with money and then switching money with food stamps. Bernie Sanders is a real socialist. Bernie doesn’t just promise to take things from people. He thinks it’s a sin not to. His faith demands stealing. If Bernie snatches a walker from a poor old lady he’s doing a good deed. He’s going to give that walker to an even poorer, even older lady. (I mean that strictly as a metaphor. If Bernie literally snatches a walker from an old lady, she’ll snatch if back and beat him to a pulp.)

Bernie was never going to get the Democratic nomination for president. The Berlin Wall fell on his politics in 1989. But the old lady beating him to a pulp with her walker has grandkids. The grandkids don’t know about 1989 because they weren’t born yet. The grandkids support Bernie. Hillary wants them to vote for her. Bernie believes in stealing. The Clintons have sticky fingers. We’ll see how much of Bernie’s platform Hillary walks away with.

I visited Bernie’s campaign website, went to “Issues,” and clicked on “Income and Wealth Inequality.” Here are thirteen kinds of stealing Bernie Sanders proposes:

1. Make the wealthy “pay their fair share in taxes.” Americans earning $100,000 or more pay almost 78 percent of the federal income tax. Bernie’s idea of taking a fair share of their income is the same as a shark’s idea of taking a fair share of a surfer.

2. Increase the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour. There are 3.3 million U.S. jobs paying at or below the minimum wage. Multiply a $7.75 raise × 40 hours × 52 weeks × 3.

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