Like many people consumed by a cause, Bernie Sanders has a dangerous tendency to put ends before means
wake from a bad dream only to discover that they are still asleep and that the nightmare goes on. This is the prospect facing America if, as seems increasingly likely, the Democrats nominate Bernie Sanders as the person to rouse America from President Donald Trump’s first term. Mr Sanders won the primary in New Hampshire, almost won in Iowa, trounced his rivals in Nevada and is polling well in South Carolina.
On economics Mr Sanders is misunderstood. He is not a cuddly Scandinavian social democrat who would let companies do their thing and then tax them to build a better world. Instead, he believes American capitalism is rapacious and needs to be radically weakened.
Sometimes even the ends are sacrificed to Mr Sanders’s need to be righteous. Making university cost-free for students is a self-defeating way to alleviate poverty, because most of the subsidy would go to people who are, or will be, relatively wealthy. Decriminalising border-crossing and breaking up Immigration and Customs Enforcement would abdicate one of the state’s first duties. Banning nuclear energy would stand in the way of his goal to create a zero-carbon economy.
Last is the effect of a President Sanders on America’s political culture. The country’s political divisions helped make Mr Trump’s candidacy possible. They are now enabling Mr Sanders’s rise. The party’s leftist activists find his revolution thrilling. They have always believed that their man would triumph if only the neoliberal Democratic Party elite would stop keeping him down. His supporters seem to reserve almost as much hatred for his Democratic opponents as they do for Republicans.
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