Bernie Sanders's Big Night
BY JOHN CASSIDY
As Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern demonstrated in 1968 and 1972, respectively, the sweet spot in the Democratic electoral calendar for an insurgent liberal-leftist campaign is often right about now: those weeks in the deep midwinter of an election year when the nation’s eyes turn to Iowa and New Hampshire, two states with a populist streak. Senator Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, is running strongly in both places. At Sunday night’s television debate, which was held in South Carolina, he was inevitably the center of attention. He made the most of it.
It wouldn’t be quite accurate to say that Sanders won or lost the debate. In tone, if not always in substance, the two brands of politics that he and Hillary Clinton are hawking to voters are so different as to be virtually incommensurable. The former Secretary of State is offering experience, electability, and toughness. Sanders is offering fire and brimstone. Both did a good job of laying out their wares, although, given the gulf between them, it is hard to see how mere presentation could be the decisive factor in the primary process. The key issues are how far to the left Democratic voters have moved in the past few years, and just how alienated from the party establishment they are. That is what will determine how far Sanders can go.
Under pressure to avoid a repeat of her defeat in the 2008 Iowa caucus, Clinton persisted in her recent attacks on Sanders’s record on gun control, and on his proposal to establish a single-payer health-care system. Sanders described Clinton’s characterization of his record on gun issues as “disingenuous,” and dismissed as “nonsense” her suggestion that his health-care reforms would undermine Obamacare. In presenting his own platform, he didn’t say much that was new: that is his great strength. Like Donald Trump, he always delivers the same straightforward and distinctive message—one that, for many months now, has been drawing huge crowds of Democrats and independent voters to events across the country. “What the American people understand is we have an economy that’s rigged,” he declared in his opening statement. “This campaign is about a political revolution to not only elect a President but to transform this country.”
What was different from previous debates was Sanders’s eagerness to go on the offensive against Clinton, and particularly to highlight her most vulnerable area: her ties to the Wall Street plutocracy. Twice, Sanders mentioned that she has received generous speaking fees from Goldman Sachs. The NBC anchor Lester Holt, the co-moderator of the debate, asked Sanders how his approach to bank regulation would differ from Clinton’s. “Well, the first difference is I don’t take money from big banks,” Sanders replied. “I don’t get personal speaking fees from Goldman Sachs.” Sanders’s second jab came after Clinton claimed that she had the toughest, most comprehensive plan to regulate Wall Street. This time, Sanders added a dollar figure, pointing out that Clinton “received over six hundred thousand dollars in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs in one year.”
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http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/bernie-sanderss-big-night
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Besides what you posted above, I liked this:
So is his sheer orneriness, which betokens a certain authenticity and unwillingness to abide by political convention, such as the one that says that, in American politics, being labelled a socialist is a death sentence.
I don't think I've seen much written about this personality aspect of Bernie. "Ornery" is not my favorite word, but it does seem to describe him. It doesn't bother him in the least to provoke convention. He seems to thrive on it.
Cher
