Bernie Sanders Seems Like a Nice Man

In the aftermath of this evening’s Democratic Presidential debate, I’m left with the somewhat disconcerting impression that, even though I completely disagree with him politically, I can understand what people see in Bernie Sanders.

As Charles Krauthammer said after the debate, “Hillary Clinton is an identity politics candidate.”

Whereas Sanders, whom I must confess I hadn’t really listened to before at length, comes across as an ideas – and ideals – candidate.

For example, when Hillary bitterly complains about the Republicans, racism, sexism and inequality, filling up her air time with terms like “right wing,” one gets the sense she is indulging in the politics of grievance, but when Sanders talks about issues, one gets the sense he cares about inequities and about people, and that he wants to make life better for them. For instance, when he made the point that the U.S. is the “only major country on earth that doesn’t guarantee healthcare to all people … If we have the courage to take on the drug companies and the insurance companies and the medical equipment suppliers … If we can do that we can guarantee healthcare to all people in a much more cost-effective way,” I thought, well he does have a point. My understanding is that the reason for Obamacare was to ensure that everyone had healthcare. But as far as I’m aware, after the whole overhaul, hey, it never happened, and there are still millions of Americans uninsured. What’s up with that?

I thought the main reason Obama, Hillary and the Democrats rammed it down everyone’s throat was the humanitarian imperative to insure every American. Instead, everyone has been inconvenienced and it’s still not done, and Hillary is arguing it can’t be. I was not necessarily in favor of Obamacare and I’m sympathetic to the arguments that it will diminish the quality of care for everyone, etc. But it seems to me that if businesses and individuals are being forced to participate in this, it ought to at least achieve its noblest objective. Otherwise, given what I understand to be its many potential drawbacks, it shouldn’t have been attempted.

I’m gettin’ why the kids like Bernie. Kinda scary given that socialism has never worked in any major country in history (a fact someone should remind Bernie when he starts making sweeping statements about how the U.S. is the only major country this and that…) Socialism in a country the size of the U.S. would, I believe, be economically disastrous, as well as a violation of the basic framework of liberty the nation was founded on.

I couldn’t help but chuckle at Bernie’s statement to Hillary: “Madame Secretary, that is a low blow.”

Doesn’t he know who he’s dealing with?

Madame knows how to land a low blow, yes.

And Bernie seems like a nice man.

That’s all I’m sayin.’

This entry was written by Heather Robinson and posted on February 12, 2016 at 1:18 am and filed under Blog. permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Keywords: Bernie Sanders, Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL. */?>