LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
Bernie Sanders is the, so to speak, most promising of the candidates. He’ll promise you anything. I went to a Bernie rally at Keene State University. It was the most crowded primary event I attended and very enthusiastic... especially by New Hampshire standards where, every four years, we feel like a cheap motel with a bedbug infestation of presidential hopefuls putting the bite on us. It was a school, so half of those “Feeling the Bern” were kids at the “easy believey” stage of gullible youth. They applauded loudest for Bernie’s promise to make school tuition free. The other half of the Bernie supporters looked like they were still on the outskirts of Max Yasgur’s farm, waiting for free admission to Woodstock. Bernie began promising and just couldn’t quit. (I will not stoop to make a pun on his initials, B.S.) He promised a minimum wage of “at least” $15 an hour, equal pay for men and women, a doubling of the number of unionized jobs, higher education for all, and lower education too, with no teacher making less than $50,000 a year, and childcare for children “ages zero to four.” (Although I think childcare for age zero will be tricky because at age zero the child isn’t there.) And Bernie promised “Justice.” He had a long list of all the different kinds of it: 1. Social Justice (I would have been able to get a date in high school.)
On the other hand, to give liberals their due, we don’t want to go back to the era before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or the era before the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. In those days, innocent people suffered from gross discrimination. And they were the lucky ones... who survived drinking the poisonous patent medicines and eating the tainted beef. But the days of rational argument seem to be over. I spent the last week here in New Hampshire covering the Democratic primary. When it comes to the American story of having a lively, continuing liberal-conservative debate, the Democrats have lost the plot. The argument “What can government do/not do?” depends on that little auxiliary verb can , meaning “to know how to, to be able to, to be at all likely to.” Government does not know how to, is not able to, and hasn’t the slightest likelihood of making you faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. But that’s what the “progressive” Democratic candidates are promising. The “moderate” Democratic candidates are more... moderate. They promise to make you faster than a Little League knuckle ball, more powerful than a Prius, and able to jump up and down with joy if they get elected president.
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February 2020
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