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| Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump |
I really can’t get over it. Never in my wildest dreams could
have I ever have imagined the possibility that a narcissistic vulgar showman
and a dyed in the wool socialist would have the slightest chance of becoming
the President of the United States. And yet Donald Trump who is the epitome of
the former and Bernie Sanders, the epitome of the latter are both seriously in the
running to do just that.
It seems that Trump can do or say no wrong. The more
outrageous, bigoted, and insulting his comments become the stronger his support
seems to get. It seems that Sanders socialist
ideas about redistributing the wealth of this country does not disturb anyone
either. If anything it inspires support. I have to wonder where all this is
coming from. Are the American people that stupid? Or is it me? Am I so dense
that I can’t see why the support of these two opposites is so appealing? I hope
not. At least I don’t think so. Let’s see if we can figure this out.
For the record, I still believe that neither of these two individuals
will become President. Common sense has to prevail at some point. On the Democratic
side Hillary Clinton will be the nominee. On the Republican side, well - it’s too
early to tell. (Although the candidate I support, Marco Rubio still has a good
chance. It all boils down to where the votes of lesser candidates Bush, Kasich,
and Carson will go after they drop
out.)
But still, what is going on here? I think what is being reflected
here is a ‘Throw the bums out’ mentality. People are just fed up with politics
as usual and are probably unhappy with their lot in life. They see a shrinking
middle class and a growing upper and lower class and blame the establishment politicians. It seems like it almost doesn’t
matter what a candidate says. They are going with anti establishment candidates. As long as
they are ‘ballpark’ Democrat or Republican they are going to get their
respective support. Democrats leaning left will support anti establishment Bernie.
And Republicans leaning right will support anti establishment Donald.
As someone that leans right, given the choice between the two,
I would still have a hard time supporting Trump. But supporting a socialist is
a non starter for me. Especially someone like Sanders who gets part of his foreign
policy advice from J-Street. He would make the current President look like Meir
Kahane by comparison. There is not a doubt in my mind that he would do a lot
more to pressure Israel into making life threatening decisions.
Trump, on the other hand is an unknown entity. It’s hard to
tell what he would do. But based on his rhetoric, his views seem to be a 1000
times more favorable to Israel than Sanders’ views. Not to mention the fact
that he seems to be a lot friendlier with Israel’s current prime minister than
the current President is.
So how can our politically divided country vote for these
two guys? With respect to Trump it must be that most people do not take his
rhetoric literally. He is probably a lot more rational than his big mouth indicates. Once in office,
he would hire the best people to advise him on the issues. I believe those
people would be very strongly pro Israel and pro business.
Bernie Sanders appeal is his personal charm. You’ve got to
like this guy. Even though I obviously do not agree with his politics, he
exudes honesty and integrity. He is a true believer in the redistribution of
wealth. He wants to ‘even the playing field’ by taking money from the rich in
the form of confiscatory taxes – and give it to the poor in the form of a lot
of free entitlements.
He constantly compares the United States negatively to European
democracies saying they are far more progressive than we are. Europeans provide
all of their citizens with free health care, free college, better pensions, longer family leave, and a shorter work week (for the same pay).
The ‘Robin Hood’ approach that socialism is - is attractive
to the hard working middle. Especially the young. They see hard working people
barely making enough money to live a middle class lifestyle, while the rich
hardly work at all and live like kings, using the ethics of a Bernie Madoff to
get them there. It’s time to take some of their money away and give it to ourselves - the hard working middle class.
If I was going to vote charm and integrity; if I was going
to vote for the appealing message of sticking it to the rich, thinking that
would get me more, I would vote for Bernie. His message is so very seductive.
He wants to give away lots of goodies and have the rich pay for it.
But the reality is that aside from what in my view would be a
disastrous foreign policy, his domestic policies would turn America’s prosperity into a European socialist disaster
whose economies are barely treading water.
You can’t give away the store. All of Bernie’s goodies have
to be paid for. Which means substantially
higher income taxes; higher sales taxes; and a variety of new taxes that don’t
even exist yet. Either that or devaluing our currency substantially. Which
would eventually cause an inflation that hurts everyone. Including the poor.
We do not want to become another Europe. Instead of spending
ever more on social programs, we ought to be reducing the deficit by spending
less. Not by giving away the store to the masses. Socialist Greece tried that. They
almost went bankrupt.
We ought to instead incentivize business by lowering their
taxes and invest in their own growth. Incentivize them to produce more which
would mean more jobs and more money to buy the things they produce. And reduce
or eliminate a some of the wasteful government programs and some of the ridiculous projects
funded by the government (Bill Proxmire, where are you?!) to compensate
for the lost revenue in the short term. In the long term government revenue
would increase because there would be more jobs, meaning more people paying
taxes
What if this worst case scenario actually happens where Trump
and Sanders actually win their party’s respective nomination? Who would I vote
for? Much as I like Bernie and hate Donald, I would hold my nose and vote for
Donald. And hope that his disgusting rhetoric does not reflect his ultimate
actions as President. Because if it does, it would be an unmitigated disaster for
this country.
But all this is speculation about what I still believe is an
unlikely scenario. I still think it’s going to be Clinton and (hopefully)
Rubio. In the mean time it will be a fun (if scary) to watch. So I am going to
enjoy the show.
