Bernie Sanders starts off with a bang [View all]

[Uncle Joe]

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All this shouldn’t come as a surprise, yet it often seems to, at least in the Acela corridor. In a world where income inequality continues to soar, common sense says Sanders’s populist message appeals to many. Millions of Americans support Sanders’s agenda, or at least parts of it. Poll after poll after poll shows solid majorities of all ages say they want to see Medicare-for-all, a $15-an-hour minimum wage and higher taxes on the wealthiest among us.

But there is something else, too. Sanders — either deliberately or accidentally — has figured out a way to make his relatively advanced age work in his favor. In American society, we often brush off the elderly. But there remains a long-established trope, something I’ll dub the “Golden Girls” appeal after the 1980s-1990s hit television show. These people are who they are, and they remain committed to their passions. They don’t talk down to the young people, but neither do they scold, or blame them for their woes. At the same time, they don’t sugarcoat their critiques. They don’t pretend to share their taste in music, but they share something more important — they share their idealism and their belief we don’t need to settle for realism, or second best. They are, you might say, brass-tack dreamers.

Sanders, who, in an age of polished video, often turns up looking as if he forgot to brush his hair, makes zero effort to modulate his distinct New York City honk despite decades of living in Vermont and released a campaign commercial in 2016 featuring the sounds of Simon and Garfunkel, fits this profile perfectly. He tells a generation of Americans indebted by student loans that college tuition can once again be an inconsequential expense. It wouldn’t take a “magic genie,” as Klobuchar claimed Monday, just a society willing to support it. And he doesn’t just say he would like to see a $15 minimum wage. He all but shamed Amazon into raising its minimum hourly pay last year to $15 an hour, after he debuted legislation named in honor of Jeff Bezos, that would have required large companies to pay the government back if their employees still need government benefits to get by. (Bezos owns The Post.)

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But Sanders comes with the formidable muscle. He has passionate supporters who remain committed, years of experience in grass-roots organizing, and a political environment that has only become friendlier to his views since the last time he ran. And no candidate who can raise so much so quickly from so many small donors can be dismissed so cavalierly and quickly.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/02/20/bernie-sanders-starts-off-with-bang/?utm_term=.ebde4c5f6ed1