Bernie Sanders Is Rich [View all]

[Uncle Joe]

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Kruse’s article contains some snarky quotes from anti-Sanders Democrats. “He became the very thing he criticized others for becoming and at the same time didn’t fix any of the problems he’s been railing about that got him to this point,” Mary Anne Marsh told Kruse. Her fellow Democratic strategist Bob Shrum added that Sanders “almost at times sounds like he thinks it’s inherently evil to be well-off.” But far from being a hypocrite—or damaging his chances—Sanders’s recent success not only doesn’t hurt the “political revolution” he’s championed, it might even help it. Sanders, after all, isn’t advocating (no matter what Fox Business commentators tell you) to impoverish everyone in the country, but to lift them up.

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Instead, the fixation on Sanders’s wealth seems to have more to do with a general discomfort in talking about his policy positions, and perhaps especially, his democratic socialism. The Beltway media, in particular, have struggled to understand his earnestness, and some of that cynicism often bleeds into coverage of his finances.

It also, of course, speaks to the desire to undercut Sanders’s message. “Bernie is a known quantity in any socialist paradise,” establishment-class Republican consultant Rick Wilson told Kruse, “the party apparatchik with the dacha…” Kruse helpfully notes that everyone who knows Sanders thinks the comparison is absurd. But Wilson’s corny line points to the dig that many have hoped would stick: That Sanders is really just another politician, in it for the money.

Still, the real lesson of Sanders’s millions isn’t that he’s sold out his political revolution. It’s that his political revolution is winning, turning him into one of the most improbable celebrities in recent American history. Far from hurting Sanders’s political success, his new wealth points to just how popular his ideas about inequality and fairness have become.

https://newrepublic.com/article/154008/bernie-sanders-rich