Bernie Sanders was given the opportunity to tell America that it would be perfectly OK to elect a self-styled socialist as president.
And then he started talking about Denmark, Sweden and Norway.
Cue reference to George McGovern turning over in his grave.
“Do I consider myself part of the casino capitalist process by which so few have so much and so many have so little by which Wall Street’s greed and recklessness wrecked this economy? No, I don’t,” Sanders said by way of talking around an answer to a question from Anderson Cooper.
The question: Do you consider yourself a capitalist?
Yikes.
Sanders also let stand a soliloquy from Cooper on a sample attack ad that we can all imagine Republicans just wish they will have the chance to unleash next fall.
“The Republican attack ad against you in a general election – it writes itself,” Cooper said. “You supported the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. You honeymooned in the Soviet Union. And just this weekend, you said you’re not a capitalist. Doesn’t – doesn’t that ad write itself?”
Sanders’ defense comes down to being able to ‘splain himself. Seriously, that’s what he said.
“Well, we’re going to win because first, we’re going to explain what democratic socialism is,” Sanders said. “And what democratic socialism is about is saying that it is immoral and wrong that the top one-tenth of 1 percent in this country own almost 90 percent – almost – own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. That it is wrong, today, in a rigged economy, that 57 percent of all new income is going to the top 1 percent.
“That when you look around the world, you see every other major country providing health care to all people as a right, except the United States. You see every other major country saying to moms that, when you have a baby, we’re not going to separate you from your newborn baby, because we are going to have – we are going to have medical and family paid leave, like every other country on Earth.
“Those are some of the principles that I believe in, and I think we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people,” Sanders said.
All good points, and all go way, way over the heads of the average voter, no matter how much ‘splaining Sanders thinks he can do.
There’s an old political adage about how if you’re explaining, you’re losing, that would seem to apply here.
– Story by Chris Graham
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