The opinions expressed by columnists are their own
and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall
Stop It People!
Democrats Deserve Bernie Sanders!
Source: AP Photo/Cedar Attanasio
If Bernie Sanders continues his undefeated win streak in 2020 he deserves to be the Democratic nominee for president.
So why all the agita?
He’s undefeated through three contests. He’s growing his coalition and base of support. And he’s staying on message.
How is this a mystery to people?
In the modern era, he is also the culmination of what left-leaning politics has been yearning for.
Face it, barring some radical recalibration, John F. Kennedy was the last moderate Democrat our society will likely see.
From economic policy—be it taxes, government control and regulation—every Democratic administration since Kennedy got oppressively worse.
Republicans—typically content with only incremental changes to those policies—consistently treaded water or lost ground minus the Reagan and now Trump eras.
But for what looks like a first in a very long time America is going through a bit of a political purification.
This seems to worry some. One Townhall.com's Political Editor, Guy Benson, expressed concern after Sander’s blowout in Nevada that conservatives were rejoicing in Sanders’ win.
Karol Markowicz, of the New York Post, has uttered on more than one occasion on my show her dismay at “being left with Bernie Sanders” as the nominee.
Joy Ried on MSNBC, S.E. Cupp on CNN, long time Democratic operative James Carville, Never-Trump crank Jonah Goldberg, the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin, my esteemed (Trump-supporting) radio colleague in New York, Frank Morano, and almost the entire election panel on CNN—collectively wring hands and express “worry” at the prospect.
My Twitter feed literally from one end to the other is now discussing the “Never Bernie” concession speech that the unimpressively failed mayor of South Bend issued after failing miserably in Nevada.
But why is anyone surprised?
For dozens of years, I’ve penned columns and books, filled thousands of hours of radio, made commentary on cable news, and have archived thousands more editions of podcasts that have all warned the American voters what it means to vote for Carter, Clinton and Obama.
The increasingly noxious worldview that says “take more from people who earned it” and forcibly redistribute it to “those who haven’t” had to eventually lead somewhere.
Apply that same idea to policies on the judiciary, immigration, national security, and social framework values and the fault lines pretty much reveal themselves.
Democrats have for decades (since JFK) admired godless socialism. They gift wrap it up in supposed compassionate humanism. But they are literally embracing authoritarian philosophies that have extinguished millions of lives.
They’ve also lied about what it all means—especially during election cycles—knowing that middle of the road Americans wouldn’t quite be able to stomach it.
In 2016, Bernie Sanders became the authentic face for where this had all been pointing for generations. In 2018, it was his philosophies and “authenticity” that drove the passion behind the incoming “squad” with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rhashida Tlaib.
It was the force of these new members and their appetite to be openly what they claim—no matter how stupid, unAmerican, and anti-Semitic—that forced Nancy Pelosi and the old guard to capitulate and attempt to undo the election of 2016.
In 2020 Democrats can no longer lie to voters. The base has moved their party, Bernie Sanders speaks openly—even cavalierly—to what they’ve come to expect, and he is now undefeated through the first three contests.
He has actually—to date—won two more states than he had by this point in the 2016 cycle. And he is poised for blowout after blowout on Super Tuesday (California and Texas among them.)
But listen carefully, Americans, conservatives, independents and Republicans should welcome his ascendency, because at the very least, it’s honest.
Elections by nature should serve as referendums on ideas.
Carter and Clinton pretended to be middle of the road but stacked our judiciary with radicals. Obama pretended to be the president of the “purple states of America,” but he himself was a radical, surrounded by a cabinet of radicals.
These administrations despised the will of the American people while claiming to advance it.
In 2020, a Trump/Sanders contest will make the most honest, direct, and open debate our political body has observed in many decades of what ideas actually mean.
Should people get to keep what they earn? Or should they be forced to give $7 out of every $10 they earn to a centralized “Kremlin” that will then dole out “free benefits” to the people (usually on the basis and preference of the whim of those in power)?
Does the United States Constitution protect the right of free speech, particularly religious speech?
Do the people of the United States truly have the protected right to defend themselves by keeping and bearing firearms?
Should we empower the government to overtake the people’s decisions and lives?
Or should we empower the person to become the best that they can fully be?
These are just a handful of the contrasts that a Trump/Sanders head-to-head will give us.
It will force the American attention span to a place we only rediscovered in 2016. It will be a thorough debate between a man who’s never held a private-sector job, and a man who’s kept 104 campaign promises in his first job in politics.
America should welcome it.
A fistfight of ideas, slugging it out as though everything in the future depended on it.
Because it does!