Flaming Out

Where’s the Bern?

THEN

If ever there was a time when Bernie Sanders can genuinely fulfill his mission, now is that time. Sadly, it seems a futile hope.

Coming on the scene in the last Presidential election, Sanders was a shooting star, electrifying the normally obtuse “younger generation” supposedly the best educated Americans in history…but actually the worst.

Nonetheless he woke them up challenging the entire national establishment by speaking of revolutions beginning with the scrapping of a failing healthcare system…just one of our failing systems..but one that hit home because we all agree health matters.

Once upon a time in America…way back in the 1920s and 30’s… people sounding like Bernie set American youth on fire with talk of unions and fair wages and equality at a time when our economic system was just getting underway but already showing the worst of what it could be.

Then as now we saw the domination of big business and growing industry… the Robber Barons in full flower…and the obvious inequality that existed including child labor in growing factories and new industries. People needed to rail against the controlling interests and found that without organization they had no voice at all. And so the organization of unions began.

The war against unionization became a literal one – industry leaders hired gunmen to make certain that unions were kept out…and people were killed fighting back.

It wasn’t until the Second World War that political leaders recognized that unless all of industry cooperated, America could never successfully wage a war in Europe and Asia at the same time. FDR’s brilliant cabinet showed him the way and he listened:

”Let every industry make money and they will all come aboard and make the war supplies and armaments we need…” was the advice. He followed it and everyone – industry and workers – made money and prospered. Everyone worked…miners, minorities, women…everyone.

And unions prospered and grew and found a seat at the economic table.

And when the war was over…America’s economic system working at maximum for everyone, produced a Middle Class…the first such reality in World history.

And so revolutionary voices have been heard in our time and Bernie and his ferocious style and seemingly simple message found listeners. But the Democratic Party’s deck was stacked against anyone but their favorite Hillary Clinton and he knew it from the beginning.

Having nothing to lose, he started speaking and much to his surprise – shock perhaps – people listened. Medicare for All was the prescription. Get rid of the private healthcare system which had produced a very poor healthcare result: America ranks way at the bottom of healthcare among all industrial nations. Our physicians win Nobel Prizes, but our healthcare system produces a high mortality and morbidity rate. Too many Americans are sick from chronic diseases that make physicians wealthy, medical specialists rich and the Pharmaceutical industry super-rich.

Get rid of it says Bernie – a self-styled Democratic Socialist – knowing full well that people don’t know what that means and don’t essentially care.

The message took to an extent and Bernie brought in millions of dollars in campaign contributions even while knowing every minute of every day that he would never be the Democratic nominee.

NOW

So it was no surprise that he is trying again now. This time is different. This time his mantra became the conversation in the show that is called the Democratic Primary Debates. His voice was the most strident; his message again and again drove the debates accordingly. Yes it was the same message as 2016 with little or no difference, little or no clarity—but as before absolute: there can be no other idea…Medicare for All or more of the same failure.

And once again, the young responded. And once again the crowds gathered and the donations followed in. And once again it wasn’t enough…because in American politics all or nothing genuinely produces…nothing.

And now everything has stopped. Biden and Sanders appear on late night shows or in conversations on social media. Donald Trump appears every day as President of the United States in a crisis as no other in one hundred years.

He is being as Presidential as he is able to be…and in politics that is enough.

But what we see is what Bernie and Elizabeth Warren have been talking about – a healthcare system based on the laws of the marketplace: supply and demand. If there is no demand, the supply remains carefully controlled and as low as it can be…cut costs, make profit. Simple stuff.

But in health when something happens that is unexpected, low supply can often mean that people die.

And in the meantime something else: something maybe even worse than the handling of this pandemic.

Viruses come and go, but climate change is forever.

And climate change is happening with Tornadoes throughout the South, the melting of the ice in Greenland and Antarctica, the rise of the level of the Great Lakes…and changes that are coming that we do not yet see but are on the horizon.

The present Administration refuses to see any of this and in total control of the Environmental Protection Agency is rushing to get rid of Obama-era fuel efficiency standards that limited climate warming auto emissions – a move that will allow cars in America to emit nearly a billion more tons of carbon dioxide over the life of those cars. And there is more.

So we have this suggestion for Bernie:
Stay in the race. Do not allow Joe Biden to come into the Democratic Party’s convention with the necessary 1991 delegates he needs.

Make the convention genuinely choose someone who can really take on the current Administration in a way that will win the Electoral College as well as the popular vote.

Joe Biden cannot and will not.

But more than that Bernie: spend some of those millions you will now never use in the campaign to buy Prime Time on National TV to speak to us of how healthcare has suffered under our system and needs to change – whether Medicare for All happens or not.

Bernie be Presidential. Compromise as Liz Warren wants to do. Not all or nothing…but changes that will prevent the shortfalls in healthcare that now exist so blatantly, but so obviously that that should no longer be ignored or smothered by big money.

And something more: speak of the Administration’s efforts to ignore climate change because it wants only to serve industry needs not America’s needs.

And be Brooklyn smart, Bernie.

Be calm and straightforward. Look at us directly. No shouting crowds. No waving arms. Remind us that this virus threat will pass…that what has happened should never happen again. And that climate change will never be conquered by well-meaning humans…and that those hazards to our health and life will be forever.