Monday, May 04, 2015

Which presidential candidate is loyal to the middle class?

It is great to see Bernie Sanders running for president. With one hand tied behind his back. I mean to say, he is only taking small donations from people like you and me. Anyone who wants to make a donation must aver that the donation is a first party donation, that it is not made on behalf of anyone else. That it does not come from a corporation. That would be most of us.

With just small donations alone, Sanders has received $1.5 million in donations in the first 24 hours after announcing his candidacy. It is a great pleasure for me to see, finally, a candidate I can trust, someone I want to make a donation to in his quest to run for president, the highest office in the land. Note that if you have tweeners that are confused about Bernie Sanders, send them here.

Yes, there is Hilary. But Hilary was hired by a former Monsanto lobbyist to run for president. Hilary, wife of Bill Clinton, has decades of neoliberalism behind her. Bill Clinton approved and supported NAFTA, the free trade agreement that did nothing to free trade, unless we're talking about imports not exports. Bill Clinton helped to maintain a strong dollar policy, guaranteeing that demand would be sucked away from the United States. I want no part of Hilary in the White House if I can help it. But I would still take Hilary over anyone in the GOP Clown Car.

With Bernie Sanders in the race, we can expect him to put Hilary in a very tough position. Bernie is going to be there, in the debates. If the Democrats try to shut him out of the debates, there is going to be a really big stink. It will be big enough to make Hilary look bad. This is not a prediction, this is a fact. Bernie has the power and the support to ensure that he gets a podium in any debate with Hilary Clinton.

Once the debates get going, Hilary is going to have to answer a man who has a sincere desire to ask the tough questions we're never ever going to hear on Meet The Press. He's going to raise issues that will require Hilary to decide if she is going to betray her supporters in Wall Street or her supporters on Main Street. Bernie knows who his supporters are. He offers no uncertainty about his loyalties.

In fact, I think he's the only candidate we can be sure of. In the GOP Clown Car, we see no one who is loyal to the middle class. I'm even surprised to find former HP CEO Carly Fiorina scrunching herself into that clown car. Why would anyone consider a former CEO who took part in a merger that cost about 17,000 jobs? Because, as she put it, she "understands how the economy actually works". I guess that means she knows how to lay thousands of people off and still go to sleep at night.

Bernie Sanders has undisputed loyalty to the middle class. He sees the moral dilemma of an economy that lavishes the top 1% with all of the economic gains when the economy grows. He's willing to talk about it, too. On national TV. On radio. On his Facebook Page. Wherever we see him, he'll be talking about it when the other candidate refuse to do or say anything about it. He will be the only candidate to admit that the biggest reason the top 1% get 99% of the gains when the economy grows is due to government intervention in the markets. You know, public policy.

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