Bernie Sanders isn’t running for president.
Whatever.
The hobo’s announcement surely elicited tears in Madison and Cambridge and Berkeley, but it made me recall a column I wrote in late 2014. Enjoy!
■ ■ ■
A bumper sticker, spotted on a dirty and dilapidated subcompact: POLITICIANS SHOULD DRESS LIKE RACE CAR DRIVERS SO WE KNOW WHO THEIR CORPORATE SPONSORS ARE.
Above it, another sticker: BERNIE FOR PRESIDENT.
Bernie Sanders is ticked that the “middle class has been disappearing.” He’s steamed over “massive wealth and income inequality.” He rage-tweeted that “Americans already work the longest hours in the western industrialized world.” But it’s clear that what makes the socialist senator sorest is ... corporations.
Vermont’s angriest man is an acolyte of what economist Alan Reynolds called “the gospel according to Ralph Nader, which goes something like this: The nation is at the mercy of a few hundred giant corporations, run by a self-perpetuating oligarchy of managers who are not accountable to stockholders, workers, consumers, or society at large. These ‘private governments’ employ advertising to sell us things we do not need, with little concern for the safety and health of workers or consumers.”
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to No Dowd About It to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.