A day after New Jersey Star-Ledger columnist Mark Di Ionno reported how Donald Trump’s and Bernie Sanders’ support springs from the same cultural roots (Sanders success sign of middle class revolt—see my last post), the Star-Ledger argued, after Sanders’ nomination chances died, that Trump cannot satisfy Sanders voters' need for change. In urging Sanders supporters not to switch to Trump, the Star-Ledger writes that Donald Trump:
wants to expand his base by adding millions of voters who believe in using government to solve real problems that affect us all.
And that has been at the heart of Bernie Sanders' appeal throughout the campaign. For nearly a year, he has built a movement based on bringing as many people as possible into the circle of opportunity, and only a strong, progressive government does that.
Only government can lead the fight to reform education and Wall Street, expand health care, save our infrastructure, and rebuild the middle class.
This is not the kind of stuff Trump is selling, which most Sanders supporters should have discerned by now.
So it's mind-boggling that 20 percent of Sanders primary voters say they will support Trump in the general election in a Washington Post poll.
Yes, Trump is a statist, just like Sanders. Nonetheless “anyone,” writes the Star-Ledger, “who believes that Trump serves under the same flag is in for a grim reality check.”
I’m disgusted with Trump as the GOP nominee. He is an authoritarian. This he shares with Bernie Sanders.
But the similarities diverge there. As the Star-Ledger says, “anyone who believes that Trump serves under the same flag is in for a grim reality check.” True. Trump is infinitely less bad than Sanders. Under the classic statist guise of creating a government that “works for all of the people,” Sanders means to strip the people of the individual freedom to live by their own judgement in support of their own lives, goals, values, and happiness. He is a self-described socialist, the very philosophical premise of which is to repudiate individual sovereignty and liberty on principle in favor of corralling us all into a chain gang controlled by a whip from Washington.
The Sanders movement encompasses people who more resemble the clueless inhabitants of Animal Farm—who blindly followed the pig leader Napoleon into tyranny, destitution, and slavery—rather than morally, economically, and historically enlightened American voters. Leaving aside Sanders’ specific policy proposals, which are secondary, my full thoughts on Sanders are laid out here: China’s Recovery from Socialism vs. Bernie Sanders, The Most Evil Politician in America.
Related Reading:
Sanders’s Open Socialism Blows the Cover Off of the Left’s Stealth Socialism
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