Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt, speaks at a rally to kick off his 2020 presidential campaign at Brooklyn College in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, NY, March 2, 2019. (Photo by Anthony Behar/Sipa USA via AP Images)
Another Democrat — Colorado governor John Hickenlooper — has thrown his/her hat in the ring for that party's presidential nomination. That makes fourteen — count 'em fourteen — candidates. Can you give me twenty? How about twenty-five? Pretty soon we're going to need an auctioneer.
Quondam frontrunner Joe Biden hasn't even officially decided yet. Hickenlooper's pretty much a national cipher. Perhaps he should announce his own Green New Deal — The Rocky Mountain Tree-Hugger Special or some such. The specter of twenty or so potential nominees sitting on a stage debating each other over how to save the world from an agreed-upon imminent climate Armageddon, when not a single one of them is a scientist or likely would pass an upper-level physics or chemistry course, is amusing in a black comic sort of way.
But forget that. What we will have is an array of candidates going from center-left to far-left, jockeying for position. Naturally, they will all be more to the left in the primaries, while trying not to say something so crazy or extreme it will come back to bite them in the general.
Capitalism needs a break and our young people, who have been so heavily indoctrinated into socialism given the polls we are now seeing about millennials, need at least a slight chance to learn what capitalism is (before they get out into the real world and have to earn a living).
Trump vs. Sanders would be an incredible educational experience. It would be about the basics, not about tactics, like was Trump right to meet with Kim Jong-un? Nobody really knows at this point. (Actually, Bernie supported that.)
America will get to compare and contrast and Trump has already made it clear that he intends to run against socialism. The election will be about the big issues for once. Good-bye, uni-party.
The danger in this is that Bernie has his allure. I have seen it personally, having attended one of his rallies in Des Moines during the last presidential election cycle. I thought I was at a Tom Hayden anti-war speech circa 1967, but the large crowd — mostly college students and aging hippies — was going wild.
Still, no risk, no gain. The advantage Trump has in such a confrontation is that he has a great sense of humor. Bernie is all doom and gloom, as socialist are predominantly.
So I say, in the primaries, "Go, Bernie!" What's not to love?
Roger L. Simon — co-founder and CEO emeritus of PJ Media — is an author and screenwriter.https://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/why-im-for-bernie-in-the-democratic-primaries/
