NOT FEELIN' IT, BERN

As the independent senator from Vermont goes on a tour of America, we've nearly reached full reversal. The same media who engaged in various attempts at his political assassination and spent years pretending he was a Russian plant are eagerly welcoming Bernie on for a barrage of sit-down interviews and town hall meetings. Why, is the question. As the only plausible counter to Trump? As the only hope for uniting the Democrats? From my vantage point, neither looks to be what’s happening.

Well, what’s Bernie’s message? The usual. And that's particularly odd in this moment. Sanders has been bouncing between gymnasiums and arenas full of people, claiming, as ever, that the current administration is emboldening and enriching the billionaire class. How are they doing this? By his account, through taking a sledgehammer to the stock market. Of course, that's senseless. As we all know, "the markets" make no meaningful contact with the half of the population Bernie claims to be working for while being controlled by and benefiting those holding all the nation's wealth...

However, what Sanders pitches is a little more sassy than that. He offers his well-worn discourse in full knowledge that his side of the political aisle has firmly backed the devilish “one-tenth of one percent” and that this most powerful but infinitesimal cohort has enthusiastically reciprocated. Has anyone anywhere disputed the many evaluations placing far more millionaires and billionaires behind Harris and the Dems than Trump and the neo-Republicrats in the last election? Not once that I’ve seen. 

Naturally, Sanders compliments this strained take of his by contributing to the cacophony of misinformation he so loves to decry. How? He insists Herr Musk effectively bought the last election. (I suppose that means Trump is, by Bernie’s accounting, an illegitimate president? No, that can’t be the argument…) Well, what can I say about this except that Sanders obviously didn’t read my essay on this very matter. Titled Buying an Election, I tried to expose and explain how there’s no such thing as buying an election; and, more than that, how there doesn’t even appear to be good evidence for the ability to so much as influence an election. Not with money — or, at least, as much as a billion dollars has proven woefully insufficient to win a party nomination or tip even a few votes in a single swing state.

Of course, the reason some folks have to go to their grave insisting the opposite of reality, despite a wealth of such well-known examples, is that they all promised the American people and the world a US president needed to be impeached on the grounds that some kids in Saint Petersburg bought thousands of rubles worth of Facebook ads. But I digress...

Paired with all of this attempted historical revision, troublingly, Bernie also seeks a rewriting of his own history with the help of these newsfolk. For his entire career, as is so very well documented, Sanders stood staunchly opposed to free-trade, voting against deals like NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He even vehemently opposed trade normalization with China. If you don't know about any of this, there’s a now-infamous interview with Bernie, on Vox with Ezra Klein from 2015, in which he covers most of these details in a single sit-down. At that time, Bernie, then running for president, noted how American manufacturing and associated jobs were wrongly transferred to China and elsewhere with only a consideration of corporate profits (but with promises of helping democratize and bring peace to the world while making everyone rich.) But now, decades later, the experiment had been run. Everyone could see that, while failing to bring peace and democracy, this deal proved to be fantastic for the the Chinese and the billionaire class but largely at the expense of blue-collar Americans and so many throughout the West. In that same interview Sanders recalls and asserts: “I voted against [permanent normal trade relations] with China, that was the right vote, and if elected president I will radically transform trade policies.” He talks about his broadly anti-free trade position and how even the free-traders aren't for free trade. To his endless astonishment, he tells us, his colleagues “who are great free traders, who want to see lettuce and tomatoes brought in from small farms in Mexico, have no problem with the fact that we cannot import name-brand prescription drugs from other countries around the world.”

This is the same interview that has resurfaced several times in recent years, every time immigration and America's southern border makes the news. On social media you can find it clipped down to the bit where Klein attempts to push what he thinks is a grand idea, a borderless world, and Sanders abruptly extinguishes this stinky birthday sparkler of nonsense:

Klein: "I think if you take global poverty that seriously, it leads you to conclusions that in the US are considered out of political bounds. Things like sharply raising the level of immigration we permit, even up to a level of open borders. About sharply increasing—"

Sanders: "Open borders? No, that's a Koch brothers proposal."

Klein (dumbfounded): "Really?"

Sanders: "Of course. That's a right-wing proposal, which says essentially there is no United States."

So, given all of his long-standing, on-the-record policy positions, what do you think Sanders is promoting at this very moment? Astonishingly, these last weeks Sanders has been complaining that tariffs (his favourite) will harm China (who he cares nothing for and insists the wrong trade policies were directed at for decades). Specifically, he's concerned that harming Chinese manufacturing (which he has never endorsed and knows is bad for anyone who doesn't own a factory or run a tech company) will only result in higher priced goods for Americans (the class lacking in stock portfolios and who voted for these policies), as seen, he tells us, in his recent trip to Target (wherein almost nothing taking up shelf space is produced in the United States.)

Yes, that’s right, he literally claims that it is tariffs on China (and her city-sized sweatshops and slave labour camps) which are the real betrayal of the struggling working class. You couldn’t make this up! Obviously, at any other moment, as evidenced by practically every video and news article available of the man over forty years, you can be certain Sanders wouldn’t just be arguing for tariffs and restricting trade with China but denouncing Target (Walmart, Costco, Marshalls, TJ Maxx, et al) for having such a terrible business model that harms workers while helping off-shore US jobs by endorsing a globalized system of low-pay (or no-pay) labour. Right?

Just to jog your memory, here’s one particularly potent and pertinent gem, from Politico during the 2016 election race: “Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are barnstorming Wisconsin with at least one promise in common: By taking apart trade deals and imposing tariffs, they will bring back the highly paid blue-collar jobs of the industrial past.” Gosh. But don’t confuse things here with your unreasoned defence. Yes, doubtless Sanders would have done things differently than Trump. Sure. But what Bernie was after, you'll recall or read, was “high” tariffs and the “radical” transformation of international trade policy. He wasn't aiming for cautious adjustments on any front. He was after undoing a generation of what he saw as errors in trade and foreign policy. I mean, wouldn’t you be shocked to learn that what Sanders thought was feasible and fully justified in 2016 (and needed to on-shore entire industries and millions of jobs taken abroad and built up over 40 years) was the most paltry tariffs and not anything like the much broader and more severe trade reforms Trump is presently talking about and enacting? You think 0.3% on garlic and leeks and 1.1% on LEDs and computer monitors was what Bernie was calling for and what he felt would be sufficient to reverse a lifetime of what everyone but the factory owners and retail magnates have always admitted was a set of terrible policies? No.

Bernie goes further than all this, though. (And the question that premises the comment that follows is just as bonkers as his response…) To equate the current US president with the man who wore Germany’s most famous moustache, Anderson Cooper goes to a pre-screened questioner who asks Sanders how growing up a Jew in the immediate wake of the Holocaust prepared him for present-day America. Gadzooks! Again, at no prior moment would Sanders have allowed himself to stoop and fall for something so idiotic. You’ll recall he even refused to so much as challenge or offer something negative about his opponents during his presidential run. Right. So what does he do in this case? Sanders presents his evaluation that globalism is ideal and that tariffs are an institutional form of xenophobia and outright racism. My gosh. All of this would be laughable if it wasn’t so stupid. He argues that America needs to support and continue to work with China because globalism is how we combat climate change and future pandemics, of all things. Apparently Sanders missed how we got all of the worst climate offenders and pandemics of the last century (and beyond.) Wasn’t it through a blind and staunch commitment to unrestricted international free-trade and free-travel and the outsourcing of, well, everything? I’ve never heard a serious argument to the contrary. And I've never seen evidence of anything else, but I'd love to hear it...

This week, too, as you've probably noticed, Bernie and his Democrat partners and supporters would like you to forget that every leftist worth their salt always argued the world’s stock and bond markets were never a reasonable gauge of anything of any value, least of all the well-being of the working class. And, if nothing else, "the markets" were certainly no measure of public satisfaction. My whole life, fluctuations in the S&P 500 or Russell 2000 Index and the like were, at best, a moisture reading in the diapers of Wall Street traders and a class of folks who paid for their vacation homes and vacation Bentlys on their portfolio “earnings” — and nothing more. Suddenly, in early 2025, according to the self-appointed saviours of the working class and defenders of justice and goodness and nature and life, a momentary swing in the markets is the clearest imaginable index and proxy for damn near everything. I read and heard this week that the markets dropping to December 2023 levels, but still far above any point in the last quarter century (meaning: We lost 70 quintillion dollars!!!), is a strong signal of: public distrust in government policy; a broad reversal of the sentiment expressed in the (very recent) election; the now-inevitable turn to authoritarianism; a near-certain war with Iran, China, and Russia; and so much more. Of course, it was also forecast that we were facing down an imminent collapse of global stock markets, akin to 1987 or ‘29. This is your last chance to buy gold and chickens! Those feeling a little more conservative, namely Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, merely forecast a deep recession by the end of the year. Time to sell your gold and chickens and buy frozen concentrated orange juice futures and our new memecoin! Yet, what did we see? In defiance (of the folk artists who pretend they’re scientists despite reliably predicting nothing, ever), the markets stabalized almost immediately and then, even according to the popular anti-Trump press, reversed course, “skyrocketing” upward in one of the most remarkable undoings of the century.

So there you have it. Prior to this, I was writing about how we were about to see Trump impose new anti-gun laws and Bernie and AOC respond by turning into open-carry advocates, packing scoped rifles and RPGs while visiting their local farmer’s market or primary school play. We’re damn near there. Damn near.