opinion

Editorial: Bernie Sanders needs a real revolution

Before the Register staff began asking questions in his editorial board visit this month, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders was given a few minutes to say why he wants to be president of the United States. He plunged right in and reeled off a litany of evidence that this nation is seriously out of whack.

This country’s wealth is concentrated in the hands of a tiny group of billionaires. Democracy has become oligarchy as the billionaire class and corporations are allowed by the U.S. Supreme Court to spend limitless amounts of money to affect the outcome of elections. We are the wealthiest nation in the world, yet two in 10 children live in poverty and a third of our youth are unemployed. We hand out criminal records for marijuana convictions but not for Wall Street criminals.

This was a quick recitation of Sanders’ standard stump speech, and the message resonates with many disaffected voters who see the United States becoming a nation where the 1 percent own most everything, including Washington, while the poverty increases and the middle class disappears. Sanders held forth like this for 90 minutes, covering a broad range of issues.

Sanders is intense and on message with rapid-fire facts, figures and occasionally rising anger. He looks a bit like a disheveled professor, with a shock of windblown white hair and a clipped Brooklyn accent. He gives the impression he’s gotten most of our questions before.

An exception was about his personal management style, prompted by a story in a Vermont alternative weekly that quoted anonymous sources who said he could be tough, bordering on abusive, with his staff.

“Where did you get that information?” Sanders snapped. “You got it from one article from one person who quoted four anonymous people.” While he said he was offended by the accusations, he does not deny being a demanding boss. “Yes, I do work hard. Yes, I do demand a lot of the people who work with me. Yes, some people have left who were not happy. But I would say that by and large in my Senate office, in my House office, in my campaign, the vast majority of the people who have worked with me consider that to be a very, very good experience and a learning experience and have gone on to some great things.”

Another topic Sanders has talked little about in this campaign is foreign policy. He has strong opinions, of course, such as a very high bar for going to war. In general, he says “war is the last resort of a great nation,” and though he supported the U.S. bombing missions in Kosovo and the war in Afghanistan, he opposed both wars in Iraq.

Sanders really wants to talk about economic inequality, however, which he sees as eating away at the very core of this nation. What would he do about those things, though, and how would he get his solutions through Congress?

Sanders, who calls himself a democratic socialist, is not shy about prescribing solutions considered heresy by conservatives.

His Supreme Court justices would strip unlimited campaign spending by corporations and billionaires and replace that with taxpayer-funded campaigns. He would make tuition free at public universities. The Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) would be replaced with a single-payer government health insurance program similar to Canada’s or Medicare. Tax breaks would end for billionaires and a new tax would be imposed on Wall Street speculation.

In short, the Sanders agenda would require a political revolution at the grass roots, a total overhaul of Congress, new personnel on the U.S. Supreme Court and a Constitutional amendment or two for good measure. All that seems far-fetched, but who knows? At the rate Sanders is gaining momentum, he is at least off to a good start.

The Bernie Sanders File

Personal biography: Born Sept. 8, 1941 in Brooklyn, N.Y. Lives now in Burlington, Vt., with wife, Jane, and has four children and seven grandchildren.

Education: Attended Brooklyn College and graduated from the University of Chicago.

Political career: Elected mayor of Burlington in 1981. Then, in 1990, he was elected to represent Vermont in Congress. He was first elected to the Senate in 2006 and re-elected to a second term in 2012. Though elected to Congress as an independent, Sanders is running for president as a Democrat.

First Impressions

About this series: The Des Moines Register has invited all declared candidates for president to meet with the editorial board. After each meeting, we will publish editorials giving our impressions of the candidates.