[lbo-talk] What Sanders represents: Peggy Noonan warns her readers

W. Kiernan wkiernan at gmail.com
Sun Feb 7 15:32:36 PST 2016


"They remember socialism." American 60-year-olds "remember" socialism? Maybe they remember bathing in bug-eyed anti-Soviet propaganda. How can they "remember" something they never experienced? Except for graduated income tax rates, the public schools, interstate highways, Social Security, FEMA flood control, regularAll-American stuff like that.

On Sat, Feb 6, 2016 at 11:58 PM, Joel Schlosberg <joelschlosberg at gmail.com> wrote:


> Interesting read. As capitalists go, the WSJ knows its enemy relatively
> well.
>
> Joel
>
> On Fri, Feb 5, 2016 at 11:49 AM, Marv Gandall <marvgand2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > A surprisingly sober look by Wall Street Journal columnist and former
> > Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan at the Sanders movement and the
> > receptivity to “socialist” ideas of many young adults whose only
> experience
> > of capitalism is that it “drove us into a ditch”.
> >
> > “It’s all part of the great scrambling that is happening this political
> > year—the most dramatic, and perhaps most consequential, of our
> lifetimes.”
> >
> > (Behind a paywall)
> >
> > Socialism gets a second life
> > By Peggy Noonan
> > Wall Street Journal
> > January 29 2016
> >
> > Nashua, N.H.
> >
> > I was watching Bernie Sanders speak last week at a town hall in Bedford
> > when an early intuition became a conviction: Take Mr. Sanders seriously.
> He
> > is not just another antic presence in Crazy Year 2016. His rise
> signifies a
> > major shift within the Democratic Party.
> >
> > The big room was full, 700 to 800 people, good for 5 p.m. on a Friday.
> The
> > audience wasn’t raucous or full of cheers as at his big rallies, but
> > thinking and nodding. They were young and middle-aged, with not many
> > white-haired heads. There was a working-class feel to them, though
> Bedford
> > is relatively affluent.
> >
> > “Let me disabuse you,” Mr. Sanders says to those who think he cannot win.
> > He quotes New Hampshire polls, where he’s way ahead. He can defeat Donald
> > Trump,he says.
> >
> > Then the meat. He described America as a place of broad
> suffering—“student
> > debt,” “two-job families” with strained marriages and insufficient child
> > care, “the old on fixed incomes.”
> >
> > We can turn it around if we make clear to “the billionaire class” that
> > income inequality “is not moral.” The economy is “rigged.” Real
> > unemployment is not 5% but twice that. “Youth unemployment is off the
> > charts.” He wants job-training programs for the young. The minimum wage
> is
> > “a starvation wage.” Raise it to “a living wage—15 bucks an hour.”
> >
> > The audience is attentive, supportive. “Yeah!” some shout.
> >
> > He speaks of Goldman Sachs, of “banksters” and of a Republican Party
> owned
> > by “the oil industry, coal industry.”
> >
> > “Health care is a right of all people, not a privilege.” He asks if any
> in
> > the audience have high-insurance deductibles. They start to call out:
> > “$4,000,” “5,000,” “6,000!” Someone yells: “Nothing’s covered!”
> >
> > No one mentions ObamaCare, but it seems clear it hasn’t worked here.
> >
> > Mr. Sanders says people don’t go to the doctor when they’re sick because
> > of the deductibles. “Same with mental-health care!” a woman calls out.
> > “Mental-health care must be considered part of health care,” he responds,
> > to applause. He is for “a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system.”
> >
> > How to pay for it all? “Impose a tax on Wall Street speculation,” he
> says,
> > briefly. He does not elaborate and is not pressed to.
> >
> > Mr. Sanders’s essential message was somber, grim, even dark. It’s all
> > stark—good guys and bad guys, angels and devils. But it’s also clear and
> > easy to understand: We are in terrible trouble because our entire system
> is
> > rigged, the billionaires did it, they are the beneficiaries of the
> biggest
> > income transfer from the poor to the rich in the history of man, and we
> are
> > going to stop it. How? Through “a political revolution.” But a soft one
> > that will take place in voting booths. We will vote to go left.
> >
> > As the audience left they seemed not pumped or excited, but satisfied.
> >
> > I listen to Mr. Sanders a lot, and what he says marks a departure from
> the
> > ways the Democratic Party has been operating for at least a generation
> now.
> >
> > Formally, since 1992, the Democratic Party has been Clintonian in its
> > economics—moderate, showing the influence of the Democratic Leadership
> > Council. Free-market capitalism is something you live with and accept;
> the
> > wealth it produces can be directed toward public programs and endeavors.
> > The Clinton administration didn’t hate Wall Street, it hired Wall Street.
> > Big government, big Wall Street—it all worked. It was the Great
> > Accommodation, and it was a break with more-socialist approaches of the
> > past.
> >
> > All this began to shatter in the crash of 2008, not that anyone
> noticed—it
> > got lost in the Obama hoopla. In March 2009, when Mr. Obama told Wall
> > Street bankers at the White House that his administration was the only
> > thing standing between them and “the pitchforks,” he was wittingly or
> > unwittingly acknowledging the Great Accommodation.
> >
> > The rise of Bernie Sanders means that accommodation is ending, and
> > something new will take its place.
> >
> > Surely it means something that Mr. Obama spent eight years insisting he
> > was not a socialist, and Bernie Sanders is rising while saying he is one.
> >
> > It has left Hillary Clinton scrambling, unsteady. She thought she and her
> > husband had cracked the code and made peace with big wealth. But her
> party
> > is undoing it—without her permission and without her leading the way. She
> > is meekly following.
> >
> > It is my guess that Mr. Sanders will win in Iowa and New Hampshire. But
> > the tendency he represents—whether it succeeds this time or simply
> settles
> > in and grows—is, I suspect, here to stay.
> >
> > A conservative of a certain age might say: “No, he’s a fad. Socialism is
> > yesterday! Marx is dead, the American economic behemoth rolled over and
> > flattened him. Socialism is an antique idea that rocks with age. America
> is
> > about the future, not the past.”
> >
> > I disagree. It’s back because it’s new again.
> >
> > For so many, 2008 shattered faith in the system—in its fairness,
> > usefulness and efficacy, even in its ability to endure.
> >
> > As for the young, let’s say you’re 20 or 30, meaning you’ll be voting for
> > a long time. What in your formative years would have taught you about the
> > excellence of free markets, low taxes, “a friendly business climate”? A
> > teacher in public high school? Maybe one—the faculty-lounge eccentric who
> > boycotted the union meetings. And who in our colleges teaches the virtues
> > of capitalism?
> >
> > If you are 20 or 30 you probably see capitalism in terms of two dramatic
> > themes. The first was the crash of ’08, in which heedless, irresponsible
> > operators in business and government kited the system and scrammed. The
> > second is income inequality. Why are some people richer than the richest
> > kings and so many poor as serfs? Is that what capitalism gives you? Then
> > maybe we should rethink this!
> >
> > And Mr. Sanders makes it sound so easy. We’re rich, he says; we can do
> > this with a few taxes. It is soft Marxism. And it’s not socialism now,
> it’s
> > “democratic socialism” like they have in Europe. You’ve been to Europe.
> > Aside from its refugee crisis and some EU problems, it’s a great place—a
> > big welfare state that’s wealthy! The French take three-hour lunches.
> >
> > Socialism is an old idea to you if you’re over 50 but a nice new idea if
> > you’re 25.
> >
> > Do you know what’s old if you’re 25? The free-market capitalist system
> > that drove us into a ditch.
> >
> > Polls show the generation gap. Mr. Sanders does poorly among the old.
> They
> > remember socialism. He does well among the young, who’ve just discovered
> it
> > and have little to no knowledge of its effects. A nationwide Marist poll
> in
> > November showed Mr. Sanders already leading Mrs. Clinton, 58% to 35%,
> among
> > voters under 30. She led him among all other age groups, and 69% to 21%
> > among those 60 and older. By this month a CBS/New York Times poll had Mr.
> > Sanders up 60% to 31% among voters under 45.
> >
> > Bernie Sanders is an indicator of the Democratic future. He is telling
> you
> > where that party’s going. In time some Democrats will leave over it, and
> > look for other homes.
> >
> > It’s all part of the great scrambling that is happening this political
> > year—the most dramatic, and perhaps most consequential, of our lifetimes.
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