Bernie Will Never Be The Dem Candidate But He Does Keep Hillary Focused On What She Can Give Away Today

Bye-bye, Bernie

Posted on November 27, 2015 by Ben Crystal

Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Leningrad) stopped his traveling campaign and folk revival in my town of Savannah, Georgia, this past weekend. Apparently, the old goat still thinks he has a double-bacon-cheeseburger’s chance in Michael Moore’s kitchen of being more than “that crazy-looking senior citizen who beat the karaoke singer from Maryland in the ‘I lost to Hillary’” sweepstakes. I considered poking my head under the tent flap. But there was football on TV and pulled pork in the slow cooker, the beer was already cold, and the dog needed to go for a walk. Also, I didn’t feel a strong desire to go and stand in room with shrieking gender studies majors, beta-male hipsters and whichever hoary old 60s leftovers got the biodiesel microbus to run. But I was glad to see him keeping the dream alive.

From local reports, Sanders put on his usual show. He threw out the same old left-wing tropes which have made him the noisiest also-ran since Ross Perot. Despite a resume of nearly four decades of completely ineffectual public service, Sanders continues to press his message that the government is the wellspring from which all liberty must flow. Bernie will deliver free college, free healthcare, free benefits as far as the federal coffers can stretch; even farther, if Bernie gets his way. In an America presided over by Bernie Sanders, we will all snuggle together under the blanket of something he calls “Democratic socialism,” which you probably remember as “communism.”

And let’s be honest with each other, kids. Bernie Sanders can dress up his plan to put the government in charge of everything with awkward couplets like “Democratic socialism.” Bernie Sanders can promise every delicate undergraduate at every college all the “safe spaces” they could dream of, and all on your nickel. Bernie Sanders can swear on a stack of “Das Kapitals” that he’ll save the American middle class by stealing a bunch of swag from the upper class and giving it to the lower class. But Bernie Sanders will never be president. Despite that, I hope he fights to the bitter end.

Bernie’s movement of college kids and doddering Woodstockians are a mile out of their weight class. For all their noise, they lack actual volume. With the sole exception of New Hampshire’s Democrats, who favor their old neighbor Bernie by single digits over Madame Hillary Clinton, the rest of the party prefers the pantsuit, often by 20 points or more. The Wall Street-backed, Saudi-funded, multimillionaire wife of Monica Lewinsky’s ex-boyfriend is beating Bernie the way Ronald Reagan beat Mikhail Gorbachev. Hell, she’s smacking him around like The Gipper backhanded Jimmy Carter’s old running mate.

But God love Bernie for the effort. The man is stumbling uphill like a drunken zombie, shuffling from place to place, making incoherent exclamations to crowds of similarly incoherent, but single-minded, people. His supporters, while certainly impressive when gathered large groups, are virtually helpless when isolated. They demand “safe spaces,” where they can be protected from “microaggressions.” And they appear to define “microaggression” as “anything you can’t find in a Howard Zinn screed.”

And God love Bernie’s mob for their effort, too. Their cause makes my dream of playing 18 at Augusta National look like a lock, but they’re not giving an inch. Their full-throated insistence that their detractors should be treated like background characters in an Orwell nightmare gives productive Americans a reason to look askance at the Democrats who take the old guy seriously. A recent Pew study revealed nearly 40 percent of the millennials who provide Bernie with his foundation also think the government should take a more active role in suppressing free speech. The same poll also revealed that 35 percent of Democrats overall share that opinion. That would suggest that a sizable minority of the Democratic throng thinks Hillary is too far right to be trusted. And that’s going to continue to force her to feint left to keep Bernie at bay.

And that’s pure gold for the good guys. By keeping Hillary on a port-side tack, Bernie is dragging her away from the majority of Americans who have grown exceedingly tired of being blamed by the left for all their ills, real or imagined, and then being charged for the experience. And keeping a vicious crone like Hillary from focusing on the rest of us is a heck of a gift for Bernie to give to the rest of us. God bless you, Bernie Sanders.

–Ben Crystal