PrintBernie vs. the swamp
Bernie Sanders has spent over half of his 78 years in Congress. He knows it as well as anyone, and he knows that it is hopelessly corrupt — and getting worse.
The entire establishment in Washington, D.C. is corrupt, with few exceptions. The leadership, the committee chairs, minority and majority, Republican or Democrat — it makes little difference, just a matter of degree. The lobbyists, the big think-tanks, the media, the Business Roundtable and the Chamber of Commerce, they're all in on it. It's a gravy train, with enough goodies for everybody.
Bernie is not corrupt, or at least less corrupt; he's a holy warrior, on a mission to drastically change this country. His outrage at public corruption is real. But his solutions are 19th-century reactionary Marxist madness.
Joe Biden is a year younger than Bernie, but he's been part of the swamp longer, since 1972. He is, as much as any man, a creature of, by, and for the swamp. Naturally enough, he's dirty, very dirty — as Bernie well knows.
Maybe the way Bernie was ambushed by CNN at the debate on Tuesday will get him to react. CNN is part of the swamp, the establishment. The establishment took Bernie down in 2016. Is his campaign going to let it happen to him again?
Bernie never really criticized Hillary Clinton in 2016, even as she and the swamp denied him the nomination. He hasn't criticized Biden, either. But I don't think he has to. Somebody will do it for him. I suspect there will be plenty of volunteers.
Once Biden's corruption is exposed, he's going to sink like a rock, and the nomination will be Bernie's to lose.
The political disaster of Sanders in 2020 will be the last gasp of the socialist left in this country. The Democratic Party has been carrying the banner of more centralized government since Woodrow Wilson in 1912. Major successes were achieved under Roosevelt; more came under Kennedy/Johnson. The great goal is a single-payer health system, created by the federal government. Obamacare was as far as they got, and it's going to be all downhill for them from here on.
Sanders in 2020 is the end of the evolution of the modern Democratic Party, always drifting to the left, and farther left — until socialism, the end of the road.
Fritz Pettyjohn is supporting Andrew Yang’s campaign for the Democratic nomination.
