If you thought the 2016 fight between Donald John Trump and Hillary Rodham Clinton was a blast, you might be in for a real treat in 2020.
Senator Bernie Sanders raised $6 million in less than 24 hours after announcing his candidacy for the presidency, the outright insanity of his ideology notwithstanding. That big haul means two things: One, Sanders still has a frighteningly large, lowing herd of devotees. Second, the Democratic Party is, in case anyone was in doubt, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the totalitarian Left.
And should Sanders defeat the other more temperate but no less radical Democrats, the general election will pit one man who loves his country and the people who elected him against another who hates the country and the people who elected his opponent in 2016.
Trump vs. Sanders will fun. But it will also be ugly.
Sanders: Trump Is a Racist
When Sanders launched his campaign the other day, he offered a constructive critique of the president.
“I think the current occupant of the White House is an embarrassment to our country,” Sanders said. “I think he is a pathological liar…. I also think he is a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, a xenophobe, somebody who is gaining cheap political points by trying to pick on minorities, often undocumented immigrants.”
That sober and detailed analysis of the president’s policies is nothing new. “I must tell you it gives me no pleasure to tell you that we now have a President of the United States who is a racist,” he said last month at a ceremony honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. “We have a president intentionally, purposefully trying to divide us up by the color of our skin, by our gender, by the country we came from, by our religion.”
And in November, before offering that exegesis of the administration’s economic and foreign-policy failures, he spoke before hate-crime hoaxer Al Sharpton’s National Action Network. Americans, he said, elected “a president who is a sexist. A president who is a homophobe. A president who is a xenophobe and a president who is a religious bigot.”
Trump: “Crazy Bernie”
For his part, Trump reacted appropriately. “Crazy Bernie has just entered the race,” the president tweeted. “I wish him well!”
He also had some kinds words for the man whose head is stuck in the glory days of 1930s Soviet collectivism. “But I like Bernie because he is one person that, you know, on trade he sort of would agree on trade. I’m being very tough on trade, he was tough on trade,” Trump told reporters. “The problem is he doesn’t know what to do about it…. But I wish Bernie well. It will be interesting to see how he does.”
Yes, it will be interesting. As was Sanders’ riposte to Trump’s tweet, which brutally listed the president’s many mistakes, for instance, in his approach to trade and economic policy.
“What’s crazy is that we have a president who is a racist, a sexist, a xenophobe and a fraud,” Sanders tweeted. “We are going to bring people together and not only defeat Trump but transform the economic and political life of this country.” Providing a link to donate to this campaign, he wrote, “Say you’re in.”
A lot of people did, given that 24-hour, $6 million haul.
Campaign Video
In the video opening his campaign, Sanders offered even an even more profound critique of the president and what his campaign will be “about.” Trump, he said, is the “most dangerous president in modern American history.” And “our campaign,” he said, “is about transforming our country and creating a government based on the principles of economic, social, racial and environmental justice.”
However “dangerous” Trump might be, let us not forget Sanders’ past. Even today, as he launches a second run at the White House, he has not renounced his loving support for communist tyrants from the Soviet Union to Cuba.
Sanders’ pro-communist activities and friendship with America’s enemies is nothing if not well-documented, but perhaps best expressed in the Soviet flag he hung in his office. Those inclined to doubt his communist sympathies can always watch Sanders express them in footage on YouTube.
Sanders is not an off-the-wall candidate for the presidency. He’s not another Harold Stassen or Lyndon Larouche. He is a serious and strong contender. So even as the radical Left and the controllers of the party would shun, ostracize, and destroy any candidate, Republican or Democrat, who honors the Confederate Battle Flag, they might well adopt as a standard-bearer a man who finds common cause and flew the banner of communist tyrants who murdered tens of millions.
Maybe “crazy” understates the truth.
Photo: AP Images
