The disappointed apostles of socialist Bernie Sanders have demanded that presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden erect the Leviathan State that Sanders had promised.
In a letter published just after Sanders abandoned his second quixotic quest for the White House, Sanders’ so-called youth supporters offered Biden $100 million of campaign funding if he agrees to implement a long list of demands and hire a longer list of hard-left Sanders supporters.
In other words, Sanders lost, but what he advocated — a totalitarian megastate run by daft hate-America ideologues — might still be the result if Biden defeats President Trump on November 3.
Main Demands
Signed by the Alliance for Youth Action, Justice Democrats, NextGen America, and others, the letter flatly tells Biden he was “unable to win the votes of the vast majority of voters under 45 years old during the primary.”
Thus, the signatories expect full-blown socialism because a “‘return to normalcy’ does not and has not earned the support and trust of voters from our generation. For so many young people, going back to the way things were ‘before Trump’ isn’t a motivating enough reason to cast a ballot in November.”
Barack Hussein Obama, it seems, wasn’t far enough left.
The Chinese Virus, the letter says, has “has exposed not only the failure of Trump, but how decades of policymaking has failed to create a robust social safety net for the vast majority of Americans.”
And so the earnest youngsters demand action on these pet projects:
• Green New Deal: Ensure a “just transition to 100% Clean Energy by 2030 for electricity, buildings, and transportation; restart the economy by committing to mobilizing $10 trillion in green stimulus and infrastructure investments over 10 years that will create tens of millions of good jobs of the future.”
• Gun control: Enact a “Peace Plan for a Safer America” that includes federal licensing of firearms and attacking the National Rifle Association.
• Immigration: Expand Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (President Obama’s amnesty for illegal-alien kids), give citizenship to all illegal aliens, stop state and local cops from helping Immigration and Customs Enforcement, eliminate ICE and Customs and Border Protection and punish their personnel.
• Health Care: Back Sanders’ socialist Medicare for All and reinstate taxpayer subsidies for abortion.
• Education: Give “free” tuition for public colleges, universities, and vocational schools for all students, regardless of income, citizenship status, or criminal record, and cancel all $1.7 trillion in student-loan debt.
• Wealth Tax: Tax the “wealthiest 180,000 households in America who are in the top 0.1 percent.”
Biden must appoint “progressive elected officials” who backed Sanders, and hire “a trusted progressive to lead the White House Presidential Personnel Office to ensure that the entire administration is free of corruption and staffed with public servants committed to advancing a progressive agenda.”
After the long list of proposed personnel who would, of course, be “free of corruption,” came the promise of the Big Payola: “$100 million communicating with more than 10 million young members, supporters, and potential voters.”
Upshot of the letter? Sanders will have won the election by losing.
Biden’s Letter on Sanders
Coincident with that list of demands, Biden confessed yesterday that he too Felt the Bern and will do what he can to accommodate the old socialist’s many supporters.
“Senator Sanders and his supporters have changed the dialogue in America,” Biden wrote on Medium.com:
Issues which had been given little attention — or little hope of ever passing — are now at the center of the political debate. Income inequality, universal health care, climate change, free college, relieving students from the crushing debt of student loans. These are just a few of the issues Bernie and his supporters have given life to. And while Bernie and I may not agree on how we might get there, we agree on the ultimate goal for these issues and many more.
Though Sanders and his disciples have “changed the dialogue in America,” Biden didn’t promise specifics to the old socialist’s hirsute followers, some of whom promised gulags and firing squads for Republicans if he had won. But Biden did vow to implement at least some of Sanders’ program, even if the two do “not agree on how we might get there”:
While the Sanders campaign has been suspended — its impact on this election and on elections to come is far from over. We will address the existential crisis of climate change. We will confront income inequality in our nation. We will make sure healthcare is affordable and accessible to every American. We will make education at our public colleges and universities free. We will ease the burden of student debt. And, most important of all, we will defeat Donald Trump.
R. Cort Kirkwood is a long-time contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor.
