This election is unique. I have never seen anything like the way Sanders has come out of nowhere and acquired such a large following.
The reason for it is, in my view, that we are in a time of great change.
Technology has moved fast over the past 20 years. Incredibly fast.
Jobs that existed and paid well 10 years ago are disappearing because computers have diminished the need for many clerical workers. Even in industry, computers are replacing people.
When you get a revolution in industry (think the industrial revolution), politics change. The populist movement of the late 19th century occurred following the big surge in the industrial revolution.
We have had a big surge in the automation, computer, artificial intelligence revolution. It is just beginning. And we need new social structures to deal with it.
Job security is a thing of the past. The ability, physical, intellectual and financial, to learn new skills and ideas quickly is becoming more and more necessary to just survive in our world.
Hillary is weak when it comes to talking about job security. She refuses to take a stand on the TPP, but we know where she stands. She headed the State Department when it was written.
The stock market, too, is kind of a thing of the past. It used to be that a person sitting at home could maybe buy stocks in a company like AT&T or IBM or some major company and 20 years later, find that he had done well. Now, the big investment firms play around with shorts and longs and all kinds of fast trades and just suck the money out of the stock market leaving poor, misguided "day traders" at home, dizzy, sucking their thumbs, crying real tears and wondering where their money went. There are fewer day traders now than there were maybe 5-10 years ago, but the non-stop investment advice on TV and in the mail are still a part of our lives as are the wonderful offers for still more loans even though most of us don't have incomes secure enough to permit us to borrow.
Hillary is practically a tool of the big hedge fund managers and leading brokerage houses. Good for them. With Hillary, they have someone they can "work with" as they might say. She is amenable to them. She listens to their ideas, curries favor with them, flirts with them by standing in front of them giving pretty speeches. She is not going to come down hard and regulate Wall Street as it needs to be regulated. Wall Street knows that. Bernie supporters know that. (Even if she doesn't admit it to herself or her fans.)
This new reality calls for change. Bernie is the only one presidential candidate getting voter attention who is offering ideas about how we could change our financial culture so that it secures and serves more of us.
Wall Street certainly has no answers.
Americans feel squeezed. The "globalization" of the production of goods and services frees companies to roam and push down the value of labor. It chains American workers who, just to barely survive on wages that are in terms of today's dollars and benefits, lower than those of their parents' generation, buy mostly imported consumer goods (other than food -- and even imported food) from big box stores. We Americans watch as our jobs are sucked out of our country and the wage elevator that took us, American workers, up to a livable wage back in the 1950s descends at a faster and faster rate.
We need a social welfare system that helps us recover from frequent job losses and lower wages. That is why Bernie's "free college" which we can assume includes free retraining for everyone including people working in our fast fading industrial sector when our jobs disappear. Unemployment checks are no longer enough. We have to be able to reboot our professional lives almost as quickly as we reboot our computers. One career, maybe two or three employers over a lifetime is no longer a realistic expectation.
That's why the crowds roar when Bernie talks about free college. It isn't just young kids who need tuition-free opportunities for education. It is virtually every working person who will at some point in his or her life probably have to reboot and re-educate or re-train.
We Americans, no matter how capable, no matter how strong, no matter how well trained or educated, do not have the ability to enter the global markets and look for jobs or barter for better wages. My husband and I actually did go to other countries to get jobs when we couldn't find them here, but most Americans can't do that. They don't speak languages. They have family obligations here. And I would not advise anyone to try it. It is not as easy to live in a foreign culture or country -- to immigrate if you will even for just some years -- as Donald Trump seems to think it is. It's really, really hard. It is unrealistic for most Americans.
But not at all unrealistic for multinational corporations who, just to insure themselves as they roam the world to conquer new markets and new work forces, intimidate governments into signing trade agreements that displace democratic institutions with corporate arbitration courts.
That, too, is creating a social and economic y crisis that Bernie is responding to. No one else is responding to that social crisis, that insecurity in American families.
Then there is the environment. Americans have yet to discover how dismally weak Hillary really is on this issue.
It isn't that Hillary is weak. It is that she is part of the political machine that is ignoring these problems that will, if not dealt with openly, destroy American society.
And then there are the family issues. Here, Bernie and Hillary may be in closer agreement. But again, Hillary's ideas of solutions, because her in-ness, her membership in the D.C. and Wall Street above-the-crowd crowd blinds her, cannot really appreciate. We need a $15 per hour wage. No one can survive on less than that if they have a family. That is only about $31,200 per year if you work a full 40 hour week or $23,400 if you work only a 30 hour week. And if you are doing temporary work, it will be considerably less.
Hillary, I believe, has not yet stated what she thinks the minimum wage should be. I'd like to know this. She needs to name a number. She needs to name a number that would enable a working person to pay rent, bills and feed a couple of kids. Anything less than that won't do. Unless she wants to supplement the sub-subsistance wages with government assistance.
I could go on and on, issue after issue, Hillary is either non-committal or downright wrong. She is just too in with the in crowd that gives tax breaks to oli and gas and wealthy CEO and hedge fund managers. Wants to destroy our democracy in order to protect Wall Street and the 401(K)s or retirement funds of members of Congress.
Oh, and Hillary is weak on Social Security too. (Unless she has evolved on this one too?) Bernie wants to expand Social Security and never, never privatize it. Hillary is downright weak on this issue which is a life or death issue for Americans.
Bernie wants to raise the cap and draw Social Security taxes from first all income up to $500,000 and then all income. Hillary in 2008 argued against raising the cap. Have you evolved, Hillary? No doubt her Wall Street pals like Pete Peterson have a privatization plan they would love to sell her. No. Wall Street cannot be trusted with our Social Security dollars. No way.
On race, Bernie is handing the stage to supporters of Black Lives Matter and promising to be the strongest advocate possible for changing our racists police forces and our justice system.
Hillary -- second rate on this at best. Taking money from the private prison corporations. Even if she gives it back, and she is probably too proud to return it, it once again, like her vote on the Iraq War Resolution, shows her poor judgment. Besides, no way would she risk offending the secret racists in high places who donate to her campaign in order to institute meaningful change in terms of Black Lives Matter issues.
Bernie is just a so much stronger candidate in terms of responding to what is on the minds of Americans right now that I don't see how Hillary can possibly win.
And then there are the many nagging questions about Hillary's personal judgment and her many scandals. And I am virtually certain that as the texts of her e-mails as Secretary of State and the donations to her foundation from the very countries and leaders she was dealing with and the role of our diplomatic corps and our allies in the funding of ISIS become apparent and are publicized, the Hillary candidacy will be in shambles.
Let's hope that Americans realize all this before the Iowa and New Hampshire primary caucus and election. As for South Carolina, we shall see. The South lost its textile industry and is governed by anti-union racists. We shall see who wins there.
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