Sanders in Connecticut

Blumenthal and Sanders

Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders is exciting agita in some Democrat breasts, and he knows it.

Sanders, who arrived in Springfield, Massachusetts at the Mass Mutual Center on a wave of primary wins, told enthusiasts in the crowd, “Some of you may have noticed that the political establishment and the corporate elite are getting very nervous. You know what? They have a right to get nervous. We’re going after them.”

Sanders has been going after the Democrat political establishment and the corporate elite since his 1988 honeymoon days in the Soviet Union. The political trajectory of the leading Democrat candidate for president was set in the student revolution days of the 70s. Sanders may be the only live-wire protester of that time who has failed to grow up in the intervening years. Marxism is an outworn creed; the Berlin Wall fell in 1989; Fidel Castro’s seemingly endless Cuban Revolution puttered forward when Fidel died, leaving his brother communist Raul to solider on; the socialist revolution in Venezuela, once the pearl of Latin American countries, ran out of toilet paper a few years ago and is now little more than a failed socialist hovel. And yet Sanders goosesteps -- yes, Virginia, the fascists were also socialists -- on through the rubble.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio from Florida, a catch basin for anti-Castro Cubans, hit an obvious nail on the head when he said that Sanders could not be a Democratic-Socialist because 1) Sanders is not a Democrat, and 2) he is not a Democratic-Socialist in the manner of modern-day Sweden, which is much friendlier to free markets than Sanders. The American left stopped thinking about Sweden in the 70s and hardly realizes that present day Sweden “is the country of pension reform, school vouchers, free trade, low corporate taxes and no taxes on property, gifts and inheritance. Sweden affords its big welfare state because it is more free-market and free trade than other countries. So if they want to redistribute wealth they also have to deregulate the economy drastically to create that wealth,” according to Swedish economist Johan Norgberg.

Sanders, Rubio said, is a common variety Marxist pledged, like Castro and Nicolás Maduro  of Venezuela, to overturn a free market system in favor of state capitalism, commonly called communism.   

Among Democrat establishment figures showing signs of agita is James Carville, an anti-establishment figure active during the Presidency of Bill Clinton. Surveying the correlation of forces within his party, Carville said, “Only two things are going to happen, Bernie or brokered” – meaning either Democrats will coalesce around an increasingly successful Sanders presidential campaign or the present Democrat primary will end in a brokered Democrat convention, during which establishment Democrats lashed by Sanders on the presidential stump will determine who President Donald Trump’s opponent in the upcoming 2020 elections will be.

U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal ought to support Sanders, but prudence has knocked the edge off his valor. “I would support any of the leading presidential candidates over Donald Trump, but I am not endorsing anyone at this time,” said Blumenthal. The senior Senator from Connecticut has crawled very far out on a progressive limb: He supports Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s ruinous Green New Deal, as does Sanders and, even though the is a senator from what used to be called “the insurance capital of the world,” Blumenthal favors a federal takeover of the insurance industry. His non-enthusiastic support of the Sanders presidential candidacy has led some to suppose that Blumenthal lacks the courage of his campaign convictions.

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy recently told a sycophantic interviewer that he would have no problem supporting Sanders should he prevail in the Democrat primaries now underway. Citing Sanders’ enthusiastic supporters, Murphy had said, “I think Bernie Sanders will beat Donald Trump,” but he too is waiting to see who Democrats will choose to represent them against their rhetorical Great Satan of the Democrat Party, President Donald Trump. Governor Ned Lamont, apparently the sole Democrat politician in the state with a spine, has pledged his support to former Vice President Joe Biden. Most other prominent Democrat office holders are waiting for a conclusive vox populi following the primaries.

As of this writing, former mayor of South Bend, Indiana Pete Buttigieg has thrown in the towel and the candidacy of Senator Elizabeth Warren is sputtering, though it has not yet flamed out. Super Tuesday will further thin the Democrat primary herd. Former Obama Vice President Joe Biden recovered in South Carolina from a primary drubbing and, of course, former three-term Republican Mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg, now a Democrat, has enough cash in his piggy bank to continue his campaign through what, many believe, may be a brokered convention full of seasoned Democrats who are not overly enamored of social-democracy; the liberal heirs of President John Kennedy prefer their democracy unadulterated and straight from the bottle.