It's Easy to See Why Bernie is So Widely Attacked.

[Ron Green]

From the boardrooms of Wall Street, to the print and electronic media, to the Democratic “Underground” - people of all interests are sounding the alarm about Sen. Bernie Sanders as he takes an early and slight lead in this race.

What’s the cause for concern among all these folks? Understandably, bankers and CEOs and laissez faire Capitalist types are nervous about the threat to their golden rice bowls, but what about everybody else?

Perhaps the idea of a “revolution” is something that scares comfortable people. Change is difficult, and no one gladly seeks it, but of course many of us political junkies at DU acknowledge the absolute need for deep and substantive change.

But the presidency of Donald Trump has lowered the bar for governance to the point that an actual billionaire is being trotted out to go against the fake billionaire. And from all quarters - the media certainly, and even DU - flow caution and relief as the hard work of a political revolution can be averted, slipping comfortably back into a vague campaign to make some cap-and-trade rules and tinker with the Affordable Care Act.

The Liberal Media, for its part, is happy to go after Trump as the cause of America’s problems, while of course the reality is that he’s merely the flowering of something that’s been growing for decades, something not discussed much within the two political parties. “Who can beat Trump?” is the wrong question; “Who can turn us away from authoritarianism?” is a better one. The best questions need to be asked, but they rarely are.

Playing the electoral game, but not very well, brought us Trump in 2016. Maybe it’s time to be bold not with political calculus, but with a commitment to a better world in the 21st Century.