America’s incompetent Ruling Class has struggled without success to remove President Trump from office, whether it be by recounts, harassing electors, charging him with being a Russian agent or impeaching him. While there may be another soporific “bombshell” in the next few months, it appears that the only way the President will leave office is if he is defeated this November. However, an unforeseen problem has occurred: the popularity of Vermont senator Bernie Sanders.
A self-described socialist, Sanders launched a populist campaign against Hillary Clinton in 2016 and may have been the nominee had the system not been rigged by superdelegates and a fawning Clinton-loving media. Furthermore, polls consistently showed that Sanders was a stronger candidate against Trump than Clinton.
With Sanders, what you see is what you get. Unlike Joe Biden, who has flip-flopped on virtually every issue, Sanders consistently favored Medicare-for-All, free college, forgiveness of all student debt, amnesty for illegal immigrants, banning fossil fuels and favors financing this agenda with large tax increases, especially on the wealthy and the corporations. Voters appreciate candidates who have the courtesy to tell you what they really believe, rather than focus-group tested pabulum.
Our Ruling Class did not take Sanders seriously, fallaciously believing that Joe Biden’s nomination was inevitable. But then the polls showed that Sanders was about to run the table in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada – making it very difficult to deny him the nomination. Thus, the Sanders’ supporters saw firsthand what Trump supporters have seen all along – our Ruling Class will game the system to return to power.
Suddenly, Nancy Pelosi – who rushed the impeachment process – delayed sending the articles of impeachment to Senate so that Senate trial was timed perfectly to prevent Sanders from campaigning in the Iowa caucuses at a critical time. Hillary Clinton then attacked, stating “Nobody likes him [Sanders], nobody wants to work with him, and he got nothing done. He was a career politician. It’s all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.”
CNN followed up by sandbagging Sanders during a debate by accusing him of telling Elizabeth Warren that a woman could not be president. Magically, the rules to enter the debates were changed to allow Michael Bloomberg, after he made a large donation to the Democratic National Committee. The committees that will control the Democratic convention have been stacked with former Clinton supporters.
This all looked suspicious enough to a Sanders’ supporters, but then a final poll by the Des Moines Register – which would have shown that Sanders had a commanding lead – had “sampling problems” and was not released. When it was finally time to count the votes from the Iowa caucuses, an app designed by veterans of the Clinton campaign to tabulate the vote, did not function initially and in an Orwellian conclusion, declared Pete Buttigieg the winner even though Sanders won the popular vote not once but twice and both men will receive the same number of delegates at the Democratic Convention. Note to Sanders’ supporters: Just because you’re paranoid does not mean that they aren’t out to get you.
The conventional wisdom is that the Ruling Class believes that Sanders is too liberal to win and rabidly wants President Trump out of office. But there is another possibility too: The Ruling Class prefers Trump to Sanders.
The dirty little secret is that our Ruling Class has thrived under President Trump. Tax cuts, a booming economy and a skyrocketing stock market have filled their coffers. They can tolerate being out of power for another four years. But they will not tolerate the risk of being obliterated financially if Sanders become president.
The high valuations in the stock market and real estate are due to asset bubbles created by historically low interest rates. Our central bankers have figured out how to print money, keep inflation under control while keeping interest rates low.
How long can this last? Who knows? But financial contagions rarely have warnings. You just wake up one day; turn on financial news and see drawn faces looking at cascading numbers. And with record levels of government, corporate and consumer debt, this could occur at any time. If it does, President Trump – not having to fight again for reelection – may outrage his base but protect himself and the Ruling Class with a taxpayer bailout.
But what would a President Sanders do? In 1995, Clinton Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs CEO Robert Rubin demanded a taxpayer bailout for his company after it purchased defaulting Mexican bonds. Then-Congressman Sanders said to him, “Go back to your Wall Street friends [and] tell them to take the risk and not ask the American taxpayers.” President Clinton then obliged Goldman Sachs by using a special fund to bail them out when Congress refused to do so. Thus, it is unlikely that President Sanders will bail out wealthy corporate Democrats who fought his nomination.
Perhaps our Ruling Class can crush Sanders and convince his supporters that Trump is so odious they must show up and support someone like the billionaire Bloomberg or the billionaire puppets Biden or Buttigieg: “Do you want four more years of Trump picking our judges? Abortion rights, LGBT rights and our climate agenda will be on the chopping block.”
But many Sanders supporters may see little difference between another Wall Street Democrat and Trump. Enough of them walked in 2016 to give Trump the Presidency. They may do it again in 2020.
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