Let’s play a game, sporting reader. Name the biggest coward in Congress.
Plenty of picks jump to mind. The unctuous Speaker of the House “My Kevin” McCarthy? The Eeyorish senator currently deprived of shoelaces at Walter Reed who refuses to resign despite hating his job? Or maybe an amalgam: the progressive passel who mailed a missive to President Biden enjoining him to negotiate a modus vivendi between Russia and Ukraine, only to retract it after Twitter uproar?
Or maybe it’s just the whole lot of lawmakers who talk one way about “fiscal responsibility” or “social justice” while reliably doling out dough to their biggest donors, all while remaining comfortably ensconced in office thanks to Fenno’s paradox?
They’re all certainly a shade or two of yellow. But there’s one creme de la coward of them all: Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
I’ll swat away the most obvious reasoning first: No, Senator Sanderista isn’t a milksop because he’s a crypto red, honeymooned in the Soviet Union, and probably still believes Walter Duranty’s misreporting on the Holodomor. (Old Man Bernie may have even been alive during the shameful coverup—I’m too lazy to Google.)
There have been many Congressclots through the years who have sincerely believed true communism has never been tried. The Marxist ideology currently has its own cheer section in the House of Representatives. Still thinking Stalinism is a force for good rather than a blood-soaked belief system with a million-plus body count isn’t stupid anymore—it’s a prerequisite for being an intern in Rep. Cori Bush’s con. (in both meanings of the term) office.
No, what makes Sen. Sanders a spineless scaredy-cat isn’t his core credence, but his class-conflict squishiness. Bernie wants to be the proletariat’s paladin but can’t bring himself to shake off the woke worldview, and all its inane precepts antithetical to the working class. And most of the time, he can’t even keep consistent with his kitchen-table socialism.
Like most commie street preachers, Bernie has difficulty making dollars with sense.
Back in 2015, during his breakout presidential run, multiple news outlets uncovered the senator’s shameless hypocrisy in personal money matters. Sen. Sanders was a strong proponent of the $15-an-hour minimum wage but paid his congressional interns only $12-a-clock-spin of toil; Sanders opposed the ride-share industry for its lax worker standards yet used Uber for 100% of comped rides for the first six months of his campaign.
Just as the oppressive kings of old, Bernie indulged in nepotism, feeding campaign funds to his family for non-descript “services.” Mrs. Sanders and their stepdaughter Carina both cashed in over $100k during their socialist sugar daddy’s House years. Marx accused “the bourgeoisie” of reducing “the family relation into a mere money relation” but Bernie’s got that theory beat: he used the public fisc to enhance his family relation. Put that in your blue-chip portfolio and smoke it, capitalist fat cats!
The casual fee-skimming continues in the present day. During a speaking tour for his recent book It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism, the peeved senator farmed out event planning to his publisher, which sold tickets via—*dun dun duuuun*—Ticketmaster. If you’ve ever enjoyed the angsty melodic stylings of Pearl Jam live, you know what happened next. Ducats to hear Grandpa Menshevik rage against green greed sold for as high as $100. Experience “Our Revolution”! *mediated through monopolistic corporate colossus Ticketmaster, taxes and price-gouging fees will apply.
Sen. Sanders’s indifference to fiduciary consistency is bad enough. But now he’s fumbling the major tenets of his own ideology. During a recent appearance on the occasional-heterodox Bill Maher show, Sanders was asked: “how would you differentiate between equity and equality?” Looking befuddled, as if confronted about confusing the daily dosage in his dosette, Bernie botched the answer: “Well equality, we talk about… uh, I don’t know what the answer to that is…”
Talk about #FeeltheBrainBern. Surely senility isn’t setting in at the spry young age of octo-and one, right?
Bernie took a moment to remember his Merriam-Webster, reciting a definition verbatim: “Equality is equality of opportunity.” That’s when Maher, sensing an old man’s cognitive malfunction, leapt like a care-aide: “Equity, I think, is more of a guarantee of outcome, is it not?” to which Bernie affirmed before declaring his allegiance to Team Equality.
A few points on Bernie’s balking banana-peel slip. First, “democratic socialism” or whatever euphemistic label Bernie self-labels with is based on equity, not equality. Egalitarianism assumes a level outcome for all, while unlimited opportunity necessarily means everyone finishes in a different place. So Bernie assumes the wrong ideological identity—but, hey, the whole I-identify-as thing is more fluid than Trump’s golden tresses, so a progressive darling like Sanders can get away with it.
Second, Sanders says he doesn’t grasp what equity means, but his internet presence does. He’s tweeted about “pay equity” and his campaign website has an entire page dedicated to “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” Now, I’ve worked in and around politics long enough to know an analogue guy like Bernie doesn’t actually write his own web copy, let alone tweet. His underpaid underlings keep the senator’s internet persona up to woke spec. But it’s 2023—there’s no meaningful distinction in what you say in person to what you spout online.
Lastly, if Bernie’s past faux pas are any indication, he’ll soon be singing equity’s tune like “Hasta La Victoria Siempre!” Back in a 2015 interview with political Poindexter Ezra Klein, Sanders was pressed on if an America-based socialist movement needed to be international in outlook. “I think if you take global poverty that seriously, it leads you to conclusions that in the U.S. are considered out of political bounds. Things like sharply raising the level of immigration we permit, even up to a level of open borders…” Klein started suggesting before Bernie interjected. “Open borders? No, that’s a Koch brothers proposal.”
For once, the Green Mountain senator was right on the right: market libertarians do prefer few to no immigration restrictions, whereas traditional socialists calculated that thrown-open borders suppress working-class wages. But, after predictable online outrage, Sanders eventually walked back his dismissal of porous national perimeters, endorsing a deportation freeze.
Bernie Sanders wants it both ways: against open borders, but against immigration enforcement; for equality in theory, but equity in practice; raging against insider corruption while raking off the taxpayer-funded top.
The prevaricating politician is a trope as old as politicking. Yet Sanders has the rep of the left’s answer to former Texas Representative Ron Paul. Their trajectories tell the difference between poltroon and principle: Dr. Paul bowed out of Congress with nary a vote contrary to his professed beliefs; Bernie became a presidential contender by talking out both sides of his socialist scowl.
And if you need any more confirmation of cowardice, just scope out Sanders’s three abodes on Redfin. Such a scourge of the mansion class!
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