This May Be the End for Bernie, But Not for His Message

I almost skipped the Bernie Sanders Show in Rec Hall this week. Candidates are notoriously late to their own parties and I didn’t relish waiting hours just to hear my fellow Brooklynite tell me the rich are getting richa and the poor are getting poora.

I’m glad I went.

Bernie speechifying is better than Bernie debating and way better than Bernie boiled down to a couple of sound bites in a news story.

He was even on time – well, within 10 minutes of on time, anyway.

If you never hear Bernie out, start to finish, you don’t know how comprehensive and cogent his critique of the status quo is. The linchpin, of course, is his belief – which I find inarguable – that our economy is “rigged,” in large part because Congress is beholden to its biggest donors.

There’s a tendency to think that our most pressing problems – deteriorating water systems, schools, highways, airports; stagnant wages; burgeoning prison populations; rising education and healthcare costs; a warming planet, etc. – are simply insoluble. Too complicated. Too expensive to fix.

Bernie’s argument: They don’t get fixed because these are not Congress’ spending or regulatory priorities, which tilt toward keeping those big donors happy.

After all, he says, other “major countries” are doing better in these areas than we are and it’s not just because we’re bigger and more diverse than they are.

I’d say it was an impressive performance, but the word performance doesn’t do Bernie justice. Yes, there are applause lines and laugh lines, but Bernie, unlike any politician I have heard in my lifetime, clearly believes everything he says.

Trump supporters say the same of their candidate, but here’s the difference. Trump says what he thinks in only the narrowest sense: It’s what he happens to be thinking at that very moment. Bernie’s been thinking about the things he says for a long time.

Also impressive was the enthusiasm of the Rec Hall crowd. A cynic might say, if you’re a college kid, what’s not to like about free tuition and decriminalizing marijuana? I’m just glad the kids are tuning in.

Little kids, too. Near the press corral where I was stood a mom and her four children in matching tie-dye shirts and “Students for Bernie” stickers. The kids were jumping for joy, they were so fired up about Bernie’s rants against super PACS and subprime mortgage loans.

At times, Bernie’s thunderous diagnoses of what ails the body politic confused the crowd. They didn’t know whether to boo the ailments or cheer Bernie for vowing to cure them.

Awkward example: “Blacks are four times as likely to be arrested!” Yay! Oops! We mean boo!

Other T-shirts that caught my eye: A picture of Trump with the words “Future War Criminal.” Another that said, “Talk Bernie to Me.”

I also kept an eye on a quartet of sullen Trumpkins, who, though they were presumably there by choice, looked like kids serving detention. They wore Trump Ts and Trump caps, including the red one that says, “Make America Great Again.” To their credit, they maintained a respectful silence.

When I got home I turned on CNN to watch coverage of the New York primary. Live from State College, Jeff Zeleny, the network’s senior Washington correspondent, reported that Bernie’s attacks on Hillary Clinton were his harshest yet.

I haven’t been happy about the recent unpleasantness between the two Democratic contenders – I think Bernie has been at his most refreshingly charming when he has given “Madam Secretary” her due – but he spent maybe five minutes of an hour-long speech running down his rival. (Frankly, I don’t care about the transcripts of her speeches to Goldman-Sachs.)

This was journalism at its most trivializing – boiling the substance of Bernie’s remarks down to a predetermined Clash of the Titans storyline. But here’s how pernicious such reporting is: A few minutes later, Paul Begala, a Clinton ally and a member of Anderson Cooper’s panel of pundits (Begala will debate Karl Rove on campus on Monday night), invoked Zeleny’s report. Just that quickly, the most peripheral portion of Bernie’s speech had become his only newsworthy utterance of the day.  

Such has been Bernie’s lot. The wonder is that he got as far as he did. To the New Yorkers who flocked to Hillary on Tuesday, he was never anything other than a crank from Vermont, the charming little land where old hippies go to die.

Bernie didn’t even win Brooklyn, and he’s such a quintessentially Brooklyn guy! Hell, he didn’t even win the block he was born on.

Ah, well. If this most quixotic of campaigns is indeed nearing its end, we his admirers can hope that even if the messenger goes away, his call to reject the status quo of unbridled corporate greed and influence buying will continue to resonate among the young people who were chanting his name on Tuesday night.