The rise to prominence of Bernie Sanders scares me a bit. The man is a quack. Make no mistake about it, he is a total, complete, nutjob quack. He is the liberal Ron Paul, whose ideas sound great on paper but have no way of being practically implemented.
For all of his great ideas (which admittedly appeal to me quite a bit as his ideas a liberal's wet dream), he has yet to give a practical means of implementing them outside of "tax the one percent!" The one percenters should absolutely be paying more. But even if we tax them at a rate of 40-60 %, how much revenue will that really generate? It will not provide free education, free healthcare, reduction of the national deficit, etc, all at the same time.
Plus there is the matter of Congress. Even if Democrats won back Congress, we would be looking at deadlock the likes of which have never been seen. It would make Obama's presidency look like a beacon of presidential and congressional cooperation.
Anyone who rationally thinks about Sanders's platform/candidacy can see just how impractical it is. Yet he continues to surge. Well, I am not sure that "surge" is the right word. I think he has captivated a very vocal and loud minority, but I don't think said minority is very prominent or will carry the day when it comes to vote (much like the Ron Paul movement). But I digress, this movement is concerning.
As I said, anyone who really thinks about it can see just how impractical a lot of what he says is. Yet people DESPERATELY want to believe. And this is not the same as Obama's promises of "hope" and "change" and other intangibles. This is someone offering the disillusioned and poor the keys to the vault, so to speak.
And people are buying it. Not just dumb kids who do not know any better. Rational people are buying this, despite no logical means of implementation. Why? Because they are desperate. It is a sad statement of how desperate people in this country have become. They want to believe this nonsense. They are so desperate that they will buy any possibility of change that someone is selling them.
This is dangerous. Sanders is essentially invoking class warfare with no real exit strategy (so to speak). What happens when he loses? The millions who are desperate for his victory will feel as though they have once again been cheated out of their utopia by the one percenters and their lap dogs. Look at how people are angrily pounding their fists and claiming "MEDIA CONSPIRACY!" when one simply does not exist (see the aforementioned Salon article).
I think Sanders means well. But this is a lunatic, holding a match to a powder keg, promising things that cannot be accomplished (at least not overnight) to desperate people. This is very dangerous. It is actually quite similar to the behavior of Donald Trump.
Mind you, Clinton is no better. She is more of the same. The country desperately needs a transformative leader. There is a great deal of social and economic inequity plaguing our country. But promising desperate people EVERYTHING, with no real means to implement it is a dangerous and reckless thing to do. We need someone capable of implementing change in a tempered manner, over time. That is neither Sanders nor Clinton. Hell, that is no one in this race.
