COMPARE AND CONTRAST THE DONALD AND THE BERNE

The 2016 Presidential nomination race has resulted in the stunningly unforeseen happenstance of two way out non party backed contenders leading their respective early races. The prolonged domination of Donald Trump in the Republican race and Bernie Sanders in the Democratic contest has dumbfounded political pundits and led their respective party establishments to scratch their heads and beat their breasts in sheer frustration and disbelief. Both adversaries have regularly mesmerized crowds of tens of thousands and seem hell bent in defying political gravity. Both have the same mantra - the current political set up and the politicians that run the show have failed their electorate and that message has resonated to the rafters.

There is obviously some common themes in the emergence of this phenomenon and polls have shown that there is a crossover vote between the two camps although the two are polls apart politically. While Jay H. Ell believes that The Donald may well vanquish his field, (Blogs: “Trump's Hostile Takeover of the GOP” and “Can Trump Win the Presidency” ) and that The Berne is far less likely to emerge triumphant, (Blogs: “Can Bernie be Another Barack” and “Why Hillary is Running for Obama’s Third Term”), this does not begin to answer the question why this anomaly has occurred. 

In the education system that Jay H. Ell emerged from essay questions were the norm in examinations. Often these were framed in the form of “Compare and Contrast” two apparently related entities. For example, the question on a medical paper might be  “Compare and contrast rheumatoid and osteoarthritis, or in history, “Compare and contrast the American and French revolutions”. So here we go - compare and contrast Trump and Sanders success in their respective nomination races in the 2016 Presidential race.

STYLE  BEHAVIOR AND PERSONALITY;

Here the contrast could not be starker. While both are charismatic in their own way Trump is the epitome of glitzy style and fashion where Sanders appears in his ill fitting frumpy old suits and his old fashioned glasses. While the latter is forthright he does not blow his own trumpet which instrument Trump plays night and day. Whereas the election with the Democratic wannabe is all about ideas the Republican contender unashamedly and bellicosely claims it is about him. He can do it all because everyone else is stupid and or a loser. How he gets up and says the things he does without a blush never ceases to amaze. His latest statement is that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue New York and not lose a vote.

While Sanders almost apologetically criticizes individuals, for example, he gave a long explanation as to why he was forced to maintain that Bill Clinton’s behavior was reprehensible, character assassination is the bread and butter of the Trump monologues. Not a speech or a tweet goes by without an evisceration of a critic or opponent. Twenty - two conservative opponents devoted an entire journal, The National Review, criticizing Trump’s flip flopping and chronic inconsistencies. Not a word was addressed in response to the substance other than to spit out that The National Review was a “failing magazine - they did it because they will get nice publicity”. He argued that Glenn Beck who lead the conservative charge was as “dumb as a rock”. He used the attention focussed on him to attack Cruz on immigration, “By the way Ted Cruz was very very weak on illegal immigration. And now all of a sudden because of my stance he got strong”. Cruz being the target du jour and subject to, inter alia, a cynical merciless birther attack as he is threatening Trump in Iowa. He thrives on denigrating anyone who dares to challenge him and his contretemps with Fox journalist, Megan Kelly, has lead him to announce that he will not attend a Republican debate as she is a moderator. It is his way or the highway and thus far it has been his way. (To the media’s discredit they have predictability let it all slide because, guess what, Donald feeds their ratings. They have abandoned their role to challenge statements such as what was he thinking when he joked about shooting someone in Fifth Avenue New York. Ironically, the only one to take Trump on is Fox News. Blog: ”Fox News is the New GOP and Trump is the New Enemy”).

Then there are the outright lies. Bernie other than to extricate himself out of his mess on gun control and attempts to ingratiate himself at this late stage with Hispanics and African Americans has had very few “pinocchios” scored by the fact checkers. With Donald it is a thrill a minute. Most recently he told a New York Times reporter that he would put a forty - five percent tariff on Chinese goods. When confronted with the sequela that higher priced American goods would entail he denied having made the remark. This even when the tape was played back to him.  

PHILOSOPHY and POLICIES

While the central issue surrounding the frustration of the populace, unequal distribution of the country’s wealth, is the red meat for both, their solutions differ markedly. Firstly, the tycoon does not tackle the issue directly by saying that the dissolution of the middle class must be reversed. Rather he claims that he will get rid of what he perceives are the impediments to their prosperity such as the illegal immigrants, the Chinese and “unfavorable” trade agreements. He uses code for the widening gap in income by implying that if he makes “America Great Again” all will be well. Trump does not threaten what the Republicans call “entitlements” such as Medicare and Social Security that GOP establishment seem gung ho to axe. He thereby maintains his populist appeal. Bernie will level the playing field the old fashioned way - tax the rich and distribute it to the poor in the form, for example of a universal single payor health care system and free secondary education. No beating about the bush with The Berne.

While The Donald wears his billionaire status as a badge of honor to Bernie his money is a policy issue and should disqualify him from the race. When Michael Bloomberg, the former Mayor of New York and an even bigger billionaire hinted at joining the race Sanders again used the circumstance to highlight the difference between the oligarchs who own the country and the over ninety - nine percent that are exploited up the ying yang. “We don’t need another billionaire in this race”.

Where Bernie and Donald are idem is on the Iraq war both thought it was a disaster. But there it ends on foreign policy. Whereas the Democrat knows his limitations and steers clear the Republican is ready to take on the world. 

Trump is ready to issue simplistic one liners on anything and everything. Needless to say there isn’t a semblance of detail. Bernie has only one central message - inequity in wealth. Although he elaborates what that all that means in day to day living such as health care for all, he provides no details for nor does he elaborate as to how he will finance his policies. He vaguely states that instead of paying $10,000 to private insurance the citizen will only pay $5,000 in taxes with no basis how this balances out. Infrastructure will be payed for by repatriating the companies oversea money. The rest including free higher education Wall Street will pay for. He is ad idem with Trump in not being realistic as to funding. Trump will get Mexico to pay for his wall and other such inanities. Bernie claims he is a socialist while not explaining how his support for private enterprise fits in. Trump maintains that he is for a free market economy but threatens tariffs and trade restrictions.

THEY BOTH OPERATE ON THE EMOTIONAL LEVEL

They both don’t begin to produce long detailed explanations of how they are going to get it all done. They share a central thrust- an emotional appeal  to the body politic. They represent a mood, a gestalt that reflects a revulsion with the status quo. They both have successfully persuaded tens of thousands that politics should be removed from the political process. All you need is anger and a message. They both leave the conventional candidates frustrated who know how to effect change- in war you need guns and in politics you need votes. To get the latter you need support, you just cannot go it alone to get it done. 

WHAT COULD OR WOULD THEY BOTH DO IF ELECTED?

 They both leave everyone wondering what would happen in the unlikely event that either one became President. Both would give more of the same inauguration speeches. But they would have left us wandering why they hadn’t put together the massive armies of transition teams needed at the change of an administration. Neither one of them have as yet 10 legislators to endorse them. What would Paul Ryan say to Bernie when he called him to the Oval Office and asked him to cooperate with him on his signature legislation of taxing the rich further? Likewise would Chuck Schumer be open to sponsor Donald’s bill to provide the infrastructure to deport eleven million “illegals”? That would not require an expansion of the Federal work force and enlarge government. Will Donald fire the Mexican President when he tells him to suck eggs as he is not paying for a wall that he doesn’t need? 

Foreign relations will be a nightmare for both. The Donald, if the recent comments at Davos and the British House of Parliament are anything to go by, will have to reassure everyone that he was only doing what he had to do to get elected. Putin, at least, will understand. At least he has been consistent there isn’t a country that he hasn’t made a disparaging remark about. The Berne would have to go on a big learning curve and beg Hillary to run the State Department again. She does after all know them all. 

To sum up no angry progressive can disagree with Bernie’s wish list. The problem is that he just cannot deliver. What has he got that Obama hasn’t? Likewise there is no angry conservative that does not connect on a visceral level with Trump. His supporters however do not have the responsibility to face the world wide consequences when they spit out, shamefacedly, in the privacy of their TV rooms, such xenophobic thoughts such as keeping all Muslims out of America. 

If Noam Chomsky would rather vote for Hillary because he thinks that Bernie cannot get it done and John McCain believes that a marriage between Putin and Trump is made in heaven it should send a message to supporters in both parties. One is too good to be true and the other too bad.  

AT THE END OF THE DAY

Both candidates have cashed in on the disgust the body politic have to those that have exhibited at “politics as usual”.

Whatever the outcome the paradigm of Primaries has changed. Distinct approaches have been clearly defined that differ from the well worn pattern. Bernie at a crucial stage has given up on a bit on Iowa or he feels his priority is to continue creating a wave.  So he was off to Minnesota to address a crowd of over ten thousand. Bernie wants to operate politics by a mass movement. Obama, who was an icon, tried it as well and now is in favor of prose rather than poetry in governing. Martin Luther King understood the difference between the politics of democratic protest and legislative change. The former can exhibit massive influence for progress but is not in the business of power to carry it out. Nothing Sanders has done can convince Jay H. Ell that he could get much done as President. The idea is central but it needs translation into enactment which process is clumsy, messy and ugly and nothing to do with the market place per se - ask Lincoln ask Lyndon Johnson.

Donald has made it all about the power of personality. You are voting for a savior. He has consciously trashed convention and common decency. He too is touch and go in Iowa where Cruz may have out organized him but he has taken a massive risk by taking on Fox News. This he has done by announcing that he is opting out of a key debate three days before the Iowa Primary. Fox have deliberately slighted him by calling him a coward who is not up to the job. Like most megalomaniacs he has no sense of proportion or judgement. He is sidetracked into a major battle with a "lightweight" TV journalist while vying for the most powerful position in the world. In August of last year Jay H. Ell blogged, “GOP Primary: The Lunatics are Running the Asylum”. It has only got worse. It remains to be seen whether the American electorate will entrust their future to an unpredictable, shoot from the hip, charismatic, paranoid, megalomaniac, demagogue. It has been done before with disastrous results.

To be continued.