In a report this week, the Washington Post helped Bernie Sanders reveal his latest attempt to stay relevant – a “jobs guarantee” program that would entitle any American to a $15-an-hour government job if they wanted one.
“Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will announce a plan for the federal government to guarantee a job paying $15 an hour and health-care benefits to every American worker ‘who wants or needs one,’ embracing the kind of large-scale government works project that Democrats have shied away from in recent decades,” the Post reported. “Sanders’s jobs guarantee would fund hundreds of projects throughout the United States aimed at addressing priorities such as infrastructure, care giving, the environment, education and other goals. Under the job guarantee, every American would be entitled to a job under one of these projects or receive job training to be able to do so, according to an early draft of the proposal.”
The Post ended this exciting development, though, with this sad-trombone statement: “A representative from Sanders’s office said they had not yet done a cost estimate for the plan or decided how it would be funded, saying they were still crafting the proposal.”
Yeah…that’s kinda important.
But the little matter of “how the hell are we gonna pay for THAT” has not stopped Crazy Bernie before and it isn’t stopping Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand (both rumored to be 2020 presidential hopefuls) from signing on to this ludicrous idea. Democrats know that Sanders has the ear of millennial progressives, and those who are looking to challenge Trump want to make sure they have the Vermont senator’s endorsement when they make their big bid for the White House. There’s no better way to ensure that than to play footsie with his most absurd socialist proposals.
There was a time not that long ago that the ideas that energized the “Bernie wing” of the party were considered too radical for the rest of the Democrat faithful. You didn’t see mainstream Democrats openly favoring Medicare-for-all or free college initiatives, for example. But now we’ve seen them flock to both of these policy prescriptions as well as Sanders’ latest nonsense about a $15-an-hour job for everyone in the country.
These politicians are apparently convinced by the narrative that says the American Left really wanted Bernie, and that he would have beaten Trump had he not been railroaded by the DNC. This is not an accurate portrayal of how 2016 went down, but it is fervently believed by all of Bernie’s “bros.”
But even if it’s true, it doesn’t necessarily mean that Bernie’s POLICIES are what energized the base; Sanders himself is likeable in a curmudgeonly sort of way, and he has an authentic sort of charisma that Hillary Clinton badly lacked. There’s no reason to believe that Cory Booker or Gillibrand (or Kamala Harris) can replicate his success merely by parroting his ideology. Clinton, after all, was basically promising voters a third Obama term. But without Obama, the people said, “Meh, no thanks.”
We have a feeling that Democrats, by lurching to the left in this way, are catering ONLY to the very people who DON’T VOTE – college-age idealists who think America should be Sweden, Part II. At least, we hope that’s the case, because if these pie-in-the-sky policies ever become law, this country will be in for some dark, dark times.
