Yesterday I Wrote

a response mostly inspirited, or "ired," by someone with whom I would normally agree.  It is not surprising, of course, that he would be a Clinton supporter, but I would not have expected him to become a Bernie Basher in the process.  Here I'm thinking of his April 8th editorial in the Times, titled "Sanders Over the Edge."  The fundamental critique he levels at Sanders is the charge of over-simplification.  He writes, "on many major issues -- including the signature issues of his campaign, especially financial reform -- he seemed to go for easy slogs over hard thinking.  And his political theory of change, his waving away of limits, seemed utterly unrealistic."  There is some truth in this, and, as I said, I would agree that "a commitment to facing hard choices as opposed to taking the easy way out an important value in itself."

There is a difference, however, between "hard choices" and "incomprehensible choices."  I would agree too, as Clinton pointed out, that Sanders had "not done his homework" when talking with the Daily News, but it also seems disingenuous to suggest that he have a fully developed game plan for "breaking up the big banks."  How would such a game plan be communicated to the American people?  It would take a massive effort at education, and everything else aside, Sanders is a politician, not an educator.  And besides, if we have learned anything over the Obama administration, any such detailed game plan would lend itself to precisely the sort of decontextualized picking of nits by nitwits that engages so much air time on Fox News.  He is asking Sanders to become a policy wonk, along the lines of Clinton, which misses entirely the point of populist ire.

Yesterday, I wrote:

If one wants to understand the populist "rage," the push for "outsiders" to the political process, it's not just one's sense of being bamboozled, but a desire for simple and comprehensible solutions.

Simple and comprehensible, of course, lends itself to demagoguery, and Krugman is absolutely right, 100% right, in pointing out that danger with Sanders, but recently the NYT balanced out Krugman's warning with an editorial by Jeff Merkely, the democratic senator from Oregon.   He writes:

It has been noted the Bernie has an uphill battle ahead of him to win the Democratic nomination.  But his leadership on these issues and his willingness to fearless stand up to the powers that be have galvanized a grass-roots movement.  People know that we don't just need better policies, we need a wholesale rethinking of how our economy and our politics work, and for whom they work."   Although one can favor the policies of Clinton over Cruz, they remain just that, a wonkish nibbling at the edges of the status quo.  One might fault Sanders for pointing out Clinton's undeniable connections to the big banks, and it may not follow that she is "in their pocket," but it DOES follow, however, that she would not be inclined to deconstruct and simplify them in any significant way.  The big bank complexity is not only the pundit's friend -- who else to explain it? -- but it would appear to be Clinton's friend as well.

The anomalies in our current systems are altogether too apparent.  As the good Senator points out,"it is not that America is less wealthy than 40 years ago -- quite the contrary.  The problem is that our economy, both by accident and design, has become rigged to make a fortunate few very well off while leaving most Americans struggling to keep up." We are trapped within systems that have pretty much destroyed any hope of social mobility.  We are trapped within systems that have pretty much destroyed the leave it to Beaver family, not because we have neglected biblical principles and fallen into moral laxity, but because it take 2.5 incomes to make ends meet, which means, of course, that the ends never meet.  

We need a Kuhnian revolution in our politics, a new paradigm or perhaps a reset to the original principle.   Krugman is smarter than I am, no doubt, and he would win, hands down, every economic argument we might have, but I can't help but see him as Ptolomy and the astrologers, equipped with all the facts supporting an earth centric solar that didn't quite add up and never will quite add up.  We need a Copernicus, someone to put the sun at the center of the solar system and shed some light on things. It is not a radical revolution, but a "conservative" revolution, one that "conserves" our natural resources, one that conserves the democratic principle of "we the people."  To give the good Senator Merkley the final word, it is time to  "fully realize our founding principles of hope and opportunity for all.  It is time to recommit ourselves to that vision of a country that measures our nation's success not at the boardroom table, but at kitchen tables across America.  Bernie Sanders stands for that America, and so I stand with Bernie Sanders for President."