It’s good to see Bernie is doing well in the Democratic primaries. He came second to Buttigeig in Iowa by less than a thousand votes but has won the next two in New Hampshire and Nevada. Today sees South Carolina before Super Tuesday on well Tuesday of next week. I don’t care what people people say, for anyone familiar with Sky Sports’ sensationalising of football, Super Tuesday sounds ridiculous and merely highlights through which prism we view the world now. I think I understand how their voting system works although I will admit there is probably bits I miss out on. They get votes in each state which leads to getting delegates and super delegates based on their share of the vote to represent them at the Democratic national convention or whatever it’s called, the one with the most wins will get the pleasure of going up against the big bad wolf Trump. I wonder how may Supers they can fit in that contest especially if it ends up being crazy Bernie the wild eyed Socialist running.
Having recent experience of elections and what turned out to be the inevitable disappointment of losing, Bernie going up against Trump makes me nervous. It is impossible to deny the parallels with British politics of recent times. The populist Socialist Corbyn against the populist right winger Johnson. Despite the fact anyone with any sense could see the folly of voting for Johnson and only three months down the line it’s already seemingly falling to pieces, although the same was said about Trump, the establishment and their media did anything and everything they could to keep Corbyn from coming to power. Better the devil you know who does your bidding than the devil you don’t who wants you to pay some tax. For this reason I am nervous then. Even publications like the Economist who I am finding myself starting to trust are focusing a little too much on unelectable Bernie. I have seen the power of the media in the UK and don’t doubt for a second that despite the partisan nature of American politics they would do anything in their power to prevent Bernie from coming to power, even if that means another four years of Trump and four years of him knowing he doesn’t need to worry about being re-elected. You can even see the parallels within the American Democratic and British Labour parties as those who hold the power try frantically to repeat their success of last time when they got Hillary Clinton in with the self-defeating behaviour of many within Labour who would rather their own party were not elected than one led by Jeremy Corbyn.
Politics and power is dirty. I am not American but their politics affects so much of the world and is covered so much in our own media that it is impossible not to take an interest. I hope I am proved wrong because I would love to see Bernie in The White House and Trump back in the penthouse of one of his failing towers, but we’ve already had a trial run for this exact situation and it didn’t end well. If you repeat enough times how unelectable someone is he may just end up being so. We had turkeys voting for Christmas, will they be voting for Thanksgiving this time around?
Observations and Misunderstandings 