(Andrew C. Bome's second report from New Hampshire in advance of the Primary.)
The plan this morning
was to do some domestic things and then head to a nearby Bernie Sanders
event. It turned out the Bernie Sanders
event was not across the street, but was across the state. It took us an hour to get there, but we made
it in time.
The event was at the
main campus of Franklin Pierce University; the speech was at the field
house. Being a Bernie Sanders event at a
University, there were lots of younger folks in the crowd, complete with the
more interesting clothing choices of youth (the less said about the hipster
in the trilby, the better). A few things of note were the dude in with a
toque that had a skunk pattern around the base: “skunks on a toque” sound like
the name of an unsuccessful Ottawa punk band.
There were a few pro-pot folks wearing T-shirts saying “Keep calm and
Bern one”; the logo showed Bernie smoking a joint.
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| Bernie Sanders at Franklin Pierce University |
There also appeared to
be a number of Franklin Pierce University journalism students interviewing folks. None interviewed me; the egotistical lawyer
in me was offended. I did see one of
these j-school students interviewing one of the professional journalists in the
crowd. I detect a future Washington Post
columnist in the making.
When Sanders was introduced
everyone (myself included )raised their phones to get a picture. It was if we were in church and the priest
said the thing that got us to raise our phones and praise someone.
Bernie’s speech was
OK, but I have heard better. I really
felt like I was an undergraduate listening to a lecture by a really cool
professor. It was well organized and
thought out, but it was a lecture in any event.
Maybe that is why Bernie Sanders is polling so well amongst university
students and grads; he reminds them of their favourite professor.
He started his speech
with the line “Are you ready to make a political revolution” and the obligatory
bad suit and hair joke; his sweater vest looked like it came from the Rick
Santorum collection.. His speech was organized
along three connected themes: a corrupt campaign finance system; a rigged
economic system; and, a broken criminal justice system. He would set out the problem and set out
how the first problem would connect to the second problem and the third
problem. For example, a corrupt campaign
finance system allowed banks to lobby hard to deregulate the financial
system. That led to a broken economic
system with banks that were too big to fail and required trillions in
bailouts. While a kid caught with a
joint got a criminal record, no wall street bankers have gotten arrested over
their activities in 2008; his line was that the banks were too big to fail and
bankers were too big to jail.
This was all really
cool, but he really did not have much to say on how to solve any of the
problems that he set out. At best he
said that if people come together, there is nothing that they can’t accomplish;
that is nice rhetoric, but it don’t fix anything.
It is not like he did
not have any policy suggestions. He did;
but it was a fairly standard progressive wish list (single payer health care;
$15.00 per hour minimum wage; paid family & medical leave; lower tuition
and better student loan terms), but it was unconnected to
anything.
At least his speech
had a nice end; he said that they would make a political revolution. Nice parallel to his first line.
