Apparently the U.S. is spared the possibility of endless repetitions of “President Hickenlooper today said…” I have nothing against the former Colorado governor; like most voters I really know next to nothing about him except that he has just ended his campaign for the Democratic Party presidential nomination for 2020. Two dozen other men and women keep slogging on to get anointed as the anti-Trump.
A strange dichotomy exists: there are so many candidates in the mix that we have a hard time keeping track, yet most of them have some sort of image or message, or both, that is uniquely appealing. It is hard to keep track of all these personalities, their ideas, their credentials, their histories. During the so-called debates, when ten hopefuls stood behind podiums and tried to put into sound bites their rationale for election, followed the next night by ten others pleading their case, we made snap judgments: This guy’s goofy-looking, this woman has too much makeup, these two guys are old! Cory Booker’s clean shaved head looked youthful and sharp, but John Delaney’s bald pate and wattles seemed comical. When Pete Buttigieg was asked about his thirty-nine years compared to Bernie Sanders’s seventy-eight, he answered that age didn’t matter: vision is more important, and Bernie, ever the visionary, agreed.
Bernie is truly unique, hence he is revered as a messianic figure by many. He is supposedly mistrusted by party regulars, since he sits in the Senate as an independent, but has successfully led the way for the Democratic Party to lean to the left. He is passionate about his ideas, and although people respond to his persona, he is campaigning on policy issues, chiefly the notion of Medicare-for-All.
A few days after I qualified for Medicare, I had a dental appointment. My dentist said, “I wish I could get Medicare. Since I am self-employed, I have to pay my own insurance. When I got out of dental school, I paid one hundred dollars a month. Now it is over nine hundred. I can’t imagine what it will be age fifty-eight.” He is 52, with a busy practice, several employees, and a comfortable standard of living, yet his health insurance is becoming unaffordable. What about the poor people who cannot afford insurance?
Many of the Democrats regard health care as a right, not a privilege. Also education. To be treated with dignity and respect, no matter if one is male, female, or something in-between, or black or brown or some other color, old or young, well-educated or less so, born in the U.S or in another country, Christian or Muslim or Jewish or something else, or don’t care about religion, rich or poor. Our founding document stated, “all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Increasingly over the past few years, our country has acted as though the “blessings of liberty” accrue only to those who are born into wealth – such as our current president – or those who accumulate it, as many politicians manage to do. Bernie stabbed his finger in the air and said, “We will include vision, hearing, and dental!”
Most of the Democratic candidates would include paid family leave for various situations, including a birth. Andrew Yang wants to grant every person a guaranteed basic income of one thousand a month. Most support some level of free college. Led by the media, voters are gauging candidates visually, or by their ability to keep their feet out of their mouths.
It’s their ideas we should be examining, not their dress code, or what they eat at a state fair. Of course not everything can be achieved – all major social achievements in U.S. history took decades to be enacted into law – abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, social security, 40-hour work week, child labor laws, civil rights for people of color, gay marriage, etc. But we have to start somewhere.
Check ‘em out – the days of Trumpism may be numbered.