I'm beginning to think Bernie is going to take it.
It seems with Bernie there are two camps.
The first, being the red scare mongers who think Bernie is to the left of everyone except Mao, Stalin and Castro. And that a social democrat believes nobody is allowed to have anything nice in the world. By their measure, every major western nation has fallen to the evils of communism.
Then the others who realize things like single payer healthcare is just common in every western democracy. And higher minimum wages make sense in an increasingly automated society where production and wealth centralization is pushing downward pressure on aggregate demand; and social democratic capitalist society with a greater interest in the masses as income disparity reaches new heights in the healthy mixed system of government available.
I think people are cluing in that Bernie pragmatically could only accomplish so much if he were to become President and it's unlikely he'll be able to get everything he would want through, but he's a worthy experiment at this point. And it seems little by little some companies are going that way, like Bank of America instituting a $20 minimum wage.
I remember listening to Steve Bannon when debating The Rise of Populism not that long ago saying something to the effect that populism is going to win. The question is not if it will win, but whether it will be right wing populism a la Trump, or left wing populism a la Sanders - and that the traditional Republicans and Democrats will be on the outside looking in.
Right now, I can't picture Democrats coming up with a better candidate than Sanders. And if he does win, I think it will be like Trump where things don't change all that much, just that it will be a lot tougher on comedy writers finding material.
