Socialism Rises From The Ash Heap of History: The Improbable Story of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn

Socialism, the bastardized version of Communism, once consigned, along with Communism, to the ash heap of history is now seeing a resurgence thanks to two avuncular self styled crusaders. Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn are selling bromides and what Friedrich Hayek memorably called 'Road to Serfdom'. What is the true nature of this resurgent evil that once plagued more than half the world from Moscow to London to Latin America?

Make no mistake, Sanders and Corbyn are repackaging Communism in Socialist garb and presenting it as not just palatable alternative but as panacea to every societal illness. That Sanders and Corbyn do not call for abolishing private property, the cornerstone of Marxism, should not lull us into complacency about the true evil nature of socialism which, compared to communism, is more sinister due to the very innocent noble sounding promises that it is wrapped in. What could be wrong with 'free college for all' or 'free healthcare for all'?

Bernie Sanders (Picture Courtesy Politico)

Last year I wrote of Jill Stein, the nominee of Green Party:

Jill Stein's interview with Cenk Uygur of the ultra left wing channel Young Turks is revelatory in a Freudian sense. Launching into a lengthy monologue that can be picked line by line for half truths and playing loose with facts by any fact checker Dr. Stein lays out why her campaign should be appealing to "43 million young people, and going into middle age and beyond, who are trapped in predatory student loan debt" (transcript from Slate). The appeal, Stein says is simple, "there's only one place that they can put their votes in order to cancel their debt". Yep. As simple as that. I come from India, where politicians promise illiterate farmers that hundreds of millions of dollars in farm loans can be written off. They win, they write off the loans and of course it does nobody any good.

Jill Stein went on to equate loan write offs to the GI bill. The GI Bill, god bless the Greatest Generation, was not a loan write off or a hand out, rather, it was the debt of gratitude paid by a nation in 'EXCHANGE' for services rendered, the ultimate sacrifice, by the youth of this country. If Dr. Stein proposes free education in exchange for military service then that is already in vogue and nothing revolutionary but any such suggestion on a large scale would have her brood of peaceniks puking, not, lapping up. Uygur's reaction to all this "you are definitely to the left of me". To be left of Uygur means it is lecturing Marx on how to do redistribution better than what the Communist Manifesto said. 

Both Sanders and Corbyn have attracted the committed support of legions of millennials who, having escaped the sting of socialism and never been instructed on the ideological debates of communism versus free market, don't know the true nature of what they're cheering.

Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York and Presidential aspirant for 2020, seeking to cover himself in progressive credentials and seek the mantle of Sanders, has promulgated a 'free college' scheme. Independent estimates, according to New York Times, peg the cost in a wide range, $138-$232 million. No one knows the true cost which depends on number of enrollees and many other factors. Other analysis points out that, as Hillary Clinton repeatedly said in objection to Sanders during campaign, the plan does nothing for the poor students, from families earning less than $50,000, as they are already covered for tuition fees by existing programs. On the other hand the program is a largess for the middle class, earning unto $125,000. Most importantly the program does nothing for part time students, which most poor students are but rewards only full time students and insists that students should graduate in 4 years, most poor students graduate in 6 years. A little known provision in the proposal insists that students, upon graduation, should serve the state of New York for the number of years they received funding. 'Road to Serfdom'.

What could be wrong with giving free kindergarten to all children of New York City, mind you, just the City not the State? A price tab of $400 million for 65,000 children and that's just for 4 year olds. This is a program that NPR points out is not means tested and, again, benefits all, without demarcation of who needs it and who doesn't. An expansion of the pre-k program to all 3 year olds in the city would cost, New York Times says, $700 million to cover 62,000 children per year. The expense could grow to $1 billion. If there ever was a ponzi scheme this is it. Why not just deposit the money spent per children into a mutual fund and the child may never have to go to school or have to earn a penny by working when it reaches adulthood.

In 2000 NYC's pension costs were just 2% of the city's budget. A 2014 New York Times article said that in 2015 NYC pension costs would comprise, $8 billion, 12% of the city's budget, fueled by union contracts. In city after American city, in State after State pension costs of public employees are budget busters with sickening regularity. Police, Transit, Teachers, Firemen unions are the combined single biggest drivers of pension costs. Unions lobby and campaign for politicians who'll promise rosy pension benefits like retiring at 55 with full pension and 'cost of living adjustments' forever and lump sum cash equivalents of rolled over sick leave over decades of service all the while with measly contributions from employees. Greedy politicians agree to those demands by playing creative accounting on pension returns. Over estimating pension returns politicians put less than required money into the system because if they put in what is needed there would be only pennies left for services to the taxpayer. Add to this luxurious overtime pay that unions negotiate and the miserly premium they pay for the ballooning healthcare costs. Bernie Madoff is a picture of fiscal sanity in contrast.

Is it any wonder then that the last census confirmed said most New York City residents are either rich or poor and very little middle class. New York City has only those who can afford the taxes and those who need those taxes.

What could be wrong with 'free healthcare' for all? Bernie Sanders's own home state Vermont tried what is popularly called 'public option' and abandoned it when it almost consumed the entire state budget. California is now flirting with a public option for all Californians, including illegal immigrants at a cost $400 billion. California's entire budget is around $180 billion. While America's notoriously expensive healthcare surely needs to be tamed but the much lauded public option proves to be a fiscal disaster. The California experiment is being spearheaded by the Nurses union which touts a study funded by it that says that the extra cost can be mopped up by, what else, more taxation that includes raising the already high sales tax to nearly 10%. When sales tax rises that affects every citizen, rich or poor.

Bernie Sanders raved and ranted about breaking Big Banks and sending CEOs to jail on the campaign trail. Asked during a debate as to why he'd not ask for jail time for government run EPA (Environment Protection Agency) that literally muzzled evidence that the water in Flint, Michigan was poisoned he hemmed and hawed. This is the problem with Sanders and his worldview. Private enterprise is held to a much higher standard whereas incompetence and plain villainy by a government entity is par for the course. Faced with mounting evidence of corrupt ineptness at government run Veterans Affair Sanders, a New York Times article said, was reluctant to admit wrong doing until the evidence was clearly beyond ignoring.

Jeremy Corbyn

Contrast how Obama administration dealt with Volkswagen and BP on the one hand and big time union shop GM. The Obama administration skinned alive BP for the Gulf oil disaster, an accident. BP almost became bankrupt. Volkswagen cheated on emission standards and was slapped fines that eventually came to $30 billion. General Motors management systematically hid evidence of faulty ignition switches that had resulted in nearly 124 deaths. The penalty on GM was a paltry $900 million. The number of deaths due to VW scandal was 0, the number dead in BP accident was 11. I guess the tens of thousands of union workers in GM or that they were a democratic voting bloc had nothing to do with Obama's decisions.

Bleeding heart liberals cried hoarse about BP oil spill but did not give a squeak about an entire river polluted for generations to come by the EPA. The EPA, against advice, triggered a mining accident in a Colorado river leaving it polluted with toxic waste and then refused to pay the damages that were estimated at $1.2 billion, according to CBS News, citing 'sovereign immunity, which prohibits most lawsuits against the government'. The poor American citizen living in Colorado suffering toxic waste have no recourse to any largesse as settlement because their polluter is the government unlike the residents of Louisiana where an 'accident', not intentional act unlike the EPA, resulted from the actions of a corporations.

The story of Bernie Madoff, the ponzi operator, and the racy story of a few guys who shorted the housing market are often cited as evidences of a 'rigged system' and how more regulation is needed. This is laughable. Employees of the SEC were watching porn at office while the financial crises swirled. Tipsters tried contacting SEC regarding Madoff but to no avail. One of the 'Big Short', Mark Baum, tried telling regulators, to no avail, how he figured out that the housing market would crater. I'm not arguing for dismantling regulations but regulations are not a panacea.

Bernie Sanders rails about the rich not paying their 'fair share'. This is baloney. Pew research center shows that 51.6% of US Income Tax is paid by the top 2.7 % (AGI $250,000+). The bottom nearly 60% that includes AGI unto $50,000 pay just 5% of the  total tax receipt.

Pew Research center sums up for 2015, "analysis confirms that, after all federal taxes are factored in, the U.S. tax system as a whole is progressive. The top 0.1% of families pay the equivalent of 39.2% and the bottom 20% have negative tax rates (that is, they get more money back from the government in the form of refundable tax credits than they pay in taxes).

Trump was not the only one playing the fool with facts in the 2016 election. Bernie Sanders was equally guilty. Sanders grandly claimed that the humongous bill for his free tuition would be paid for by a tax of Wall Street. Politifact rated that claim as 'mostly false'.

Sanders's healthcare proposal, scored by left leaning economists cited by New York Times, would cost $2-$3 Trillion in 'additional' spending 'per year'. Sanders extolled Denmark for its welfare programs. What he left out was that the average tax rate of Denmark, that includes the middle class, is 49% compared to the US average of 25%. Further taxes in Denmark, according to liberal online magazine Vox: VAT, a form of sales tax, is 25% ; 180% tax on car purchases, effective income tax rates are 35-48%. America is, thankfully, not Denmark.

Elections are won and lost for complex set of reasons and we should avoid the temptation to simplify electoral mandates. It is tempting to read into the Trump victory and impressive loss of Corbyn a simplistic story of revolt against a liberal international order built on the principles of free market and free trade.

Asked what would he consider a major threat to US Sanders singled out 'Climate change'. Sure, one could make the case for that but imagine how that answer would play to the coal belt of Ohio and Pennsylvania that gifted the Oval office to Trump. Those states did not tip to Trump only because of his anti-trade stance. Trump's deadly cocktail of xenophobia, racism, sexism and muscular rhetoric against trade pacts all rolled into one winning combination that, aided by wikileaks, delivered a stunning win.

I'm not a climate change denier. Global warming needs serious problem solving but solutions that, unlike those proposed by limousine latte-sipping liberals, should not be mere pabulums. Most prescriptions from the likes of Sanders are devoid of economic or scientific merit. Why do Tesla and Toyota Prius car buyers need a tax break? If there's a tax sop that has to be tossed it is molly coddling buyers of expensive hybrid cars. Why is Tesla subsidized heavily by taxpayers for their factory? An Obama administration official conceded in a congressional hearing that drivers of CNG powered buses are counted in 'green jobs'. If this is not boondoggle what else is? It is a myth that Solar power is 'clean'.

We're told that the youth of UK delivered a rebuke to Theresa May by rallying behind Jeremy Corbyn and that it is proof that socialism is once again hip. Nonsense. Theresa May ran a horribly arrogant campaign and promised a 'hard Brexit'. The last thing the youth wanted was a 'hard Brexit'. When Brexit happened these same pundits bemoaned that the worst affected were the educated youth. If that is true how did they rally behind Corbyn, who, for all practical purposes, was a Brexit proponent with his denunciations of international trade?

The Guardian, a trusted left wing newspaper, gave an unflattering review of Corbyn's proposals that were the template 'tax and spend' socialism of the 40s. Both Sanders and Corbyn like to downplay how their dragnet of higher taxation will spread far into the middle class and instead pretend as if they could deliver 'heaven on earth', as socialism was once called, at the cost of few. We're often sold stories of how income taxes on high earners were in the stratospheric 80s in the Eisenhower era and how all was well with the world. Truth, nonsense. One, not many really paid that rate. Two, in this globalized world of today high earners can migrate at will and money moves better across borders. One of the chief criticisms against Thomas Piketty's theory of high taxation was that he insufficiently factored how people would change their behavior in response to tax increases. If tax cuts are oversold for stimulating economy then it is equally true that adverse responses to tax increases are downplayed. When Sanders says that wealth 'flows' to the top 1% it is an obscene statement that does not even pay cognizance to the fact that the rich are also 'working rich'. Money did not 'flow' to Bill Gates or to people like me who are in the top 10%. Money doesn't grow on trees. Incidentally Sanders owns three homes including a beach home. So much for a guy who wants the government to decide how much is too much. Corbyn wants to tax those who earn 80,000 pounds at the rate of 45%. Try living with that salary in London or Oxford after that tax. It is more honest to call the tax as extortion racket.

George Orwell, like Corbyn and Sanders, loved the idea of capping salaries of CEOs except when it meant his own royalties. Orwell hated the idea of selling books cheaper than they should be if only to increase readership. His argument was it doesn't promote readership. Sure. Everyone loves to be a socialist on another man's dime. Just like Sanders Corbyn bristled when even sympathetic analysts pegged the costs for his programs as budget busting. Corbyn, Guardian said, had no way to pay for 90 billion pounds in spending.

The 2016 election saw the advent of the term 'low information voter'. It was used to refer to, primarily, Trump voters who voted for him while living off of welfare programs that he either planned to cut or had no intention of keeping intact. Sanders and Corbyn voters are no different. Many of their supporters had no idea of the hollowness of their programs beyond the fact they sounded good and were, economically speaking, utopian fantasies.

A popular trope in US is about US defense spending, which, dwarfs other expenses.

The above graph slyly shows only 'discretionary spending'. Now, here's the full picture.

On the overall US budget 'entitlement spending' (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare subsidies) totals 51%. Essentially half of US budget goes to welfare cost. Here's Nate Silver in New York Times statistically depicting US government spending over the post-war era.

Obamacare addresses a key American issue and expanded healthcare accessibility but truth is 80% of Obamacare enrollees depend on subsidies. In a stunning video that surfaced after the 2012 election Jonathan Gruber, one of the architects of Obamacare, admitted that while the program was sold on the basis of controlling cost it was planned solely for expanding care and that the American voter was practically lied to. Expanding healthcare was supposed to control costs by enabling access to preventive care but current studies show that access to healthcare actually increases costs because more symptoms are diagnosed. Sure, it is a good thing for a citizen BUT there is a price to pay.

Sanders and Corbyn were admired for their passionate espousal of causes with messianic fervor. They even strutted around with a halo compared to Clinton and May who were seen as being in the pocket of elitists and corporate interests. Little did it matter that Sanders and Corbyn were admirers of totalitarian thugs like Fidel Castro and were completely dishonest about the cost of their programs. If Trump voters were ready to overlook his faults Sanders and Corbyn voters refused to see any faults in their idols.

I asked a Bernie Sanders supporter if he can point to any statement or audio clip of Sanders praising any entrepreneur or CEO over the many decades he's been in public life. There's none. Zilch. Yet one can find him praising Castro. Then Corbyn is in a league of his own with his molly coddling of IRA. While Trump's love of totalitarian leaders was ridiculed these saints of socialism escaped rebuke for their own penchant for totalitarianism.

Sanders and Corbyn make a virtue out of their aversion to militaristic adventurism but their record is not only inconsistent but, especially for Sanders, plainly duplicitous. Sanders voted for both the Afghanistan war and the Libyan expedition. Corby amended his manifesto to voice support for NATO while having opposed Afghanistan war, after all 9/11 did not happen in UK.

Sanders's campaign was known for cold shouldering black and hispanic voters who were rolled up by Hillary Clinton. There was considerable opposition to Sanders's free tuition idea from the black voters. Black voters were deeply suspicious of Sanders's communism-lite economics since they had long memories of how FDR's New Deal, the high noon of socialism, institutionalized segregation in government projects. Black voters, like any democratic party worker, support big government but socialism is one step too far for them.

All of the above criticisms is not dismiss as invalid genuine concerns of income stagnation or income inequality or global warming. A Harvard study found that for every automation of a job six employees lost their job. Entire classes of jobs have been wiped out in the past 20 years thanks to technological innovation. While a college degree ensures a pathway to prosperity too many people are feeling compelled to attend college at great cost even when they would go into jobs which do not need a college degree. College tuition and healthcare costs are genuine concerns that need better solutions not a wholesale takeover by government.

From my obituary for Thatcher:

What was life in UK before Thatcher? A liberal writer writing in the staunchly liberal 'The Guardian' gives a glimpse: "But if today's Guardian readers time-travelled to the late 70s they might be irritated to discover that tomorrow's TV listings were a state secret not shared with daily newspapers. A special licence was granted exclusively to the Radio Times. (No wonder it sold 7m copies a week). It was illegal to put an extension lead on your phone. You would need to wait six weeks for an engineer. There was only one state-approved answering machine available. Your local electricity "board" could be a very unfriendly place. Thatcher swept away those state monopolies in the new coinage of "privatisation" and transformed daily life in a way we now take for granted."

In another curious parallel both Reagan and Thatcher faced down crippling strikes and broke down the unions. Thatcher had her miners strike in her second term and Reagan had the PATCO strike in his first term. Both strikes were led by greedy unions willing to prove they were militant unions. Reagan fired the entire PATCO union. The miners lost broad public sympathy with their arsonous streak. Organized labor never recovered from those death blows. Both countries, thanks to that, have since prospered.

Between Thatcher and Reagan it was Thatcher who found the words to taunt socialists: "you want to make the poor poorer as long as the rich are less rich". Asked if she would do a u-turn on her policies a stout Thatcher retorted "u turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning". "There is no such thing as public money" said she. Yes, its not a revelation or a discovery. But such truths had been forgotten for decades under the assault of liberal Keynesian policies. Truths needed to be re-told and thats what Thatcher did and for that the world owes her gratitude.

It is not for nothing that 'The Economist' called her a 'Freedom Fighter'.

References:

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/03/nyregion/free-tuition-new-york-colleges-plan.html?_r=0
2. http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/08/pf/college/new-york-free-tuition/index.html
3. http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/09/08/438584249/new-york-city-mayor-goes-all-in-on-free-preschool
4. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/nyregion/de-blasio-pre-k-expansion.html
5. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/opinion/sunday/how-new-york-made-pre-k-a-success.html
6. http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article151960182.html
7. http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article151960182.html
8. https://www.empirecenter.org/publications/nyc-pension-costs-will-go-even-higher/
9. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/04/nyregion/new-york-city-pension-system-is-strained-by-costs-and-politics.html?_r=0
10. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/21/mta-workers-overtime-making-100000_n_1616921.html
11. http://nypost.com/2016/03/13/nycs-highest-paid-bus-driver-doubled-his-salary-with-ot/
12. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/21/us/epa-waited-too-long-to-warn-of-flint-water-danger-report-says.html
13. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/10/20/epa-should-have-intervened-in-flint-water-crisis-months-earlier-watchdog-says/?utm_term=.6ebab3cfd880
14. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch_recalls
15. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/gold-king-mine-spill-colorado-rivers-epa-claims/
16. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/13/high-income-americans-pay-most-income-taxes-but-enough-to-be-fair/
17. http://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/judge-approves-largest-fine-u-s-history-volkswagen-n749406
18. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/apr/04/bernie-s/bernie-sanders-says-wall-street-tax-would-pay-his-/
19. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/jan/13/how-much-would-bernie-sanders-health-care-plan-cos/
20. http://www.npr.org/2016/05/09/477402982/study-sanders-proposals-would-add-18-trillion-to-debt-over-10-years
21. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/16/us/politics/left-leaning-economists-question-cost-of-bernie-sanderss-plans.html
22. http://www.npr.org/2016/05/09/477402982/study-sanders-proposals-would-add-18-trillion-to-debt-over-10-years
23. https://www.vox.com/2015/10/16/9544007/denmark-nordic-model
24. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/16/labour-manifesto-analysis-key-points-pledges
25. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/12/labour-party-recognise-90bn-cost-deliver-manifesto-pledges-election
26. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/30/corbyn-unable-to-give-cost-of-childare-pledge-in-interview
27. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/may/10/corbyn-needs-to-find-10bn-a-year-to-make-good-on-tuition-fee-pledge
28. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/live/2017/jan/10/jeremy-corbyns-morning-interviews-politics-live
29. http://medialens.org/index.php/component/acymailing/archive/view/listid-1-alerts-full/mailid-350-the-guardian-readers-editor-responds-on-jeremy-corbyn.html
30. https://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/16/what-is-driving-growth-in-government-spending/?_r=0
31. http://contrarianworld.blogspot.com/2013/04/thatcher-is-dead-long-live-thatcherism.html

Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein and Gary Johnson: False Messiahs and Why Third Parties Don't Succeed.

The nominees of the two major parties, we are reminded endlessly, have historic unfavorable ratings in polls. Of the two nominees Hillary Clinton has received withering criticism on her trustworthiness and honesty even in comparison to, yes, Donald Trump. Every mention of Clinton's numbers on honesty is often wistfully compared to Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein, both of whom are not seen as part of the Democratic party establishment. If Sanders's and Stein's records were examined even superficially one could see that they don't stack better than Clinton on trustworthiness and their policy prescriptions border on economic fantasy. It is with good reason that Third Parties have been relegated to the fringe in American politics.

First, Bernie Sanders. Sanders mounted a very impressive and completely unforeseen candidacy that almost rattled Clinton's camp. While Sanders and his supporters shred Clinton for being, well, a politician what went almost unnoticed or unexamined is how hypocritical Sanders himself was or how venal a politician Sanders was.

Sanders, like Obama before him, endlessly excoriated Clinton for her vote that authorized Bush to go to war against Iraq. Sanders claimed that like Cassandra he predicted the mess that would follow an invasion of Iraq. He also criticized the US defense spending. What is the real record?

Picture courtesy Wikipedia. Bernie Sanders.

If US intervention and regime change troubled Sanders so much then why did he vote for NATO bombing campaign in Yugoslavia? An adviser to Sanders quit and wrote a stinging letter calling him out on his hypocrisy then. Sanders also supported the war against Afghanistan after 9/11. He said he could not support the invasion of Iraq because there was no plan and that it would destabilize a region and draw the US into a protracted war. In fact all that was truer for Afghanistan, a war that Sanders eagerly voted in support of. Note, Sanders opposed the war against Iraq not only because unlike Afghanistan war it was pre-emptive in nature but more critically for the reasons mentioned previously and those reasons hold good for Afghanistan too. Essentially Sanders knew that voting against the Afghan war would be politically suicide and in a typical pattern he caved and voted out of political expediency.

The US army's most expensive program to date is the F-35 stealth bomber project that, at $1.2 Trillion, has overrun cost by hundreds of billions of dollars. Sanders supported that too because the defense contractor Lockheed Martin created jobs, thanks to that pork bill, in Vermont. For a man who railed with manufactured rage against regime change Sanders cheerfully voted for the 1998 regime change in Iraq legislation. The so called peacenik also would not stop drone programs, widely blamed for the death of hundreds of civilians. Some Messiah this Sanders is. When anti-war supporters occupied his office Sanders had them duly arrested.

Asked about his Kosovo vote during a debate Sanders bristled "Well, obviously, I voted, when President Clinton said, 'Let's stop ethnic cleansing in Kosovo,' I voted for that". Note, the humanitarian rescue excuse was what Obama and Clinton gave for Libya too and Sanders admonished Clinton for that adventurism.

Though Sanders voted against the Iraq war he has consistently voted in support of the funding for not just iraq war but for all that wars too. A President Sanders would keep the thousands of troops currently in Afghanistan he said. The sulfurous stench of hypocrisy is more revolting.

Hillary Clinton took heat for supporting Bill Clinton's Crime Bill in the 1990s. Promoting the bill in the 90s Hillary labeled violent offenders as 'super predators that have to be brought to heel'. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter today that remark haunted her on the trail. She apologized. Bill Clinton, however, drew attention to the fact that Sanders had indeed voted for the bill and that the bill, faulty by hindsight, did stanch the crime wave that was sweeping then. Also, back then Bill Clinton was leading the Democrats into a new era by showing that they too, like Republicans, could be tough on crime. Sanders escaped all criticism for his vote while Hillary took heat.

Sanders piously claimed that he supported the crime bill because there was a restriction against assault weapons in the bill. NBC anchor Chuck Todd refuted him in an interview that that was not true. Yet, it is Hillary Clinton that is seen as "liar".

Until 2012 not even Barack Obama was in favor of gay marriage. Asked in 2008 Obama wriggled out of supporting marriage equality. Bill Clinton, and Hilary's support of, the now much maligned 'Defense of marriage act' (DOMA) was made an issue by Sanders who claimed he was for gay marriage ahead of Hillary.

While Sanders voted against DOMA and claimed this year that he did so because the act discriminated against gay marriage. Liar. Time magazine traced Sanders's evolution on gay marriage and cited an answer he gave in 1996 where his wife and Chief of staff Jane Sanders told "Associated Press reporter in July 1996 that he opposed the law because it weakened the section of the constitution that says sates must respect laws that are made in other states. 'We're not legislating values. We have to follow the Constitution'". Liar, Liar pants of fire.

Was Hillary being politically expedient in supporting gay marriage in 2013, after Obama did? Of course yes. But so was Sanders when he strategically kept mum on supporting his successor in the mayor's office in his efforts to legalize gay marriage. A Vermont political reporter said that getting Sanders to opine on the issue was like "pulling teeth from a rhinoceros". Rachel Maddow of MSNBC confronted Sanders on his refusal to back gay marriage in 2006 in Vermont. Sanders sheepishly said it was because he thought "give us more time" because of the political climate at that time. Maddox torched him, "Isn't that the same kind of tactical thinking, same kind of pragmatism, that may have driven the decision for which you criticized Secretary Clinton". Oh the saintly Sanders.

The policy prescriptions of Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein show why they are still outside the mainstream of American politics.

Bernie Sanders fired up the millennials with a simple promise, free college. I too love free lunch but I remember the caution of economists that when somebody offers lunch it is because they're are stealing my breakfast and possibly my dinner too. Both Sanders and Stein sell this snake oil of 'free college' and it is their ticket to popularity.

The non-partisan fact checking site Politifact rated Sanders's claim that his free college program will be paid for by a tax on Wall Street transactions as "mostly false" because Sanders often fails to mention that his plan critically depends on States providing a third of the funding. So, even if one takes a lowered estimate of revenue raised by taxing stock transactions there's a huge chunk that remains unfunded. Liar, liar, pants of fire. Politifact does not get into the messy question of whether taxing wall street transactions is itself a good idea economically speaking. NPR further dented the case in a fact checking article that concluded that free college does not necessarily create "the most educated workforce" and pointed out that countries which have better educated work force than US do not offer free college. The US itself does quite well in the rankings.

This is NOT to say that the US does not have a problem regarding College tuition increases but it is only to say that free college is not the magic bullet. Further, it is a fact that student aid programs, following the immutable laws of economics, does increase inflation, and in this case that means tuition increase.

Both Stein and Sanders rail and rant against Health Insurance companies when they discuss healthcare costs but when it comes to college costs the only question is how to fund it, not, how to control it. But then any talk of cost control would alienate the drooling liberal campuses of their support.

Sanders and Stein also gloss over the fact that with funding free college government will play an explicit role in college education as it now does, locally and at federal level, in school education. Tax payers will demand government oversight of quality. UK does it. Any such suggestion or even a hint of it will make the millennials run away like they'd do from plague

While Sanders and Stein rave and rant, perhaps a tad justifiably, about corporate lobbying they are least bothered by Universities that lobbied enough to make the Obama administration drop a measure that rated universities and degrees according to rates of return (ROI). In their zeal to promote free college these Marxist duo give no thought to the fact that students who pursue their passion in esoteric or less employable fields would be educating themselves at taxpayer expense. Many university courses lack appreciable returns because the degrees are, well, worthless. Yes, their plan is only to give free tuition in public universities but then many are just plain useless anyway. Also these candidates who have no idea of economics do not understand that free tuition would see these public universities struggling to deal with an onrush of students and students who flock here would deprive other universities of money. While superficially it may seem desirable it is not. Two professors who study College costs critiqued Sanders's plan in an oped in Washington Post. Federal attempts to steer money to states that participate in the program while starving the rest will only deepen a crisis elsewhere

Jill Stein's interview with Cenk Uygur of the ultra left wing channel Young Turks is revelatory in a Freudian sense. Launching into a lengthy monologue that can be picked line by line for half truths and playing loose with facts by any fact checker Dr. Stein lays out why her campaign should be appealing to "43 million young people, and going into middle age and beyond, who are trapped in predatory student loan debt" (transcript from Slate). The appeal, Stein says is simple, "there's only one place that they can put their votes in order to cancel their debt". Yep. As simple as that. I come from India, where politicians promise illiterate farmers that hundreds of millions of dollars in farm loans can be written off. They win, they write off the loans and of course it does nobody any good.

Pic Courtesy Wikipedia. Jill Stein

The justification, Stein says, is that the government wrote off $4 Trillion for wall street "crooks" who "crashed the economy". Even a very ideologically sympathetic interviewer like Uighur had to intervene to say that TARP was a loan that was repaid by banks. Penny for penny, with usurious interest. The Federal Reserve made really good profit on TARP. Unfazed, Stein continues her utopian math to say that the hundreds of billions given to banks in the name of Quantitative Easing (QE) could be mimicked to write off student loans. Never mind the fact that to do so a President Stein would have to unconstitutionally order the Federal Reserve to do so. Why bother learning what a President can do or cannot do when there is no chance of becoming president?

Quantitative Easing, assailed by the left and right, was not the invention of some cabal to line the pockets of pin stripe suits in Wall Street. Rather, QE was a very innovative, albeit controversial, financial methodology that the Federal Reserve, under the chairmanship of Ben Bernanke, a student of the Great Depression, to ease credit flow and to create jobs. QE had it's share of detractors surely but it was not a ponzi scheme to enrich a few suits.

Not content with parading her financial illiteracy Jill Stein went on to equate loan write offs to the GI bill. The GI Bill, god bless the Greatest Generation, was not a loan write off or a hand out, rather, it was the debt of gratitude paid by a nation in 'EXCHANGE' for services rendered, the ultimate sacrifice, by the youth of this country. If Dr. Stein proposes free education in exchange for military service then that is already in vogue and nothing revolutionary but any such suggestion on a large scale would have her brood of peaceniks puking, not, lapping up. Uygur's reaction to all this "you are definitely to the left of me". To be left of Uygur means it is lecturing Marx on how to do redistribution better than what the Communist Manifesto said.

Oh by the way guess who voted for deregulating the Commodities Futures Trading Modernization Act of 2000 that the 2011 Financial Crises Inquiry report, CBS news in a fact check of Hillary Clinton's statement at a debate wrote, identified as one that "contributed significantly to this crisis". CBS fact check also noted that when even more provisions were added as to preventing the government from regulating the over-the-counter-derivatives, Sanders "voted in favor of that too". OTC (over the counter) derivates where blamed big time for the financial crisis. Yes, Bill Clinton signed the bill but it is Hillary Clinton on the ballot and it was Sanders who stood on a stage and characterized, with righteous fury, for being a stooge of Wall Street. Some stooge, some righteousness. Shame on Sanders and those who drink his kool aid.

If anyone thinks a few pin stripe suits brought down the world's richest economy to its knees they're being naive. It was the perfect storm in which bankers, consumers, culture of greed, politicians who promoted the 'American dream', conservatives, republicans, democrats, independents and even mega church televangelists who were selling the 'prosperity gospel', all played a role. A good place to learn is Raghuram Rajan's "Fault Lines". Those who revel in conspiracy theories about QE etc should learn what happened to the world's economy when central bankers dragged their feet during Great Depression in Liaqat Ahmed's Pulitzer winning book "Lords of Finance".

Jill Stein and the left wing make a fetish of science when they piously point out how scientists have agreed that Climate change is man made. The same left wing and Dr. Stein included react with apoplectic horror when confronted with the fact that equally good number of scientists have agreed that Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) are good. I guess everyone loves science only when it confirms their 'beliefs'.

Ripping into Stein's demand to reduce US defense spending by 50% and to "close more than 700 foreign military bases" Slate columnist in a piece titled "Jill Stein's ideas are terrible. She is not the savior the left is looking for", wrote that those ideas sound like they were "hatched in an old Bay area commune". Ouch.

This obsession over defense budget often obfuscates more inconvenient truths. US defense budget is, while being a whopper at nearly $600 billion (almost the equivalent of the next 14 countries defense spending), only 16.2% of the overall budget while Social Security and Healthcare take 43.3% (25.3% and 28% respectively). Medicare spending was $540 billion in 2015 and is projected by Kaiser Family Foundation to reach $1 Trillion in another ten years, 2026.

Affordable Care Act was a financial boondoggle as Americans are beginning to realize this year with soaring premiums. Sanders had his catchy "medicare for all" program. Sure it looks good on a bumper sticker. But no thanks. The so called Single Payer systems of Canada and most notably UK are plagued by their own problems. UK's crown jewel the NIH is literally facing a revolt from doctors who hate the over-regulation of their hours and meager salaries. Sanders never speaks of those and nobody calls him out on those.

Bernie Sanders's home state of Vermont tried the Single Payer system and it crashed to a grand failure almost overwhelming the revenue of the entire state. The cost, Boston Globe reported, "would nearly double the size of the state's budget in the first year alone and require large tax increases for residents and businesses". Snake oil.

An Associated Press opinion poll clearly showed that everyone loves to support Single payer system healthcare ideas as long as they personally don't have to pay more in taxes. While 39% supported a single payer system (33% oppose and 26% are 'neither for nor against') the support drops to 28% if it meant "your own taxes would increase".

Left leaning economists, not the conservative types, pegged the costs of Sanders's programs at an eye popping $2-3 Trillion dollars a year. Sanders scolded them as sellouts and the "establishment". Paul Krugman, a darling of the left thanks to a Nobel Prize in Economics, ridiculed Sanders for his pie-in-sky programs with a valid admonition that the Democrats have created a public image that, unlike the Republicans and their irresponsible policy of unfunded multi-trillion dollar tax cut programs, they can be looked up to for realistic proposals and Sanders's ludicrous tax and spend proposals dent that carefully cultivated image.

Sanders summoned his usual moral outrage during a debate while answering to a question on how Denmark achieves all his pet proposals and has a robust free market economy. Hillary Clinton retorted "we are not Denmark". Retorts have a momentary effect and Clinton did not proceed to dismantle Sanders's rosy picture of Denmark. First, in Denmark the top income tax rate is 60% at income above $60,000. Welcome to socialism where none is rich and all are uniformly poor.

Michael Booth, author of "The almost nearly perfect people: Behind the myth of the Scandinavian utopia", told the Washington Post that "few actually seek to move to Scandinavia, for obvious reasons: the weather is appalling, the taxes are the highest in the world, the cost of living is similarly ridiculous". Booth also adds that Denmark, which "promotes itself as a green pioneer and finger wags the world about CO2 emissions, and yet it regularly beats the U.S. and virtually every other country" in "per capita ecological footprint".Incidentally, irritated by a Democratic Socialist touting the merits of Denmark, the Prime Minister of Denmark told an American audience that "Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy".

Sanders's intellectual dishonesty is breathtaking and makes Hillary Clinton look like, well, not a saint, but a regular politician. Sanders always pretended that his programs are easily paid for by taxing a minority whereas in reality, as Hillary Clinton reminded repeatedly, his proposals will result in Denmark style taxes on all, especially the middle class. Sanders was selling snake oil to gullible voters that they could enjoy Denmark style socialism with American style taxation where 47% do not pay federal income tax and the top 10% pay the largest part of income tax. Chutzpah thy name is Sanders. Naivete thy name is 'Sanders voter'.

Jill Stein also illustrates why third party candidates wallow in the low single digits. We often ridicule the nominees of the two major parties for being politicians, and by that we mean whores pandering to every voters. Reality is different. The last election saw 120 million voters exercise franchise and Obama won over Romney by 4% margin. The US population is 324 million. Appealing to nearly 40% is no mean feat and to garner 51% of that vote is sheer acrobatics. One has to sing a certain tune in Iowa and a different tune in California while not antagonizing the voter in Ohio or Michigan and without forgetting the voter in Florida. In a social media age when a remark in a California fundraiser, as Obama learned, could ricochet in a Pennsylvania primary we need to tip our hat to the nominees of the major parties. The two major parties are far bigger ideological tents than we give them credit for. And for anyone to become the nominee there's bound to be pandering and contradictions.

Third party candidates flame out because often they are nothing but the extreme fringe of the two major parties. The Green party of Stein is an extreme fringe variety of the Democrats and the Libertarian party of Gary Johnson is an extreme fringe variety of the GOP. As fringe variations their policy menu is thin and appeals to a very thin sliver of the electorate albeit a very maniacally committed and disillusioned sliver.

Hillary Clinton is often mocked for being over-prepared and less spontaneous. This election cycle in debate after debate, in conversations with editorial boards across the country Clinton won plaudits for knowing what she was talking. Editorial board interviews, like the one with New York Daily News, were unmitigated disasters for Sanders. In a year when media are distrusted by the left and the right Editorial boards released entire transcripts to justify the endorsement editorials. TV debates that squeeze candidates to answer complex topics in miserly 1 minute or 30 second rebuttals were an injustice but editorial boards gave Sanders all the time he needed to answer a question. New York Daily News pressed Sanders on his signature issue of breaking the banks and Sanders could not, in a very lengthy answer, offer any coherent reply. Jill Sanders later termed the interview an 'inquisition'. Sore loser. Left leaning online magazines 'Daily Kos' and 'Mother Jones' in addition to other mainstream media called the interview an unmitigated disaster. The interviewers were aghast at his absolute ignorance and that too on his banner issue. During a debate Sanders rambled on Climate change when asked about Syria.

Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, a darling of the neither Hillary nor Trump crowd, could not remember where the city of Aleppo is and why it is at the heart of the Syrian tragedy. One could say that these are gotcha questions and that Clinton with all her knowledge of facts still pursued disastrous policies around the world. That intellectuals and erudite people make mistakes, and they sure do, does not mean we entrust the highest office of the land to the completely ignorant. That is idiocy. It is funny to see Sanders voters flock to Gary Johnson. Johnson has nothing in common with anything Sanders promoted.

We mock the nominees for being extra cautious but let's not forget that we as voters do not reward carelessness either. The nominees go to extreme lengths to select non-controversial VP candidates as running mates only to avoid the embarrassments Jill Stein would've faced with her choice of Ajamu Baraka if she had represented a major party.

Ajamu Baraka unflinchingly calls Obama, the nation's first black president, an "Uncle Tom". Just as Sanders gleefully tarred and feathered any and all of his critics as sellouts and "establishment", Baraka, when Sanders meekly endorsed Clinton, called him a "media driven pseudo-opposition" and an "ideological prop of the capitalist imperialist-settler state". Take that Sanders. Oh and Cornel West, a Sanders supporter who in turn called Obama an 'uncle Tom', was labeled as "sheep-dogging for the democrats". Wikipedia lists selected insults of Baraka's sharp tongue. Not satisfied with colorful tongue lashing Baraka holds positions like not awarding death sentence to Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma city bomber. A VP nominee like Baraka will sink any presidential candidate unless of course the candidate is moving heaven and earth to not rise above 3% in the polls like Jill Stein is doing with vigor.

The ultimate utopia was by Jill Stein when she offered "jobs as rights". The government, Stein says, should be the employer of last resort. Current US unemployment hovers around 5%. Under Stein's proposal the government would give them all a job. Fantastic, pray can I have my entree and dessert with it too. What kind of job can the government give? At what pay? Do personal aspirations count or is it any job doled by the government? What differentiates deserving personal aspirations from unrealistic expectations?

Historian Richard Hofstadter in "The idea of a party system: The rise of legitimate opposition in the United States, 1780-1840" captures perfectly the two areas where third parties fail and that explains why the bigger tent major parties survive. America's founding fathers hated party politics but in due course they did arise. Of the three defining characteristics of an opposition party that Hoftstadter specifies two are relevant to our discussion.

An opposition party should be responsible and by that he means that it "contains within itself the potential of an actual alternative government- that is, its critique of existing policies is not simply a wild attempt to outbid the existing regime in promises, but a sober attempt to formulate alternative policies which t believes to be capable of execution within the existing historical and economic framework, and to offer as its executors a competent alternative personnel that can actually govern". Sanders, Stein and Johnson clearly fail this.

Hofstadter adds, "I do not mean to prejudge the question whether a non-responsible critique of government may not have also have some value", "programs and critiques that are essentially utopian in content may have practical results of they bring neglected grievances to the surface or if they open lines of thought that have not been aired by less alienated and less imaginative centers of power". While Clinton did offer a plan to curtail college debt the utopia of Sanders had unleashed a clamor and compelled Clinton to tack further left than she would've done otherwise. While Sanders unleashed a dream it will remain to a Clinton to deliver at least half the promise. A New York Times article today on College debt comparing Clinton's and Trump's proposals shows how rooted in pragmatism and therefore in incrementalism Clinton is. This is the proper function of a democracy. Though Sanders hijacked the Democratic party he achieved more than he'd have had he run as a third party candidate. Sanders has reshaped the Democratic party whereas Stein will be remembered as the person who could not get elected as dog catcher.

Second principle is that an opposition should be effective. An 'effective' opposition is one whose "capability of winning office is also real, that it has institutional structure and the public force which makes it possible for us to expect that sooner or later it will in fact take office and bring to power an alternative personnel". Seen in this light Sanders gate crashing the Democratic party after having been an independent for decades is a sagacious decision but one which also demanded that he play by the rules if he lost the race. This is not the place to extensively debunk the idea of Sanders losing due to a rigged system, check my blog on Hillary Clinton for that. Having lost the race Sanders held out the carrot of endorsement long enough to extract ideological concessions.

Until Donald Trump scrambled the ideological contours of the two parties they represented the yin and yang of the society very well. Any society, let alone America, struggles with two ideologically competing forces. On one side the individual is a unit of society and exists for the sake of the latter in an uneasy truce. On the other side there is no society but a jangle of individuals cohabiting and bound to each by commerce and accommodation of competing self interests. Historian Arthur Schlesinger identified these as "private action" and "public purpose" and said that in American politics they alternatively gain the upper hand in what he labeled "the cycles of American history". The Democratic party and GOP are large ideological tents that have nice demarcated limits and yet accommodating a wide spectrum of ideological shades within their limits. Green party and libertarian party represent ideological extremes that can never garner the support of the larger majorities and therefore are condemned to remain on the fringe. There is no conspiracy to keep the fringe parties in the fringe.

While Hillary Clinton released 30 years of her tax returns Bernie Sanders released just one year's returns and that too without all the schedules attached. After ending his candidacy the Sanderses bought a nice $600K beach house, their third. While he is perfectly at liberty to buy any number of homes he could afford it does smack of hypocrisy when it is a guy who often spoke against CEO salaries. After all if we cannot decide how many homes Sanders should own he too cannot be deciding how much salary if enough for a person, that's between the CEO and his shareholders. Further if Clinton, thanks to the millions she has, cannot speak for the poor then Sanders too cannot speak for the poor.

George Orwell in his essay on Gandhi said that saints are to be judged guilty until proven innocent. Sanders, Stein and Johnson are certainly no saints and they, sure as hell, are not innocent.

References:

Bernie Sanders related links:

1. Left leaning economists question cost of Bernie Sanders's plans - NYT http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/16/us/politics/left-leaning-economists-question-cost-of-bernie-sanderss-plans.html?_r=1
2. NPR Fact Check "Bernie Sanders promises free college. http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/02/17/466730455/fact-check-bernie-sanders-promises-free-college-will-it-work
3. Politifact rates Bernie Sanders's claim that Wall Street taxes would pay for his college plan as "Mostly False" http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/apr/04/bernie-s/bernie-sanders-says-wall-street-tax-would-pay-his-/
4. Oped by Professors of College of William and Mary in Washington Post "Why Bernie Sanders's free college plan doesn't make sense" - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/04/22/why-bernie-sanderss-free-college-plan-doesnt-make-sense/
5. Sander's Free public college is a bad idea - US News - http://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/2015/05/27/why-bernie-sanders-free-public-college-plan-is-a-bad-idea
6. CBS News Fact check of Sanders vote for modernizing Commodities and Futures trading http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fact-checking-hillary-clinton-on-bernie-sanders-financial-votes/
7. Boston Globe article on Vermont shutting down Single Payer System https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/01/25/costs-derail-vermont-single-payer-health-plan/VTAEZFGpWvTen0QFahW0pO/story.html
8. Associated Press opinion poll on Healthcare taxes http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/02/people-have-no-idea-what-single-payer-means/471045/
9. "Bernie Sanders's Iraq War Hypocrisy" - http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/16/blood-traces-bernies-iraq-war-hypocrisy/
10. "Bernie Sanders' Troubling History of Supporting U.S. Military Violence Abroad" - http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/bernie-sanders-troubling-history-supporting-us-military-violence-abroad
11. "Bernie Sanders' Elephant in the Room" http://theantimedia.org/bernie-sanders-elephant-in-the-room/
12. "Bernie Sanders Supports Keeping Troops in Afghanistan" - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-afghanistan_us_5623b601e4b08589ef47bdaa
13. "Bernie Sanders Voting Record Antithetical to his purported anti-war stance" http://www.mintpressnews.com/bernie-sanders-voting-record-antithetical-to-his-purported-anti-war-stance/208066/
14. "Bernie Sanders Loves this $1 Trillion War Machine" - http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/09/bernie-sanders-loves-this-1-trillion-war-machine.html
15. Michael Booth interview in Washington POst on "Why Denmark isn't the utopian fantasy Bernie Sanders describes" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/03/why-denmark-isnt-the-utopian-fantasy-bernie-sanders-describes/
16. "Denmark tells Bernie Sanders to sop lying about their country" - http://www.headlinepolitics.com/denmark-tells-bernie-sanders-stop-lying-country/
17. "Sanders buys $600K beach house" - http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/290887-sanders-buys-nearly-600k-summer-home
18. Federal Spending pie chart http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/aug/17/facebook-posts/pie-chart-federal-spending-circulating-internet-mi/
19. Medicare spending detail - Kaiser Family Foundation- http://kff.org/medicare/issue-brief/the-facts-on-medicare-spending-and-financing
20. Bernie Sanders interview with New York Daily News http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/transcript-bernie-sanders-meets-news-editorial-board-article-1.2588306
21. Jill Sanders calls NY Daily News interview an 'inquisition' http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/sanders-wife-calls-nydn-interview-inquisition.html
22. "Sanders burns himself in New York Daily News Interview" - Daily Kos - http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/4/5/1510987/-Sanders-Burns-Himself-in-New-York-Daily-News-Interview-Media-Roundup

Jill Stein:

1. "Jill Stein's ideas are terrible. She is not the savior the left is looking for" - Slate (includes the link to interview with Cenk Uygur) - http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2016/07/27/jill_stein_is_not_the_savior_the_left_is_looking_for.html
2. Ajamu Baraka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajamu_Baraka

Gary Johnson:

1. Gary Johnson's Aleppo stumble http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/09/us/politics/gary-johnson-aleppo.html

Hillary Clinton: A Role Model for Girls. Period

Hillary Rodham Clinton stands poised to make history and shatter, what she aptly called, the 'hardest glass ceiling' by becoming the first woman president of United States and yet women voters have not only been lukewarm to her candidacy but many even consider her in terms that are no less sexist than her male detractors, of whom there are legions. Sexism is a state of mind and has little to do with the gender of the detractor.

A group of women professionals shared a photograph of first ladies, current and former, and went gaga over Michelle Obama while omitting any mention of Hillary Clinton. These professionals, incidentally, also want to encourage, through mentorship, other women to aspire and achieve professional success which they feel needs training to surmount the odds of the working place where women are still seen as less than equals. Asked "what about Clinton" the response was "the jury is still out". This is stunning sexism and would be called out as such if a male had said it. Michelle Obama is a charismatic first lady and remains a traditional first lady espousing non-controversial feel good causes like combating obesity, a national epidemic, with feel good initiatives like growing a vegetable garden in the White House and by exhorting people to exercise more. On the other hand there's Hillary Rodham Clinton, former first lady, first woman senator from New York, first woman to win primaries in a major party, first woman nominee of a major party and former secretary of state. How could a group of strong willed independent minded women, especially those who run a group meant to promote women leadership, ignore Clinton and hold Obama higher? Sexism, albeit of a different kind from the readily recognizable one by males.

Whether it is 2008 or 2016 women in the democratic primaries did not flock to Clinton but they backed Obama and Sanders enthusiastically. In both cases Clinton was seen as not "progressive" enough compared to her rivals. This is not the place to litigate the merits or demerits of those arguments.

The Lady in the Pant Suit. Image courtesy http://cdn-img.instyle.com/sites/default/files/styles/622x350/public/images/2015/06/061715-hillary-clinton-pantsuits-lead.jpg?itok=LI0CvZMq

Lost in the din was the fact that while Clinton got no favors for being a candidate who could make history. She was rather held to a different standard, mostly because the candidate was Hillary Clinton and almost as frequently because it was a woman candidate.

Clinton has been in the national public eye for over 20 years since her husband got elected as president in 1992 and yet it was not until this year did the media unearth a little spoken of speech delivered by her in 1969. Clinton led a group of students and demanded from the dean of Wellesley that a student representative should be allowed to give a speech during Commencement. Clinton herself was the chosen speaker. Echoing FDR she said "Fear is always with us but we just don't have the time for it now. Not now". In her speech Clinton passionately spoke of poverty, student diversity and most importantly, rather shocking  to some, rebuked a sitting senator who was the Commencement speaker. Senator Edward Brooke, first African-American elected to the senate, cautioned against "coercive protests" in his speech. Clinton, ad libbed extemporaneous remarks to say "Part of the problem with just empathy with professed goals is that empathy doesn't do us anything" and she went on to say, in words that a Obama or a Sanders would later use, "for too long our leaders have viewed politics as the art of the possible. And the challenge now is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible possible". A young girl changed tradition at a hoary university and went beyond just rising up to the occasion and verbally dueled with a senator.

In 1995 Clinton gave a rousing classically feminist speech in Beijing that told the world "women's rights are human rights". It was, given the fragile state of US-China relations at that time, a gutsy speech and one that inspired many women.

"Women's Rights Are Human Rights" -- Hillary Clinton in UN Conference at Beijing in 1995

Today voters remember the Whitewater investigation, more appropriately it should be called witch hunt, as the start of the perpetual air of suspicion that would always hover above Hillary. What is less remember or completely unknown is Hillary redefined the role of a spouse of a politician in office. Not since Eleanor Roosevelt had a politician's spouse played a pivotal role in the administration. Whether as first lady of Arkansas or of the nation Hillary lived up to the promise of Bill, "two for the price of one". In Arkansas Hillary chaired the Education Standards Committee that literally reformed Arkansas schools to make them one of the nation's best from what used to be one of the worst.

Hillary Clinton and her campaign have not done a good job of introducing her to the voters. Bill Clinton's speech about his wife in the Democratic convention provided a sweeping view of the person Hillary was. As a Yale student Hillary involved herself in laws regarding child abuse, migrant labor and legal assistance for the poor.  She went on to write an oft cited article in Harvard Law Review titled "Children under the law".

When Bill Clinton lost the 1982 gubernatorial election he became, as he joked, 'the youngest ex-governor'. Hillary worked to get him rehabilitated and in response to suggestion that her retention of her maiden name does not help she changed her name to Hillary Rodham Clinton. That's the price a woman had to pay.

We forget that before Obamacare there was Hillarycare. Clinton fought a bruising battle for Universal Healthcare. The battle almost derailed her husband's nascent presidency. Her mastery of the subject remains unrivaled. In 2008 Obama airily promised universal healthcare without a provision called 'mandate' unlike that of Clinton's. Clinton's plan that included a 'mandate' was derided as a 'tax'. As president Obama's plan included a mandate and the US Supreme Court later called it a tax. While her efforts to overhaul the nation's healthcare burned to the ground Clinton gained a small but very significant victory by working with her Republican detractors to create a Children's Health Insurance Plan (CHIP). Today that plan helps millions of poor children get lifesaving health care. If this is not leadership what else is?

Hillary Clinton's run for the US Senate showed her at her best. Ridiculed a 'carper bagger' Clinton worked her heart out to earn the votes and her opponent's sexism helped. During a debate Clinton's opponent Rick Lazio walked up to her podium and glowered above her and hectored her into signing a declaration.

Asked about her high unfavorables recently Clinton opined that her favorability ratings are usually very high while she's in office as First Lady or Senator or Secretary of State but drop, precipitously, when she's running for office. It was an astute observation that says she shares an interesting relationship with the  electorate. Her brilliance and experience is never in question and, to be fair, she herself is in question when she is seeking office but, to be equally fair, some of those questions are often in the tone of "any woman, but this woman". This is despicable cop out by those, men and women, who hold Clinton to a harsher standard because she is a woman to pretend like they would vote for a better woman. No and No and not at all.

Clinton has sponsored more successful bipartisan legislation than Obama and Kerry. In the Senate Clinton earned the very grudging respect of her GOP colleagues who had declared earlier never to do anything that would even remotely help her look good when she decides to run for the presidency. Though she entered the senate as a former first lady she played by the rules in a chamber that has archaic rules of seniority. A landmark work of her in the senate was getting the healthcare help that firemen of New York City who worked at the World Trade Center needed. She took on the Bush administration and got billions for New York City. A representative of the Firemen Union, a traditional republican supporting group, expressed admiration recently for her work. How this work even rated as "jury is out" category by a group that purportedly exists to help women become leaders? Pray, what kind of leaders do these women want to create? Ah, the politically correct woman leader who'll plant vegetable garden and talk about healthy diet. If a man had drawn such a distinction he'd be called, correctly, a sexist and these women should not be spared that label either.

8 years later things were not much different when she ran for the presidential nomination. At New Hampshire two men stood in a Clinton rally holding up a T-shirt that read "go home and do laundry". Clinton, running for elected office, had to manage an adroit chuckle to brush it aside with a "the last vestiges of sexism are alive". Charged endlessly that she's icy and does not show 'human warmth' Clinton partly won the state when in a candid moment she almost choked answering how she picked herself up every day despite the drumbeat of defeat from all quarters. Nobody thought it was abominable when a debate moderator cheerfully asked why she is not liked by many, because, after all, a woman should be liked by all. Never mind that all politicians, male or female, are not universally loved. Obama and Bush remain hated by half the country and yet it is only Clinton who gets that question. Obama, in an unfortunate moment for him, interjected to answer, without even looking at her, "you're likable enough Hillary". Clinton won New Hampshire, narrowly. The world loves a woman when she acts, well, 'womanly', looking askance for support and craving public approval but hates her when she is strong and is a rampart of strength.

The millenials we're told don't think it's a big deal anymore to elect a woman to office. That is wrong. Dead wrong. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand in her memoirs recalled how she was taunted by her male colleagues for her appearance. It took Obama 8 years to acknowledge that Clinton, as a woman candidate, was measured by different standards.

It is ok for male candidates to strut about in the same dark suit, white shirt and red tie combo every day but Clinton's wardrobe was closely scrutinized for including when she wore tops that, horror of horrors, seemed to show just a hint of a cleavage. The storied Washington Post screamed "Hillary Clinton's Tentative Dip into Neckline Territory". From exposing Nixon and Watergate The Post's journalism had dipped, not tentatively, into 'neckline territory'. Defending the article the columnist said that how a candidate delivers the message, "the tone of voice, the appearance, the context", matters. Really? How many articles are devoted to any male candidate's wardrobe choices in that context? The Post's then media critic Howard Kurtz wrote an explanatory column about the scurrilous post article and helpfully titled it "Cleavage & the Clinton Campaign Chest".

A popular cop out admonition about Hillary Clinton is her standing by Bill Clinton despite his peccadilloes. Women, who anyway hate Hillary, often say with righteous indignation "oh I'd have left my husband". Did not Tolstoy teach us that "each unhappy family is unhappy in it's own way"? It never strikes many that Hillary and Bill could possibly love each other too much and love in such a way that it triumphs the pain. These are two very politically active spouses with a deep strain of activism in their veins. They, as a couple, have done much to shape up the Democratic party after the humiliating landslide loss of Hubert Humphrey. Marriages are complicated and the Bill-Hill marriage is complicated too but it is none of the voter's business. Let's not forget that Eleanor Roosevelt and Jackie Kennedy, not to mention a long list of others including most recently the wife of David Petraeus, all have stood by their philandering husbands.

Google the words "Hillary Clinton screaming" and you'll be surprised by the number of articles on that. Obama, Sanders and, of course, Trump all scream at the top of their lungs but it is Clinton who is considered a shrew because she speaks at the top of her voice. If she speaks softly she's seen as weak, not just weak but 'woman like weak', and if she speaks loud she's screaming. Late night comedian Jimmy Fallon mansplained to her how as a woman candidate she can never catch a break on her decibel.

Ask any working woman today and she'd confide how a male boss would look disapprovingly at her taking a sick day off or god forbid a day off to take care of a sick child. Yes, Clinton has a penchant for secrecy that is fueled by how her privacy has often been violated by witch hunting opponents and a public that simply thinks she's a congenital liar. But, it was not just her penchant for secrecy that made her to be less than forthcoming about her pneumonia afflictions. She later confided that as a woman, especially as one who's stamina is being questioned by her misogynist opponent, she thought she could downplay the news and work through the sickness. No, it is not easy to run as a woman for the highest office of the land even today.

If Donald Trump delegitimizing Barack Obama's birth and thereby the presidency is correctly labeled as racism then why is delegitimizing Clinton winning the nomination not labeled sexism? If it was ok for Obama to win the nomination powered by unprecedented turnout of the black vote why is it any less when Clinton does the same? Who gave Sanders the right to run down Clinton's victories as something she won "in the south"? First they said she won the primaries in the South. Then she won the Mid West. Then she won the North and then she won the very liberal California. Two days before the New York Primary pundits were musing over a possible humiliating loss for Clinton in her home state after Sanders held rallies attended by raucous tens of thousands, twice. Clinton won by a wide margin and then pundits and others brushed it as "oh well it's her home state".

The Sanders candidacy has cast a shadow on how brilliantly Clinton won against heavy odds. Nothing illustrates this better than what happened in the Dakotas. North Dakota had a caucus, a format that heavily favored Sanders's motivated youth vote, and Sanders won by 40 points. South Dakota had a traditional primary, a format that is truly democratic and tends to favor Clinton whose voters are older, and Clinton won by 2 points. But the real story is within. The total votes cast in North Dakota were 400 and Sanders got 250, Clinton 101 and uncommitted 10. The total votes cast in South Dakota were 53,00 and Clinton got 27046 to Sanders's 25,958. Sanders carried the Alaska caucus by 63 points by taking 440 votes to Clinton's 90 votes. In the much anticipated California primary, Clinton got 2.7 million votes and bested Sanders by 9 points to his 2.3 million votes. In New York out of 1.8 million Clinton garnered 1.05 million and beat Sanders by 16 points for his 750,000 votes. When all was done Clinton led Sanders by millions of votes and hundreds in delegate count. Yet, on the night she officially crossed the threshold and made history by becoming the first woman nominee of a major party Sanders not only refused to even acknowledge that but he even went to the extent of disputing her win.

Clinton showed what leadership is in 2008 when after a very hard fought primary Obama barely edged her, unlike how she beat Sanders handily in 2016, she not only bowed to the inevitable she turned herself into the most committed soldier to getting Obama elected. A group of African-American women told NPR that Clinton's conduct earned their respect. How Clinton conducted herself vis-a-vis Obama earned the votes of a critical section of the Democratic party and it is precisely those voters that Sanders brushed aside.

The sexism of Sanders was very latent and couched within his perfectly democratic rights to fight for an electoral victory that he thought he should get but many of his followers did not bother with any fig leaves and flaunted their sexism against Clinton. A Washington Post analysis of sexist tweets showed that of all the sexist tweets against Clinton nearly 14% came from Sanders's supporters. When Sanders's combative campaign manager Jeffrey Weaver said Clinton's "ambition" could tear the Democratic party US News rightly called it out as sexist by saying that running for the presidency, indeed, takes ambition and Sanders himself was no less ambitious by calling for a revolution and therefore to single out Clinton, a woman, for ambition is sexist. Sanders acted so sexist during a debate that left wing economist and columnist Paul Krugman said Sanders was beginning to mirror the "Bernie Bros", a virulently sexist group of Sanders supporters.

Another popular trope to discredit Clinton is to accuse anyone or any organization supporting her as being "in the tank" or, oh the horror, "establishment". This came mostly from the Sanders supporters. Sure, not every criticism of Clinton should be tagged sexist and there is ample in Clinton's conduct and ideas that could be subject to fair criticism. But criticisms often descend into delegitimization of her candidacy and her wins. Editorial boards of newspapers sympathetic to Sanders's policies gave him latitude to explain details regarding his foreign policy and his central theme of taking the financial industry to the woodshed and Sanders, to their surprise, came out woefully uninformed or to be blunt, clueless. Naturally, they all endorsed Clinton and for that sin alone they were tarred with the "establishment" brush. Commenting on a Washington Post article that sought to explain to Clinton why she's not winning by a large margin against a horrible opponent like Trump a reader listed a whole litany of epithets, "lying, imperious, vindictive, harridan". Harridan? My foot. The comment was a top pick comment. Clinton, as per the fact checking site politifact, is no more lying than Sanders and way more truthful than Trump who has no notion of what truth is. Calling for a 'revolution' is not imperious but Clinton is. Let's not fool ourselves that Clinton's candidacy is something that's not historical and that her struggle in the polls is only because it is a Clinton.

Amongst the so called progressive it is an article of faith that Clinton is hawk compared to the peacenik Sanders. Sanders is a hypocrite when it comes to war. He often claims that he voted against the Iraq War resolution because he felt it did not meet his criteria owing to lack of specifics, plans etc.  By that standard he should've voted against the Afghanistan war too but he happily voted for it because he realized that voting against it would cost his senate seat and he did not, in his own words, want to lose an election for the sake of a war vote.

The Iraq vote has been used to literally pillory Clinton for nearly 8 years. What is little known is how Obama very adroitly cast only "present" votes, not even abstentions, as state legislator in Illinois and cast every vote for Iraq related resolutions later just as Clinton. Unlike Obama Clinton was not known to shy from action. Senator Tom Daschle advised freshman senator Obama to prepare a run for the presidency as early as possible and not be inhibited by lack of experience. Daschle reasoned that a freshman senator will have little or no votes to defend. Yes, Obama mounted a successful campaign because, unlike Clinton, he had nothing to defend.

From Madeleine Albright to Samantha Powers and Hillary Clinton it is interesting that strong willed women have persuaded American presidents to initiate a military action in the interest of preventing genocides. If this is hawkish then so be it. Rarely has a presidential candidate been so experienced and shown such deep engagement with issues as Clinton has. If there is one thing that Clinton will never be accused of it is inaction.

There is endless prattle about Clinton and Benghazi but little note of the fact that as Secretary of state Clinton worked with republicans to increase "survivor benefits for military families" from a paltry $12,000 to $100,00. Pray what is Sanders's legislative record, that too with bipartisan support? Nothing. Zilch. To say that he does not have a commendable legislative record because he's a puritan warrior only insults the process of democracy.

Clinton has a great record of working with republicans. As member of the Senate Armed Services committee she earned the respect of senators like John McCain. Today, faced with a Trump takeover of the White House, droves of republicans, diplomats and others, have endorsed Clinton. This is a stunning act that is often taken little notice. Newspapers in deep red states that have never endorsed a democrat in many decades have endorsed Clinton. If this person is not a role model for women who else is?

For those sexist doubters of whether a woman can be a commander-in-chief another woman from another era answered best when her island nation was threatened total annihilation by an armada.

"I know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and thin foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonor shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field".

The words of Queen Elizabeth spoken to her troops at Tilbury will be vindicated by Hillary Rodham Clinton. Let us then elect Hillary Clinton, not only because she's a woman but because, today, she's the best choice. Anyone voting for Trump, directly or indirectly is a traitor to the American dream and such votes have the danger of making November 8th "a date that will live in infamy". Hillary Rodham Clinton is all that stands between a racist, misogynist, bigot and the Oval office. Let's get Hillary Clinton elected so that we can make the words of Longfellow, that FDR quoted in his handwritten letter to Churchill amidst another era of great peril, come true:

Sail on, Oh Ship of State!
Sail on, Oh Union strong and great.
Humanity with all its fears
With all the hope of future years
Is hanging breathless on thy fate

References:

1. North Dakota Caucus http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/north-dakota
2. South Dakota Primary http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/south-dakota
3. Alaska Caucus http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/alaska
4. California Primary http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/california
5. New York Primary http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/new-york
6. Washington Post Analysis of sexist tweets https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/02/24/these-6-charts-show-how-much-sexism-hillary-clinton-faces-on-twitter/
7. Sanders campaign and charges of sexism http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/opinion-blog/articles/2016-04-15/sanders-self-righteousness-allows-sexist-overtones-in-attacks-on-clinton
8. Queen Elizabeth speech to troops https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_to_the_Troops_at_Tilbury
9. Jimmy Kimmel mansplains to Hillary Clinton https://youtu.be/j2wBpYT6Zlo
10. Hillary Clinton and Surviving families benefits http://correctrecord.org/hillary-clinton-a-record-of-service-to-veterans/
11. Obama's "present votes" http://www.factcheck.org/2008/09/obamas-legislative-record/
12. FDR's letter to Churchill https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/churchill/interactive/_html/wc0112.html
13. Hillary Clinton's Commencement speech at Wellesley http://time.com/4359618/hillary-clinton-wellesley-commencement-transcript/
14. Why Hillary Clinton's Beijing speech matters http://time.com/4125236/hillary-clinton-beijing-speech-video/
15. Washington Post article on Hillary Clinton's 'neckline' http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/19/AR2007071902668.html
16. NYT article about the Post article on Clinton's 'neckline' http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/28/us/politics/28hillary.html
17. Washington Post article by Howard Kurtz "Cleavage & Clinton Campaign Chest" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/27/AR2007072702369.html