The virus has peeled back the cover on a society of runaway capitalism - unequal, often corrupt and worst of all incompetent at the top of the national government. 

After decades of Republican assault - with some help from Bill Clinton - on the basic abilities of government to protect its citizens, it is no surprise that the national government was slow to act. The existence of Trump just adds insult to injury. 

The politicians who spent decades tearing down the worth of government were playing at a kind of theatre. The stakes were low. They could bash bureaucrats and their constituents didn’t mind. 

But then along comes a pandemic that threatens everybody. That’s when government has to fire on all cylinders. And it’s right there - suddenly - a lot of us are agreeing with Bernie Sanders. 

Put aside the stuff that doesn’t matter - the delegates, the Bernie bros, did he stay in the race too long? Disclosure - My daughter worked on his two presidential campaigns.

The bottom line is that what Sanders has been proposing for 40 years give or take is a central tenet of the path we are taking with the virus. Even Republicans are supporting direct payments to citizens. More Bernie actions:

Health care - cover everybody and stop the bottleneck of insurance companies profiting off illness. 

Pharma - get a vaccine fast with strict oversight of the private sector. 

Jobs and the economy - get direct payments to citizens right now to replace lost wages. Extend unemployment benefits as long as it takes. 

Massive government stimulus from Congress and the Federal Reserve. 

No evictions.

Cancel student debt. 

There is no other entity that is capable of dealing with the virus from the health care and economic perspective except the federal government in concert with states. (Bill Gates says that)  Private companies - vaccine producers, testers, PPE manufacturers, banks - are all instruments of the policies that government should be producing. 

After resisting this approach for months, the Trump people are embracing it because they know it is the best and only way. Don’t worry - they will find a way to bail out shareholders of companies that deserve to go under.  (That’s socialism by the way) We will have to live with that as the price of getting money into the hands of small business and real people now suffering. 

It may only last a few months. But we are very close to following the path laid out by the guy who terrifies the Democratic Party yet is being thanked by Joe Biden for his decades of principled devotion to a more equal economy.  

Why? Because Bernie took the slings and arrows for all these years on his policy proposals so that folks like Biden, Kamala Harris and others could take their time coming around.

Same-sex marriage, the Iraq War, health care, jobs and the economy, unfettered capitalism and corporate power. All of it. 

Bernie was right. It just took a global pandemic for the rest of us to see it. 

The Vermont Angle

With time and perspective, we will look back and see that Bernie Sanders is the biggest political story in Vermont history. I don’t say this lightly, as I saw the marriage equality issue up close and personal.

It is easy for us Vermonters to take Bernie for granted. He is gruff. He doesn’t like the media so he disses them and uses them as a conveyor belt for his ideas. He is not fun. Doesn’t joke around. So there is little natural affinity for him among the Vermont political establishment. I guarantee you he doesn’t care.

And yet he wins elections with huge margins via the power of his policy proposals and his consistency. 

This is a guy who came here as so many of us did.  Spent the first few years bumming around the Northeast Kingdom before starting to figure out life. Then to Burlington to run for office. He lost VERY badly in his first races. He wins the mayor’s race in Burlington by 10 votes, then a U.S. House seat and then a U.S. Senate seat. 

I remember thinking that we kind of took the U.S. Senate race for granted. Wasn’t much fuss about it. He just kind of slid in there. 

And now he is a two-time candidate for president who will wonder full the rest of his life how close he came to winning. He revolutionized campaign fundraising. (Obama got there first but hey)

He drove the Democratic Party effectively to the left and made issues once considered Communist heresy to be almost mainstream. Health care for all is now mainstream thought. So is free public college. We now understand the student debt crisis in a way we didn’t before. (Elizabeth Warren might have gotten there first but heh)

Bernie Sanders changed the Democratic Party in dramatic ways without even being a Democrat! Historians will note that in a big way when the time comes.