Scott Brinton

Bernie Sanders, out of touch with America

Posted

I have a thesis that will be highly unpopular among –– and wildly derided by –– 30 to 40 percent of the liberal left: Sen. Bernie Sanders is out of touch with reality.

First, though, I want to clarify a point: Sanders is not a Democrat. He was a socialist and then an independent before he joined the Democratic Party last year to run for president. Please stop calling him a Socialist Democrat, as if that’s a thing.

Sanders grew up in Brooklyn in the 1940s and ’50s, graduated from the University of Chicago in 1964 and moved to Vermont. He bought 85 acres of woodland for $2,500 with an inheritance, lived in a maple-syrup sap house and did odd jobs, and joined the Liberty Union Party, a nonviolent socialist party, according to National Public Radio.

Later, when he aspired to elective office, he realized he couldn’t win as a socialist, so he became an independent. He was elected mayor of Burlington, Vt., in 1981, won a seat in the House of Representatives in 1991 and was elected to the Senate in 2007.

Sanders recently touted his Brooklyn roots while campaigning in New York, but he has shown no special love for his home city. He told NPR last year that he hadn’t been to New York for 10 or 15 years. “I was walking in Manhattan,” Sanders said, “and I saw people and I’d say hello, and people had this look like I was threatening them. [In Vermont], when you walk down the street, you nod to people and say hello. In the rural areas, it’s not uncommon for two cars going in a different direction to stop.”

How nice.

You’re right, Bernie, New York is not Vermont. The Empire State is home to nearly 20 million people, 8.4 million of them in New York City. The Town of Hempstead’s population alone is 760,000. By comparison, fewer than 627,000 people live in Vermont, which is 75 percent forest.

New York has a $1.4 trillion economy –– third-largest in the U.S., after California and Texas. Vermont has the nation’s smallest gross domestic product, at a little less than $30 billion.

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