The Chronicle March 5, 2020 A7 FORUM Will Bernie Sanders be able to sustain free? I am a fan of free! Whenever I can get some thing for free, I am usu ally the first person in line. Some years ago, a major pizza chain was giving away free crazy bread with each pizza order. Unfortu nately, that didn’t last very long. It could have been that the company saw that free was not going to fit into their long-term eco nomic plan. One of the Democratic presidential candidates, Bernie Sanders, is a pro ponent of free! During both of his presidential bids, he has been an advo cate of free healthcare for all. He references the Ca nadian system as a model for what our system might look like. Of course, dur ing his last run, Hillary Clinton was the candidate and therefore his health- care.idea fell short. Now with new energy and ah emerging presence, Senator Bernie Sanders is leading the field of Dem ocratic candidates. As I listen to him, he comes across in multiple perso nas. First, he is a convinc ing fellow and aspirational for the American people. When he talks about free healthcare and our thoral right to have it, it is easy to believe him. He has crowds, especially young people, in such a frenzy that the price points and costs never really enter the picture. Senator Sanders also sounds a bit mean. He has a kind of “I’m going to beat your brains out” men tality. In the long run, how will that mindset sit with American voters? After all, we don’t want a mean sounding president of the United States of America. When I was a young boy growing up in North Carolina, we would go to the fair each year. At the fair, there was always a guy trying to sellus some thing. That’s Bernie! He is trying to convince us that he can become the next president. He talks non- stop and has all the an swers without hesitating. Now, in addition to . free healthcare, Bernie Sanders is telling us that student loans will be for given, and that, college education will be free. Just a few years ago, one of the lyrics to a Hip Hop song was “blow the whistle.” Well, Bernie Sanders is re ally blowing the whistle. Is this the whistle of hope or the whistle of tempo rary insanity? Senator Sanders de scribes himself as a Dem ocratic Socialist. In ev eryday terms, that means sharing everything and that almost everything is free. Here are some per spectives on his ideas, at least from where I stand. First off, Bernie Sand ers is not a Democrat. He identifies himself as an In dependent from Vermont. Is he aligned with the Democratic Party because the Republican Party wouldn’t accept him? Can you imagine a Republican Socialist? Many believe that the Democratic Party is mis guided by having Bernie Sanders in it. My position is if he wants to run as a Democrat, he should be come a Democrat. If you are not all in, then you are all out. How can you be partially in and partially out? Our nation is espe cially troubled now with who is in the White House. Remember, he wasn’t al ways a Republican. Senator Sanders’ pro posals are far reaching. Who is going to pay for free college, free health- care and for the forgive ness of student loans?. His generic answer has been Wall Street. My consumer answer is really? Recently, at a CNN town hall meet ing, he said that a part of his plan was for us to pay a small tax. Will that strat egy work over a long pe riod of time? Bernie Sanders has a lot of supporters. The question is whether America is ready for these radical transitions and transformations. Impor tant primaries coming up will give us a temperature reading as td the viability of his programs. Just days ago a Yahoo poll said Jde Biden has the best chance of defeat-, ing the president. This is good news for the Biden camp. Going forward in the weeks ahead, we will, get a clearer picture of ex-, actly who the Democratic candidate will be. Fasten your seatbelt, we are in for a bumpy ride, James B. Ewers Jr., Ed.D., is a former tennis champion ai Atkins High School and played col-, lege tennis at Johnson C. Smith University, where he was all-conference for four years. He is a retired college administrator and can be reached at ewers. jr56@yahoo.com. Bernie’s assault on our cliche of greatness “Excuse me, occasion ally it might be a good idea to be honest about American foreign policy.” I don’t think I’ve heard that much honesty from a mainstream party, presi dential candidate in virtu ally half a century. And suddenly this race begins to matter in a way that seems like ... oh my God, a return of democracy? Suddenly I don’t feel ut terly marginalized as a voter, as an American, left with nothing but cynical despair as I wait to learn which “lesser evil” the Dems will serve up for me as a candidate. The words are those of Bernie Sanders, of course, standing up to the fed- baiting the moderators and some of the other candi dates were slinging at him during the latest debate, trying their best to bring him down. He went on: “That in cludes the fact that Ameri ca has overthrown [demo cratic] governments all over the world — in Chile, in Guatemala, in Iran.”. Well, yeah, but ... we’re still the greatest country on the- planet, right? I get why the cor porate media hates Sand ers and wants to get rid of him ASAP. The American political center (as it likes to call itself) has done a helluva job marginal izing the truth-wielding, anti-war, pro-empathy, pro-sanity wing of the American population ever since the early ’70s, in the wake of George Mc Govern’s shattering defeat by Nixon. Never again! The taming of the liberal agenda cleared the way. for the Reagan domestic counter-revolution and the U.S. military’s recov ery from Vietnam Syn drome and public distaste for war. But now that all this is settled and endless, profit-spewing war is quiet background noise. Along comes Bernie Sanders, giving voice to ideas and realities that have long been declared taboo in American politi cal discourse, certainly at the level of presidential politics. Could real change —- what I like to think of as evolution — actually start claiming political traction again? Sanders is leading in the polls and has won the early state caucuses and primaries, but there’s no telling if he’ll succeed in actually claiming the Democratic nomination or, my God, defeating the orange-haired one, much less pushing a progressive, peace- and environment- conscious agenda through Congress. But this much seems apparent right now: He’s beating — and, I hope, deconstructing — the centrist media. These highly paid bouncers are so used to de fining the political limits of the American spectator democracy — i.e., estab lishing the nature of real ity (it’s a big horse race) — they are ever more contemptuous of someone like Sanders, not to men tion the constituency for whom he speaks. A glaring example of this contempt was Chris Matthews’ idi otic blather on MSNBC last week, in the wake of Sanders’ big win in the Nevada caucus, manag ing in a twisted analogy to compare this victory to the Nazi invasion of France in 1940. Well, it turns out Mat thews hit himself in the head with his own hard ball. His profoundly offen sive analogy immediately generated a #FireChris- Matthews. hashtag and he was forced to spew an apology in order to keep his job. “Senator Sanders,” he said two days later on his show “Hardball,” “I’m sorry for comparing any thing from that tragic era in which so many suf fered, especially the Jew ish people, to an elected result in which you were a well-deserved winner. This is going to be a hard- fought, heated campaign of ideas.” The apology was ac cepted by the Sanders campaign, whose man ager said, “We hope to get fairer coverage going forward.” And maybe they actually will! But what’s worth pondering for a mo ment is the atmosphere behind the scenes at MS NBC, and throughout the corporate media, prior to Matthews’ remark. Sand ers had relatives murdered in the Holocaust, for God’s sake, but how could such a stupid comment form in a pundit’s consciousness as a newsworthy observa tion about any candidate’s victory? The anti-Sanders, and therefore anti-progres sive, atmosphere at MS NBC must have been wide open and uncontained. And indeed, consider one of the primary lines of attack on Sanders, the democratic socialist, by the corporate media: red baiting. Red-baiting is a throw- back to the unrestrained Cold War era, in the early ’50s — the McCarthy era, the HUAC era — when a grotesquely hypocriti cal moral righteousness gained sufficient gov ernmental power to limit Americans’ freedom of speech and thought by poisoning certain political positions with the label “communist.” Has this era returned? Sanders has been lam basted recently for such sins as saying something good about Fidel Castro, telling Anderson Cooper on “60 Minutes”: “It’sun- fair to simply say every thing is bad. When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy pro gram. Is that a bad thing? Even though Fidel Castro did it?” Pundits have been trying desperately to tear Sanders to shreds over this outrage (and seem to have no memory of the mob-linked Fulgencio Batista, the Cuban leader overthrown by the Castro revolution). The media has also made a point of report ing that Sanders has been briefed by U.S. in telligence that the Rus sians are attempting to help his campaign, seem ingly because he’s the can didate least likely to defeat Trump. While the briefing occurred over a month ago, it only became news, reported by the Washing ton Post, the day before the Nevada caucus. Sand ers’ response: “I don’t care, frankly, who Putin wants to be president. My message to Putin is clear: Stay out ofAmerican elec tions, and as president I will make sure that you do.” And then there was the New York Times, throw ing such poison seeds into the wind as “his support: for the Sandinistas” — as though there weren’t le gitimate reasons to sup port them and extreme controversy during the Reagan years about U.S. support for the anti-Sand- inista rebels in Nicaragua, known as the contras. And in the same paragraph, the Times seems to summon the ghost of Joseph Mc Carthy, informing Amer ica that Sanders had a “honeymoon in the Soviet Union.” Can you imagine elect ing a president so arrogant he actually claims the right to think for himself and challenge U.S. foreign policy, past and present? A president who honey mooned under the Soviet moon? As the media is point ing out, the cliche we deeply cherish — we’re good, they’re bad — is un der assault in 2020. Robert Koehler (koehlercw@ gmail.com), syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Chi cago award-winning journalist and editor. He is the author of “Cour age Grows Strong at the Wound. ”. Low voter turnout drives primary election results Algenon Cash Guest Columnist The pri- 1 mary election season has ended with many predict ed outcomes coming to pass and other results tak ing some by surprise. One fact that always seems to amaze observers is voter turnout in primary elec tions. Early results indicate 82,314 Forsyth County residents cast a ballot this past Tuesday - only 32% of all registered voters. Not only are those num bers abysmal, they are down from 2016 when nearly 36% of all voters showed up for primary elections. I asked many local people if they planned to vote and received wide ranging feedback - includ ing not trusting the pro cess, not understanding who the candidates are, with some informing me they didn’t even realize an election was underway. The country is divided and voter apathy does nothing to unite us around so many common goals and objec tives. Elected officials are extended authority in so many areas of life. We depend on these lead ers to protect us, manage public resources, gener ate economic opportuni ties, serve the least of us, and guide the community with a compelling vision. It’s simply mind boggling as to why more people don’t care to share in the process. Although final voting results are still under re view, we do have a break down of early voting data that is concerning. Around 13% of African Ameri cans voted early and just 5% of voters aged 18-24. These groups often are most vocal about issues in the community - violence, police brutality, housing, economic mobility, and transportation - however repeatedly they are the most underperforming voting bloc. Wealthy voters tend to vote more frequently. Nonvoters are more likely to be poor, young, Hispan ic, or African American. I spoke with a single 23-year-old mother of two about the challenges of raising her children with no other parent in the household. She com plained about the ineffi cient public transit system, lack of jobs paying a de cent wage, and her desire to one day be able to af ford to return to a univer sity to complete her col lege degree. However, when asked about voting, she decided, “No, I’m not voting, none of those people care about me and my kids.” The response may sound contrarian, but it’s not. For every ten adults eligible to vote, only about three cast a ballot in pri mary elections. Some vot ers don’t understand why primary elections are criti cal. In today’s hyper parti san political arena, many races don’t feature general opposition and often get decided on primary voting day when the major politi cal parties vote to establish their candidate for the gen eral election. The unspo ken truth is that American elections are far less com petitive these days as a result of gerrymandering, which packs select voters in certain districts to engi neer a desired outcome. It’s hard to argue whether election results would alter if the entire population of registered voters participated, but voters must come to re alize the process deter mines more than which candidate wins or loses. Elections matter and the outcomes influence which public policies elected officials champion and whose needs candidates selectively acknowledge or ignore. Undoubtedly there will be mass attention on who voted and why. But hope fully, elected officials and political pundits will con sider an equally important question: who is not vot ing and what impact does that have? Algenon Cash is a nationally recognized speaker and the manag ing director of Wharton Gladden & Company, an investment banking firm. Reach him at acash@al- genoncash.com. Have an Opinion? 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