'Revolution'? Or Revolution?

I very much like and respect the work of Paul Krugman. I suspect we share similar values about what we would call a 'good society,' based on greater equality, opportunity, and shared public facilities and amenities. That is, we're both sort of 'socialists,' despite the troubled fortunes of that term. Anyhow, I take it seriously when Krugman questions both the credentials and electability of Bernie Sanders while offering support for Hillary Clinton. And when Krugman offers a link to an article by The American Prospect's Paul Starr in Politico, laying out the fuller case against Sanders, I follow the link--and you should too.

What we find there are some predictable apprehensions: Bernie would be awfully old, no one can get elected under the socialist label, he's just too improbable, too narrow in his experience (foreign policy especially). Fine. But Starr goes on to suggest that Sanders's social policies are unrealistic because they can't be funded--that is, the vast wealth consolidated in America's .1% just can't be tapped--fuhgeddaboudit. And banks that are too big to fail? No, says Krugman, it's the shadow banks, stupid, as Hillary says. (Of course it's both, as Bernie knows.) But the point Krugman and Starr and all the other liberal policy wonks are making is, Don't try to rock the boat--it'll capsize. That could be Hillary's slogan.

Where this becomes most transparent--and shocking--is in Starr's argument against Sanders's 'Medicare for all' single-payer health proposal. Starr acknowledges that universal care would have been a good idea--back in Truman's day--and yes, we pay too much for the care we get now. Quite an understatement when you see how a rich state like Massachusetts is practically in bankruptcy paying hugely inflated health costs, and how France, the UK, Canada, you name it get equal or better care for half or less the dough. Starr denies none of this.

What he does say is, "Decades of skewed incentives have created the system we have ... 'Medicare for All' implies withdrawing an enormous amount of the revenue that hospitals ... are counting on (for example, to meet bond payments)." And there you have it: we simply MUST go on overpaying for health care, impoverishing ourselves and the rest of the public sector, in order to lard those skewed incentives (read deca-millionaire surgeons, hospital CEOs and big pharma execs). Why? The bond-holders have to get their profit. A familiar refrain, one we heard when it came to bailing out banks or pauperizing Greece. If you want sensible, meaningful change, you can't have it--because the financial structures require us to go on privileging the privileged, returning profits to the bond-holders while the rest of us scramble to pay our deductibles and avoid foreclosure.

Which brings us back to Bernie Sanders, and his cherished term 'Revolution.' He says it a lot, and I'm sure he means it. But what Krugman, Starr, et al. help us to see is that revolution doesn't happen by electing a new President, even a 'socialist' one, or passing some new laws (even if Congress wasn't wholly owned by the wealthy and incapable of passing anything useful). No, Revolution, the kind that makes it possible to rationalize our health care system and pay sensible costs, to tame our financial institutions and remove their vast bribes from the political process, to get clean energy when we need it (NOW) and not when it can make some energy executive very rich--that sort of Revolution won't happen at the ballot box. (It won't happen in the streets either, at least not yet.)

But when you hear Bernie say 'Revolution,' remember those bond-holders, making us pay double for our skewed healthcare. Remember that Revolution would mean we foreclose on the bond-holders, not homeowners. That we confiscate the vast wealth of the .1%ers to build our new society. That's the only revolution that would mean anything, and not even Bernie is going to take us there. Not yet.