The Problem With the Sanders Campaign

...is Sanders.

I don't know how else to say this, but he's an old man who comes across too often as if he were the crazy uncle in the attic. Sorry, he just does.

By and large, he advocates for policies and programs that would have been ideal in 1980 -- or 1950 -- but now they seem inadequate and anachronistic. We can't go back to some halcyon past when things were or could have been better.

The mess we're in is the result of cumulative decisions by policy-makers and their sponsors over the last several decades. Both major parties have been complicit. Bernie has not been able to stem the tide. Sometimes he hasn't tried.

Comes now his campaign which has been resonating strongly, particularly among the young, and it almost seems like something out of the mythological past. Things could have been so much better if only...

If only, yes. The problem is that "if only" notes what's been lost, not what can be -- will be? -- made manifest in the future. In other words, as I see it, Bernie's campaign is a lament, not a manifesto.

I won't even mention Hillary's campaign, as it's too dreary. "No you can't have nice things -- ever!" is hardly an inspirational message, no?

It's my hope that the Sanders campaign will be a catalyst for that missing manifesto for the future, but I don't think the necessary political, economic and social adjustments will come through the ballot box.

We're way past that.