As predicted by yours truly, Senator Bernie Sanders suspended his campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination today.
I won’t rehash the reasoning behind my prediction in this blog entry, but that post can be read at the link below:
https://therationalram.blog/2020/03/05/why-bernie-sanders-will-not-become-president/
The gist of that post is that Sanders didn’t stand a chance against former Vice-President Joe Biden, who is now the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, because outside of predominantly white, northeastern states, like his native Vermont, Sanders is not seen as a serious, viable, or authentic candidate.
Again, not going to rehash what I said previously about why Sanders failed again.
However, I am hearing grumbling from mostly millennial voters who are already (predictably) whining and threatening to either vote third party or not vote at all.
I find this line of thinking childish because if Sanders were a viable candidate, he would have won over more than just his predominantly youthful Generation Y and Generation Z base.
Free healthcare and free college are not realistic campaign promises any more than promises to reopen shuttered factories in the Rust Belt or closed mines in Pennsylvania and West Virginia were.
Economic prosperity is not something that any politician can promise you. How well the economy is and how well you prosper in it is more a function of individual choice and effort than most people in this country realizes. Equality of opportunity should be the goal, not equality of outcome.
I am reminded of the words of our 35th President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”.
It appears that this salient message is lost upon many of us in this country today and that saddens me.
There is no such thing as a perfect choice in any election. Ideology is not how a nation is governed. Only pragmatism works in governing a free country.
It is not men like President Trump and Senator Sanders and their empty rhetoric and false promises that give me pause. It is their rabid supporters and the apathetic and uninformed people who do not have the requisite efficacy to exercise their vote that make me shake my head.
It is the idealistic libertarians and third party voters who are more interested in supporting their normative ideas than in combatting political chicanery that I find disturbing.
Of course, it’s a free country and no populist, no matter how odious or unpopular they are can destroy the system our founders put in place. The silver lining over the last three years is that our system of checks and balances works.
I close this entry with the full quote of JFK’s 1961 inauguration speech:
Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inauguration_of_John_F._Kennedy#The_inaugural_address
And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inauguration_of_John_F._Kennedy#The_inaugural_address
-The Rational Ram
The Rational Ram 
