In an interview yesterday called out Sanders for his supporters’ organized nastiness, and said that he should not be the nominee. I’m perfectly fine with her remaining Massachusetts Senator.

I suspect we may be seeing another principled abstention in mmoffitt’s future…

cordially,

Why did the missus not vote prior to 2016? I know that the Kewl Kidz like to say that “if voting could actually change things it would be illegal,” but it’s difficult to understand in that case why the GOP has long striven to make it difficult. Also, the 2016 vote manifestly did change things. Were the spousette’s past abstentions grounded in her serene assurance that all was well in the polity without her participation?

cordially,

(Just so we’re clear: Biden was not my first or even fourth choice as the horses cleared the gates last year, but for reasons of temperament, Sanders was also well back in the field.)

“Why, so can I, or so can any man; but will they come, when you do call for them?”

coupled with Bernie's call for tuition-free state colleges and universities

An admirable goal, but has he ever outlined how, by presidential fiat or decree, he will bring this about? If he directs the University of California to henceforth charge no tuition*, the Regents will tell him to go pound sand. If he says “$14K for a year at Berkeley puts an education out of reach for many young people, so we will issue vouchers for that amount to any matriculating freshman,” the Regents will respond “Cool! Did we mention that next this fall’s tuition* is going up to $28K?”

I’ve previously mentioned the signs seen locally—presumably the work of an enthusiastic freelancer, and not the campaign itself—touting free healthcare, free tuition, forgiveness of student loan debt. Yay and woo to all, but by what magic, please, will President Sanders conjure these up? Were ideals and aspirations the sole deciding factors, I’d view candidate Sanders with a less jaundiced eye, but I’m also taking into account considerations of temperament (I don’t know how you regarded his post-convention performance in 2016, but I saw a cranky back-bencher extending a grudging, sour-spirited, decidedly pro forma support to his rival) and, frankly, electability. I think he would have been eviscerated four years ago, and might fare even worse this year. Certainly my own spouse’s predictions that the guy would turn out the Youngs in overwhelming numbers and coast to victory thereupon have not been borne out so far (the youth vote is down this year vs. 2016), but then again, though I love her dearly, L does not possess the level of granular political savvy that God gave a goose.

Uncle Joe warnt my first choice, but he’ll do in a pinch. President Sanders’ supporters will be disappointed when he fails to deliver utopia; President Biden’s supporters, to the extent that they imagine he will return us to “normalcy,” will also be let down: there’s no going back to the pre-Trump era. The country’s trajectory has been forever altered, and Trump may justly claim, if he lives to retirement, to have conducted a “transformative” presidency, rather in the sense that smallpox can be a transformative disease. We will bear the scars on our collective visage for a long time. So yes, Biden is an imperfect vessel, but I do not believe that he is an evil man, and a relatively benign, avuncular character will, I think, appeal to a broad swath of the populace exhausted by the antics of the barking mad despot presently in residence at the end of Pennsylvania Avenue. I doubt whether Sanders could achieve his grand goals; I have some confidence that Biden can provide a respite. And if we are serious about the kind of changes Sanders and Warren represent, the Democrats had damned well better shed the habit of letting the grass grow under their feet between elections, and should begin preparing for a new generation of political leadership for the rest of the decade.

About college expenses: I’ve probably related here how, owing to a miscommunication with the mothership, I arrived at college under the impression that I would be subsidized from home, whereas my old man apparently thought he’d made it clear that having fed, clothed and housed me for eighteen years, he’d done all that conscience required. This led to me going into significant arrears with the U of C, one of a cluster of reasons, including a deficit in academic performance, behind their decision to ask me to leave. Well, following a lengthy period in which I variously couch-surfed and was homeless outright, albeit discreetly, I talked my way back in, two years behind schedule, and until 1976 washed dishes on campus twenty hours a week, supplemented by summer jobs (canneries, car washes), and made it to graduation with about a hundred dollars to my name, and no debt, student or otherwise, whatsoever. This was not because I was particularly virtuous or thrifty, but because UC tuition* was about $1200 per annum in that era (an off-campus room could be had for between forty and seventy-five dollars a month), and between my dishwashing wages and a modest $50/month scholarship, I was able to cover my expenses.

Dishwashing wages at UC have not kept pace with tuition*, textbooks, lodging and related costs, they tell me. I would think it’s impossible for any freshman who finds himself in the position I did half a century ago could get through college without a crushing burden of debt. Good on you two for taking care of your daughters.

cordially,

*The University of California once prided itself on offering a free education to all academically-qualifying California students. Indeed, tuition was forbidden under the terms of the institution’s very charter. When Governor Reagan (spits), who had been elected on a platform clearly hinting at punitive measures to be visited upon “rioting students” and “permissive professors,” moved to impose “tuition,” this was pointed out to him. Nichto problemo: I don’t know whether the charter has ever been amended, but beginning in the latter sixties, UC, still tuition-free, began imposing “academic fees”: problem solved!