Bernie's focus on the working poor. [View all]

He is right, he has been right for decades, and just how right he is will soon be apparent to everyone. The Covid 19 crisis drives that point home in literally sickening details: Our failure to ensure a livable national minimum wage. Our failure to secure paid sick leave for all Americans, and of course our failure to provide readily affordable health care to all Americans, now stand as stark measures of the failure of our society and of our leaders to protect our nation from severe adversity. Every person who waits until their medical condition hits a crisis stage due to financial pressure now endangers the life of even the most affluent Americans living inside of gated communities. Every person who shows up at work sick because they desperately need that money endangers the life of even the most powerful Americans among us. Every person who is now homeless, every person who gets evicted from their homes as our economic crisis worsens, is a ticking time bomb for the further spread of this pandemic.

This is ultimately all going to pile many trillions of dollars onto the national debt, but no matter how much emergency spending we now undertake it will come up woefully short. A pound of cure will not buy us what an ounce of prevention could have. America will not be made whole. We do not have the economic and public health resiliency that we need to weather what is now upon us without extreme suffering that will scar and set back generations to come. This is what happens when a social safety net is woven with grade D thread and holes large enough for babies to fall through.

I say this whether or not Americans in our collective wisdom determine whether Bernie Sanders is best equipped now to become our next President. Maybe he's not, but damn it, he was right.