Bernie Sanders Case Study

A Different Kind of Change Former independent Vermont Senator, and current Democratic presidential hopeful, Bernie Sanders is looking to shake up the political system. An outspoken socialist, Sanders is hoping to bring fresh, new ideas to the White House. With the promise of change and a new kind of politics, Sanders’ campaign is gaining lots of steam. Many believe he is the type of president this country needs while others think he could be the end of America, as we know it. Seventy-three-year-old Bernie Sanders is the longest serving independent member of congress in history (Catanese 2015). Sanders’ first major political victory came in 1981 when he was elected as mayor of the city of Burlington in Vermont. This was the start of Sanders’

Sanders economic goals involve levying higher taxes on, mainly, corporations and the upper class. With the excess tax revenue, Sanders wants to invest in social programs like healthcare and other public programs, of which free college tuition is the most popular within the public. Essentially, Sanders’ goal is to take the wealth from the top earners in the country and spread it throughout the middle and lower class, thus narrowing the economic gap. “You can 't have it all…your greed has got to end.” That is Sanders’ cry to the billionaires of this country, and a problem he hopes his economic policies will resolve. These types of economic policies are comparable to that of Benito Mussolini’s and Adolf Hitler’s, which is the biggest argument opponents of Sanders make against him. Obviously, Sanders doesn’t advocate the genocide and radical types of leadership that Mussolini and Hitler used to rule, but those against Sanders view his economic ideas as doomed to fail, just as they eventually did throughout Europe in the 1930’s and 1940’s. While being compared to socialists of the 1930-40’s is not a good look for Sanders in the eyes of the majority of Americans, Sanders embraces his Socialist

Seventy-three years old currently, Sanders would be seventy-five by the time the general election takes place in 2016. This would by far be the oldest a person elected president would be at the time of their first election. He would beat out Ronald Reagan as the oldest president ever elected, beating Reagan by five years. Many people see this a problem that Sanders cannot overcome during his presidential campaign. Sanders would be seventy-nine at the end of his first term and eighty-three at the end of his second term, assuming he was reelected. According to National Journal author Charlie Cook, “most people would grow uneasy with the age