Bernie Sanders and the Realists. And, well, the Soviets too

The New Yorker  . . . "With polls showing Sanders leading, or challenging Hillary Clinton for the lead, in Iowa and New Hampshire, his proposals demand inspection. Until recently, there hadn’t been very much of this."

Linden doesn’t question the attractiveness of the vision Sanders is promoting—an America with a universal public health-care system, universal paid leave, free college tuition at state colleges, and a huge infrastructure program. Ultimately, a single-payer health-care system “could offer us enormous benefits,” Linden writes. But he also points out that Sanders, in order to finance such a system, would have to raise taxes sharply. “There’s no realistic chance of getting even a decent fraction of what Sanders has asked for. And if that’s the case, then Sanders has clearly not done the hard work of figuring out priorities, of operating within constraints, of balancing trade-offs,” he writes.

Where did Sanders' spending ideas come from? This may be a clue:  Fun Fact Of The Day: Bernie Sanders Honeymooned In The Soviet Union…  . . . "Sanders married his current wife, Jane, in May of 1988 and the next day left for their “romantic honeymoon” to Yaroslavl, in the then-Soviet Union. The trip was an official delegation from Burlington to cement the two cities’ sister-city relationship. “Trust me. It was a very strange honeymoon,” Sanders writes.

"He also visited Cuba with Jane in 1989 and tried to meet with Fidel Castro, but it didn’t work out and he met with the mayor of Havana and other officials instead." . . .

Bernie Sanders’s Soviet Honeymoon  "What is it about worn-out socialist “worker paradises” like the old Soviet Union and Cuba that bring out the romantic in American radical politicians?" . . .

Did Sanders ACTUALLY Honeymoon In The Soviet Union? Da, Comrade [VIDEO]

“Did you go on your honeymoon to the Soviet Union?” Roberts asked.“The fact is that I went to establish a sister city program with Yaroslavl, then in the Soviet Union, now an important city in Russia which is still in existence today,” Sanders replied. “The purpose of that trip was a sister city. Did it take place after my marriage? It did.”

"The No. 2 guy [running for the Democratic nomination] went to the Soviet Union on his honeymoon, and I don't think he ever came back," Lindsey Graham