Trump’s orange glow colors his opponents

While they’re pasting together their broken app in Iowa, a squinting look at Bernie Sanders

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Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., with his family, addresses supporters during his caucus night watch party on February 03, 2020, in Des Moines, Iowa.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., with his family, addresses supporters during his caucus night watch party Monday in Des Moines, Iowa.

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Whatever convoluted caucus process they’ve got in Iowa, under ideal conditions a Byzantine mess of neighbors gathering in public buildings to congeal in corners, broke down Monday night. A balky app.

Results finally dribbled out late Tuesday. And the news, as of 6 p.m., is ... pretty good. Exhausted septuagenarian hack Joe Biden came in fourth, with 15. 6 percent of the vote. It would be good to be rid of him. Vinegary scold Elizabeth Warren did hardly better: 18.3 percent.

Then Bernie Sanders. I have to admit, he makes my skin crawl. Whenever Sanders spools out the wish list of what he’s going to do — Medicare-for-All, Green New Deal, free college — I scowl and think: “We can’t get rid of the penny.”

He stays alive with 25.1 percent. Second to Pete Buttigieg, who won with 26.9 percent. There are many reasons to root for Buttigieg: he focuses on the biggest problem facing America right now: bringing the country together. He has dignity and speaks in complete sentences. He would be the youngest president ever. He could lead us toward the future, assuming we still have one.

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The common wisdom is Buttigieg can’t win. And honestly, a Trump-Sanders matchup would make more sense, would mesh with the nightmare quality of our political moment. Harry Potter v. Voldemort, where during the epic battle we realize that the supposed good guy — and take your pick who that is — and the supposed bad guy are uncomfortably similar.

Not that Trump and Sanders are the same. No one comes close to The Donald for vileness, deceit or malice. The central crime of the Trump administration is not any particular hair-brained policy scheme, but his war on truth and the media reporting it. Sanders never seems to let reality slow him down either. He claims he’ll do all this stuff. But what has he done, so far, over the past 50 years? Not much.

The whole roiling confusion will tumble forward, to be joined by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has already poured $300 million or so into attack ads that slide off Trump like water off a duck’s behind. Because not caring about anything that might be wrong with your candidate is what supporting Trump is all about. A strategy that Democrats might find useful before all this is over.

Mark your calendar

One glory of my job is that I don’t cover a beat—politics, crime, whatever—so don’t need to develop sources, relationships that limit what you can write, lest your sources take offense and freeze you out, leaving you sourceless and alone.

I just assume that anyone I write about will stalk off and never be heard from again. It can be a shock when the subject of a story isn’t offended. For instance, Mount Sinai Hospital.

Last October, Sun-Times photographer Ashlee Rezin Garcia and I hung out at Mount Sinai’s Level 1 trauma center. We weren’t trying to make them look good, or bad, just to convey what we saw. Had the nurses gathered out back to smoke cigarettes, sing sea shanties and roll dice when they were supposed to be tending patients, we would have reported that. But they weren’t, at least not while we were watching.

After the story ran, rather than complaining, Mount Sinai circled back, asking if I wanted to pose questions to their president and CEO, Karen Teitelbaum, at a City Club luncheon. 

“God no!” seemed abrupt. So, hoping to nip that idea in the bud, I explained that I couldn’t be a lackey, couldn’t just sit there lobbing softball questions — “Tell us more about Mount Sinai’s unbroken chain of success” — but would have to delve into issues such as violence and health care. 

To my vast surprise, they agreed to my conditions. The event is Tuesday, Feb. 11. Someone called our exchange, “Urban Healthcare: Challenges and Solutions.” The reception, aka schmoozing, starts at 11:30 a.m. The program begins promptly at noon and runs about an hour — the City Club is very good about getting you back to work.

Tickets are moving, which is incredible, since the lunch is $35 for members, $50 for non-members. A lot, but this is Maggiano’s Banquets, 111 W. Grand Ave., so the food’s pretty good. Sign up at City Club’s website.

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