Life isn’t so bad.
Anyone who listens to Bernie Sanders will tell you: it’s much worse for so many others.
Heidi Gear wants off Medicaid. But day care will cost half her income.
The 31-year-old Rittman woman fostered children before deciding to start a biological family of three on a modest $35,000 a year.
“We worked with kids who came from just dire conditions. And here in Ohio, it seemed like almost a third-world country; I hate to say it,” Gear said.
In the second in a series of sit-downs with likely voters, the Beacon Journal listened to six Sanders supporters. Ardent advocates for marriage, racial and income equality, they gratefully pay taxes. Leery of deep-pocketed donors, they generally distrust Hillary Clinton, a wealthier challenger favored by the Democratic Party.
They see America’s economic and political systems as rigged for the rich, stacked against the middle class and dead set on keeping the poor, well, poor.
“The systemic problem is the people at the top who have the unlimited amounts of money that are corrupting the whole system. They’re saying, you know, the Koch brothers: ‘We need low-paying jobs. We need trade deals that make whatever cheaper for them’ … They buy entire candidates,” said Brian Pearson, a 25-year-old fireman working two jobs to pay off student loans.
And don’t mention Ronald Reagan’s conservative ideology. That “buffoon’s” trickle-down tax policy feels “more like getting trickled on,” quipped Larry Gabler, a 63-year-old Air Force veteran and Cuyahoga Falls business owner.
They like Sanders’ policies. The working class shouldn’t struggle in vain, they say, nor die without dignity or adequate health insurance.
Sheri Risaliti, a Jackson Township resident, explained that even her U.S. Post Office pension can’t keep pace with prescription drug costs. Her monthly cost for medicine to ease the pain of fibromyalgia skyrocketed in January from $30 to $253.
“I’m retired [on] disability and my husband’s a retired teacher,” said Risaliti, 55. “And I look at things like that, my God. I’m going to have to go without. What about the seniors? That’s all they have is Social Security. And that doesn’t pay squat.”
Pearson, a self-proclaimed C-SPAN watcher from Youngstown, gave his first paycheck to bail his working father out on a $600 gas bill. “We always seemed to make things work and family was important,” Pearson said.
Sally Taylor, 76, said her nieces and nephews — housekeepers, cooks and waitresses — are the first generation to be let down by the economics of their parents. “And these are kids who went to college. So what’s going to happen to the kids who can’t go to college?”
Until 15 years ago, the widowed homemaker knew no one who filed for bankruptcy or Medicaid.
“Now, I can see it all around me,” she said.
Bernie’s brood
Pandering to fear about illegal immigration or terrorism doesn’t work for Sanders’ fans.
“I’m not seeing ISIS invade Youngstown,” said Pearson. “You’re not seeing it in Akron. What I am seeing is my neighbors living on welfare, my neighbor across the street losing his job at the post office after years. That’s what I see. That’s what’s really affecting us.”
“My biggest fear is the economy because we’re not out of this yet, this thing. Wall Street’s recovered fine,” said Gabler, rattling off the resilience of the stock market under President Barack Obama. “Main Street is hurting. I tell you what, you fix Main Street and Main Street will fix Wall Street.”
Electability
For all the inherent conflict they find in America, Sanders’ supporters find themselves in a pickle, too. Some say voting for their populist candidate betrays the Democratic Party’s best chance at beating Republicans.
Taylor, who found her liberal identity years ago while marching through the streets of Akron for women’s reproductive and equal rights, is closer to Bernie’s age than anyone in the room. But she has no intention of voting for him.
“And each day I get more so,” she said to raised eyebrows.
“And my reasoning? To me the most important thing is to win the election,” she continued, noting several Supreme Court appointments in the coming years. “And I’m just not sure [Sanders] is electable. All you have to do is say the word ‘socialist’ and you’ve lost a lot of votes right there. His ideas, I like better … But how’s he going to pay for all of this, all of these wonderful things? Just raising taxes on the wealthy is not going to do it. And once the word gets out that he’s going to raise taxes on everybody, then people won’t like him as much.”
Last summer, two old friends “basically laughed” at Wendy Duke, 65, for inquiring about Sanders.
Nodding at Taylor, Duke said: “I will say that I have some cynicism about his chances because there are so many people like you who say: ‘Oh, why bother voting for him? You’ll just help the other side.’ However, when I meet young people like [Gear] and old radical people like [Gabler], it gives me hope.”
Concerns over electability, however, may be exaggerated.
The most recent match-ups by Real Clear Politics, which averages polls, have Sanders doing better than Clinton in general elections against Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush.
Born again voters
While he energizes disenfranchised youths, Sanders has resurrected old-time radicals.
The baby boomers in his flock have spent most of their lives opposing free-market, conservative ideologies. That’s what triggered the most recent financial crisis, Gabler said.
“And we still don’t have the things we needed prior to the meltdown. We didn’t fix it,” Gabler said. Every Republican since Reagan — and even Democrat Bill Clinton, who repealed the Glass-Steagall Act provisions that prevented banks from affiliating with security firms — have fought to weaken regulatory agencies and water down financial rules.
“If they continue their shenanigans, they can bring it down again. And that’s my fear,” he said.
Disgusted with party politics, Gabler supported third parties until George W. Bush “brought me back to the Democrats.” Like Duke, he likes Sanders’ appeal to independents.
Duke, a former Akron school teacher, quit her job after 22 years. She didn’t support standardized tests for her theater students.
Duke took heat from her principal in 1968 when she plastered her high school with posters of Eugene McCarthy, a left-wing presidential candidate promising to end the Vietnam War.
Her parents were Democrats. It just made sense.
“But there came a point in my life when I became very cynical about politics, especially when you get excited about somebody on the left and people say, ‘oh, they’re not electable. Don’t waste your effort on that’ … So I became an anarchist. I didn’t vote for years — deliberately — because I didn’t want to vote for someone who could control me,” Duke said.
As a teacher whose salary and work rules depend on local levies and elected board members, Duke began voting again in self-defense.
“And I love Bernie’s independence,” she said. “For a long time I was shocked when he announced that he was going to run. I thought it would be quixotic. Then I started noticing … that people were picking up on what he was saying … And those are the things that I’ve always been interested in: not going to war; finding rational solutions to problems; liberation for all people — black, white, male, women, Latino, everybody.”
Doug Livingston can be reached at 330-996-3792 or dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow on Twitter: @DougLivingstonABJ.