Against high immigration, against exporting jobs, he sounds like a Scandinavian socialist who thinks his primary responsibility is benefiting the ordinary people of the United States.
He is not quite the cosmolib Ezra and many other post-nationalist liberals and "liberals" seem to want.
He is confused in his ideas about election finance, at least as he puts them here.
He refuses to say whether it would be worth it for the US to go to war to prevent Iran getting a nuke, if it came to that.
He seems less open to the idea of the US as the savior of last resort than many on the left, responding to a question whether we should have intervened in Rwanda by answering the US and the European powers, equally, should have intervened, an intervention that should have involved a strengthened UN.
He seems to favor a two-state solution in Palestine.
Ezra asks a stupid question and gets a stupid answer.
Ezra.
Let me ask you about the economic side of foreign policy.
I think one of the overwhelming background issues, and sometimes the foreground issue, is whether the economic rise of, particularly, China, but to some degree India and others, necessarily means a diminishment in American power and sway.
Do you see it as zero sum in that way?
Bernie.
No.
That is the whole of Bernie's answer to this remarkably idiotic question.
Having replied, he immediately shifts the topic and starts to talk about how hot he is to lead the world in cooling global warming.
He favors a massive carbon tax to diminish use of fossil fuels and rig the market, enabling alternative energy sources that are in fact vastly more expensive than fossil fuels to compete.
He does not say how he will prevent or at least limit the inevitable impoverishment of ordinary and working people of America that would result.
He does not say that he will even try, and Ezra does not ask.
Ezra does not ask whether, and he does not say that, the global warming damage to be averted would be greater than the costs he would impose to avoid it.
Ezra raises the question of unequal restrictions on carbon use for the advanced West and the economic giants of the Third World, especially the world's worst polluter, China, but Bernie mostly dodges and insists he does not favor hobbling the West while others nullify our sacrifice by continuing to rely on and expand fossil fuels.
He hopes quick development of alternatives that will actually be cheaper to use than carbon fuels will remove any economic reason for the Third World to want to continue to use fossil fuels, and perhaps his apparent confidence in such a solution explains why he seems wholly unworried that his carbon tax will impoverish America and Americans.
He is confused in his ideas about election finance, at least as he puts them here.
He refuses to say whether it would be worth it for the US to go to war to prevent Iran getting a nuke, if it came to that.
He seems less open to the idea of the US as the savior of last resort than many on the left, responding to a question whether we should have intervened in Rwanda by answering the US and the European powers, equally, should have intervened, an intervention that should have involved a strengthened UN.
He seems to favor a two-state solution in Palestine.
Ezra asks a stupid question and gets a stupid answer.
Ezra.
Let me ask you about the economic side of foreign policy.
I think one of the overwhelming background issues, and sometimes the foreground issue, is whether the economic rise of, particularly, China, but to some degree India and others, necessarily means a diminishment in American power and sway.
Do you see it as zero sum in that way?
Bernie.
No.
That is the whole of Bernie's answer to this remarkably idiotic question.
Having replied, he immediately shifts the topic and starts to talk about how hot he is to lead the world in cooling global warming.
He favors a massive carbon tax to diminish use of fossil fuels and rig the market, enabling alternative energy sources that are in fact vastly more expensive than fossil fuels to compete.
He does not say how he will prevent or at least limit the inevitable impoverishment of ordinary and working people of America that would result.
He does not say that he will even try, and Ezra does not ask.
Ezra does not ask whether, and he does not say that, the global warming damage to be averted would be greater than the costs he would impose to avoid it.
Ezra raises the question of unequal restrictions on carbon use for the advanced West and the economic giants of the Third World, especially the world's worst polluter, China, but Bernie mostly dodges and insists he does not favor hobbling the West while others nullify our sacrifice by continuing to rely on and expand fossil fuels.
He hopes quick development of alternatives that will actually be cheaper to use than carbon fuels will remove any economic reason for the Third World to want to continue to use fossil fuels, and perhaps his apparent confidence in such a solution explains why he seems wholly unworried that his carbon tax will impoverish America and Americans.
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