have you seen a bernie speech? then you've read this book ( )

Books such as Bernie Sanders “Where We Go from Here” (WW) present a real challenge to the reader reviewer. After all, these reviews are meant to be BOOK reviews, and are intended to reflect one’s opinion of the book – prose, structure, depth, readability, etc. Reader reviews are not meant to be vehicles for promoting the author’s political views, nor an opportunity to promote (or disparage) a book based on the reader’s political loyalties. It is understandable that it is difficult for a reader to score his favorite candidate’s book anything less than five stars, and the converse is also true. In the interest of “full” disclosure, I must alert all that I fall into the converse group. Nevertheless, I will make strong attempts to focus on the author’s book, and not on the candidate’s book. It won’t be easy.

WW is a slim book, 266 pages, 39 chapters. The first chapter is dated June 14, 2016 and is titled “Meeting with Hillary Clinton”. The last is August 25, 2018, “Where We Go from Here”. The book is presented as somewhat diary-like, and focuses on travels, meetings, and speeches. During each chapter Senator Sanders presents one or more elements of his progressive agenda. Many of these elements are repeated in subsequent chapters. There is an index, but it lists people names only, so you cannot look up “gun control” for example and find all the places in the book where gun control is mentioned. There are a number of pages that include filler material, e.g. lengthy verbatims from speeches, often preceded by “here is what I said” or words to that effect. Though I am not a Senator Sanders likely supporter, I am familiar to an extent with his agenda and I found these excerpts from stump speeches to be nothing new. There are also several clippings from newspapers, e.g. the local Wichita paper, perhaps favorably reporting on the turnout and some brief comments on what was said. Yet, in different sections in the book, the Senator took shots at “corporate” media, largely for not asking about subjects he wants to discuss, but rather focusing on their own agenda.

I don’t feel that I learned much new from WW, with perhaps one exception. On page 25, the Senator states. “47 million men, women, and children live in poverty”. I was stunned at the magnitude; I didn’t believe it, so I fact checked. Incredibly it’s true. Actually, reality is a worse picture than WW presents and I am surprised he didn’t take it to the next level. There are almost 100 million Americans living below, at or near the poverty level. I’m not sure what “poverty level” means, it’s not in the book, but I earmarked some articles for further reading. One last note - there is a lot in WW about income disparity. The Senator seems to focus on the billionaires and even millionaires a good bit – but they are not the problem. Duh, it’s poverty – changing tax structure is only one possible solution. (I don’t recall reading a lot about job training here and other possible solutions)

Readers may be wondering at this point why did I read WW if I was already familiar with Senator Sanders position on all these progressive issues. The simple answer is that I was hoping that WW would take things to the next level of detail; it didn’t. Progressives such as Senators Sanders and others have done a good job of identifying the wish list, perhaps fifteen to twenty things that need fixing; that is the easy part. Step two is detail definition. What do we mean exactly by “free college education”? And by the way who is going to pay for it. I understand that young people in the room are very excited about that, but older tax payers like myself understand there is no “free”. So, who pays? Me, the taxpayer? Don’t know, it is certainly not addressed in WW. And who is eligible? Everyone. Many voters, especially those without college-eligible kids, don’t realize that most scholarships are not totally free rides today – rather, they usually are a package of financing tools including loans and student employment, as well as meeting academic requirements. What skin the game will students with “Free” tuition have? Another brief, sketchy example - Medicare For All. Sounds great! Will it be the same Medicare as I have had for the past ten years? Probably not, since many projections suggest that we cannot even afford today’s Medicare for my lifetime. What will I have to give up? How will hospitals survive on (only) Medicare payments? Priorities is the third element of this implementation set, and WW does not include any prioritization at all. Which of the fifteen do we tackle first, then what’s next? Obviously we can’t do them all at once – not enough money, not enough manpower. So, what’s first, and who decides? What’s that old saying – the devil’s in the details? The details aren’t in WW.

There is a bit here about the author’s day job, Senate work. The picture I got was of someone from a small state, not totally affiliated with a major party, who is not what I would describe as a leader in the Senate. I don’t see a lot of influence, nor skills to get things done, nor did I see a long list of significant accomplishments in WW. What is clear in the book is how much the Senator enjoys getting out of DC and doing rallies, a few handshakes, chats, and then on to the next rally/protest. Reminded me a bit of the 60s protests when the protests themselves morphed into the ends.

I cannot recommend this book. It’s just too lite. Read a newspaper for a week and you’ll be all caught up on most of the issues and some of that reading will likely be more in-depth. ( )