Bernie Sanders’s plan for free college remains wildly popular amongst his supporters, but policy wonks and journalists have turned against it.
Economists of all stripes think it’s a bad policy, others point to the historical failures of free college, and an NPR analysis was skeptical it could work. Now, Cosmopolitan found the Sanders proposal lacking in economic literacy and benefits rich students the most.
Political intransigence might save the higher education system from a Sanders reform. “This may be a moot point if the plan stalls in Congress,”Prachi Gupta wrote for Cosmopolitan.
The Sanders camp has dismissed claims that its plan is “financially unrealistic.” In one sense, they have to. Bernie Sanders, in his speeches and his Twitter account, does not present himself as a policy wonk. He does not style himself as Paul Ryan does. Bernie is aspirational, tweeting truisms that plays to his voter base who want a political revolution.
His campaign wouldn’t do as well if he proposed policy reforms, anyway. Sanders tells his supporters that “it’s important to remember that we not only have massive wealth and income inequality, but a power structure which protects that inequality.”
Power structures don’t change when candidates propose slight modification that’s politically possible in Congress. In a perverse way, that benefits Bernie. He’d be hard-pressed to beat Hillary Clinton at pragmatic policy proposals – part of her appeal is her ability to compromise and make deals. The best way for Sanders to campaign, then, is to amass support through generalizations and theoretical, inoffensive soundbites. After he wins voters with fanciful ideas about free college and a political revolution, he can find policymakers who will get him close to his goals.
So maybe his policy proposals aren’t so concerning. The bigger problem is Sanders’s disinterest in listening to critics. If he listens to advisers who agree with him and don’t correct him, bad policy results. If he’s developing “a future to believe in” through his political revolution, then the naysayers are shills who have been corrupted by the current system. It’s a convenient dichotomy during a campaign, but it’s not a way to develop strong policy.
