You can’t make this stuff up. You just can’t.
Nicolás Maduro, socialist president of the failed state of Venezuela, a nation which recently introduced a five-day weekend in order to deal with energy shortages, endorsed Vermont senator and self-proclaimed “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders for U.S. president on Tuesday. Oh, and Maduro added that Sanders would win if the vote were “free.”
“Bernie Sanders, our revolutionary friend, ought to win in the United States,” Maduro said in a long televised broadcast. Nay, the socialist president went one step further — “if the elections were free … Bernie Sanders would be president of the United States.” Um, the election isn’t until November…
Sanders has been mathematically eliminated from winning the Democratic nomination for president, but he is fighting on until the convention in July. If Sanders wins California next week, he will continue to argue that the Democratic Party’s superdelegates should only vote for the winner of their states — an argument that would void their overwhelming allegiance to Hillary Clinton. This is unlikely to fly, but the whole episode should make for some great television.
Maduro, who looks at former president Hugo Chavez as a mentor, might be surprised to hear Bernie doesn’t share the same opinion. In an email to supporters in September, the Vermont senator called Chavez a “dead communist dictator.”
Sanders calls for a “Revolution,” but Venezuela already had its revolution. After a succession of corrupt and incompetent governments, the people turned to a Marxist named Hugo Chavez. Rather than turning around the corruption, it supercharged it, and ran inflation through the roof.
Next Page: How far has Venezuela fallen?
People line up outside a supermarket in Caracas, Venezuela, to buy price regulated toilet paper made available for sale by the government, Friday, Jan. 22, 2016. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)
Chavez controlled prices, gave Cuba huge amounts of aid, and borrowed billions from China, all the while destroying the ability of businesses in his country to operate. He taxed companies into the ground, and the chickens eventually came home to roost. Now, there are shortages of everything and the company is on the verge of collapse.
As noted above, electricity shortages have forced public employees to work only two days a week. People are wandering the streets in search of food, and even getting running water has become problematic. There isn’t even enough money to print debased money. Inflation is expected to run between 600 and 700 percent this year. Oh, and there’s the toilet paper.
The power shortage has impeded Venezuela’s ability to pump oil, the natural resource that made the country rich between the 1950s and the 1980s.
This is where unchecked socialism gets us — destruction. But don’t take my word for it, take the experience of Venezuela. With Maduro now “Feeling the Bern,” the Sandersistas might take a look at what’s going on in South America. I think they’d find it rather revealing.
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