The Washington Post's editorial board observes what an army of commentators has already observed: that Bernie Sanders' free college and student-debt cancellation proposals are "a formula for a massive upward redistribution of the nation’s limited resources."
It's well-nigh impossible to dispute WaPo's assessment. "The top 25 percent [in earnings] owe 34 percent of the money," writes the board. "People with graduate and professional degrees — usually high earners — accounted for 26 percent of borrowers but 48 percent of debt." Furthermore, the Urban Institute, notes the Post, estimates that "less than 8 percent of the benefit would go to those with household incomes of less than $35,000 a year."
Thus Sanders the democratic socialist is, ironically, catering to America's well off. "In short," says the Post, he "is running on a plan to bail out doctors, lawyers and their children to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars."
The Post also argues that those hundreds of billions in government spending would come at the cost ($2.4 trillion, in fact) of, for example, poor children's pre-K schooling or higher-education financial assistance for the disadvantaged only. In economics this is known as an "opportunity cost" — an unfavorable one, as the Post and many others see it, although that particular cost comes attached to every legislative spending proposal.
The political question is, Why did Sanders double down on education spending with his debt-relief plan — and thus go too far? The answer is: He was drowning in Democrats' progressive pool of proposals, most notably Elizabeth Warren's, and needed to somehow re-shine.
Related to that is this: The cause of Sanders' political undoing is another irony that doomed the Populist Party of the late 19th century: success.
For years the populists tub-thumped for progressive measures: among them, railroad regulation, a graduated income tax, and the direct election of U.S. Senators, rather than by state legislatures. Its reforms were indeed popular enough that both the Republicans' T.R. wing and Democrats' W. Wilson wing assumed the essential priorities of the Populist Party, which killed it.
Historically, such has been the function of third parties: They propose innovative ideas, the ideas become electorally popular, one (or both) of the two major parties then incorporates the ideas into its platform, and consequently the third, innovative party loses its distinctness — and dies.
That, in large part, is what Independent Sen. Sanders has done for democratic socialism, as an informal third party. He successfully has moved the party of Jefferson and Jackson to the left, and in the process, suffocated democratic socialism as a distinct movement.
Even though the Vermont senator's various proposals have a chance of congressional passage roughly equal to that of Trump's thorough reading of War and Peace, liberal Democrats should at least be thankful to Sanders for having broadened their party's ambitions, with all due politically appropriate modifications.
Idealistic third parties serve the salubrious purpose of enhancing major parties' principles and thereby invigorating their bases. Rather substantially, Warren has been possible because of her 2016 progressive predecessor. Sanders warmed up the left, and Warren is smartly exploiting his labors. (As for her being a "capitalist" and him being a "socialist"? Remember, even democratic socialists are in favor of market economies.)
As long as the Dems sell their progressive products as mainstream thinking, as an outgrowth of traditional America, their leftward thrusts and parries should be of benefit. Any outright "socialist" move, however, would bury them at the demonic hands of Donald J. Trump & Co.