Sanders On Bloomberg Run: Americans Don't Want To See Us Move Toward An Oligarchy - Well Bernie, Maybe Some Americans Do

If this were the premise for a novel, it would be criticized as unrealistic: two of the three candidates running for president of the United States of America are billionaires. You're just tailoring the premise, some would say, to support your contention that the U.S. is not in fact a country run according to democratic principles of government, but an oligarchy. 

Perception is reality, and the PBS Newshour segment above illustrates the common perception of how income is distributed in America, and therefore how socially mobile our society is. The 400 wealthiest individuals on the Forbes 400 list have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans. But the test developed by the behavioral economist +Dan Ariely reveals that most Americans think they live in a society whose wealth distribution is in fact the distribution of wealth in Sweden, not the United States. 

  

I'm a cynical person, so I don't buy the idea that all Americans are opposed to, but unaware of, how unequal wealth is distributed in this country. Some Americans are comfortable with an unequal distribution of wealth, meaning, this isn't an issue that concerns them. This group of Americans, I believe, is not sensitive, in any way, to ideas related to the distribution of wealth in the broader society. They are only sensitive to their perception of their individual wealth. They want to feel wealthy. Period. I do not believe this group of Americans is ideological. I believe their patriotism lies in the assumption that Americans are people like them. For these people, our government doesn't have anything to do with that notion of America, therefore the details regarding its governance are not related to their believing they live in a thriving democracy. The land of the free. A place where the dream of living a prosperous life is available to anyone willing to work hard.  

+Gabriel Sherman, National Affairs Editor for New York Magazine wrote a piece that will be published on Wednesday (1/27/16) titled The Strongest Candidate is The Strongest Candidate. From his interviews, Sherman concluded Trump supporters are not ideological, but they are drawn to a certain kind of confidence. 

"The main theme that emerged from all of these in depth conversations, these were really deep conversations where we wanted to understand these voters as people ,and what they said is that they wanted someone strong. It's not a set of policy per se, they want someone who can take care of them, some one who knows what they want, and Trump obviously communicates that." In the piece he wrote "Issues didn't really seem to be the point. It was common to hear voters say they could choose any o the candidates across the ideological spectrum."

Two Trump supporters interviewed by a +MSNBC reporter in Sioux Center, Iowa responded this way when asked about their support of a Billionaire:

Terry Baker 

"People who with their own money can do what the people want, and not what the heads of the parties want"

Bobby Anderson 

"I think people are starting to realize that success isn't necessarily a bad thing. You see a lot of times people say 'oh he's a billionaire' and they act like that's a negative term. But if someone's rich that means that they're successful, and we need that kind of thinking for the country to make us successful too."

New York Magazine editor Gabriel Sherman, discusses interviewing a hundred GOP primary voters, and details how Michael Bloomberg could chip away at Donald Trump’s supporter base.

Senator Sanders is clearly correct that some Americans do not want to live in an oligarchy. My question, how many Americans feel that way?