I take pleasure in answering thus prominently the e-communication below, expressing at the same time my great gratification that its hopeful author is numbered among the friends of The Huffington Post:
Dear Travis--
I am 18 years old. Some of my college friends say there is no way that Bernie Sanders can be president. My professor says, "If you see it in The Huffington Post, it's so." Please tell me the truth, is there a chance that Bernie Sanders can win?
Virginia O'Handlin
A Liberal Arts College in the Midwest
Virginia, your college friends are wrong. They have been affected by the apathy of an apathetic age. They do not believe except what they see on reality TV. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their tiny minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be baby boomers' or millennials', can be tiny. In this great country of ours, a voter is a mere dummy, a gullible follower, in their intellect as compared with the rest of the world about us, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge. Just look at Donald Trump's supporters.
Yes, Virginia, there is a chance Bernie Sanders can win. He can as certainly as equality and humanity and democracy exist, and you know that those things abound and give to Americans their greatest freedom and pride. Alas! how dreary would be the 2016 election if there were no Bernie Sanders! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias, and we all know how important those swing states are. There would be no progressive hope then, no populism, no righteousness to make tolerable this electorate.
We would have no equality, except in theory and on paper. The eternal rights with which progressives fill our country would be extinguished.
Not believe in Bernie Sanders' chances! You might as well not believe in democracy. You might get your professor to hire pollsters to poll all the likely voters on the night before the election to doubt Bernie Sanders, but even if you did see Bernie Sanders coming down in the polls, what would that prove? Nobody knows Bernie Sanders' actual numbers, but that is no sign that there is no chance for Bernie Sanders to win. The most real things in our country are those that neither college students nor professors can see. Did you ever see 1 percenters buying off politicians on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not doing it. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the bad things (or good things) that are unseen and unseeable in the world of politics.
You tear apart Hillary Clinton's campaign and see what determines the decisions inside, but there is a veil covering the political establishment which not the strongest progressives, nor even the united strength of all the strongest progressives that ever lived could tear apart. Only truth, populism, good journalism, grassroots efforts, can push aside that curtain and reveal the true power holders of the DNC and Wall Street and our federal government and show the evil nature of our corrupt political system and the money behind it. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this political world there is nothing else as real and abiding, unless the masses rise up and do something about it.
No Bernie Sanders! Thank God! His causes live and live forever. A thousand elections from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 elections from now, he will continue to make hopeful the hearts of the middle class.
May we all feel the Bern this holiday season.
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Based on "Is There a Santa Claus?" first published in the September 21, 1897 edition of The New York Sun.