Righteousness vs. experience: Will Bernie or Hillary prevail?

Bernie Sanders is right — the system is rigged.

After seeing the film “The Big Short,” about Wall Street corruption and the economic meltdown of 2008, I believe it.

I’d long viewed Sanders’ bewailing of a “rigged economy” as a simplistic cattle call for the far left who’ve always worked against the grain.

Their ilk, after all, brought us Ralph Nader in 2000, resulting in G.W. Bush grifting into the presidency and breaking the world.

Let’s not do that again — ever. Please.

The far left thought it was bucking convention in 2008 with Barack Obama, promising change that never materialized where, arguably, it mattered most: Wall Street.

True, Obama delivered health care reform. He rescued the American auto industry, patched up a busted economy, stanched the bleeding, put people back to work.

He accomplished this despite obdurate hostility from the opposing party not seen since the Civil War, triggering a Republican meltdown conservative columnist David Brooks describes as the “pornography of pessimism.”

But even with his successes, Obama’s legacy of inspiration and optimism is tinged with disappointment. He never avenged the treacheries of Wall Street, whose jackals made off with billions in taxpayer-funded bailouts while not one CEO went to jail.

So it’s no wonder Sanders surges on the left. Millions of Americans squeezed out of the middle class want what Obama didn’t deliver: A fighting chance to compete in an economy stacked against them by Wall Street greed and a complicit government.

Sanders’ promise to strip the rich of their tax dodges and use the spoils to pay for universal Medicare and free college tuition is intoxicating to the left, a potent populist appeal.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton plods, working the edges of Wall Street reform, suggesting nuanced regulation as opposed to Sanders’ scorched-earth breakup of too-big-to-fail banks.

As Sanders rages against corruption, Clinton loses ground by failing to capitalize on her party base’s passions with bold, explicable solutions.

I’ll admit, I’ve wanted to see a woman of Clinton’s caliber become president for years. She’s our Maggie Thatcher — an experienced, knowledgeable, world-respected leader who’d handle with aplomb the reactionary rightists, the Putins, sheiks, despots, rascals and assorted misogynistic knuckle-draggers of the world.

She’d well represent the USA, where men and women are equal, all faiths are respected and government is ruled by democracy and law, not religion and guns. I’d be as proud to see a woman like her elected president as I was to see our first African-American voted into the White House.

But is she The One? Can we trust her? If not her — now — then who? When? Will this chance ever happen again?

Conversely, is Sanders a safe bet? Can he deliver on his grand economic promises with a recalcitrant Congress that will never cooperate? Would Middle America ever vote for a 74-year-old, self-styled “democratic socialist”? So many doubts.

What to do? It’s the left’s dilemma — one that could make its way to the California primary in June.

After seeing “The Big Short,” I believe what Sanders says about our nation’s economic and political system: It’s rigged — maybe beyond redemption.

“The Big Short” is an eye-opening examination of the fraud that permeated our nation’s financial system not a decade ago. Most worrisome — there’s no change in the incestuous relationship between lickspittle legislators, bootlicking regulators and the unrepentant regulated. Unless that house is cleaned, we well may repeat the catastrophe of 2008.

The movie exposes what we’ve long suspected: The titans of Wall Street believe our money is theirs. They care little for our country. Their god is green. Their religion is gluttony and greed.

The electoral system is just as rigged. Republicans have so gerrymandered congressional district boundaries that “majority rule” is an anachronism. Chances of Sanders or Clinton coattails flipping the House of Representatives are about zero.

Democrats received a million more House votes nationally in 2012, yet Republicans rule. In Ohio, for example, Obama carried the state’s popular vote, but Republicans captured 12 of the 16 congressional districts. The same pattern held in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, Virginia and elsewhere.

While some states such as California draw boundaries using nonpartisan commissions, most rely on old-fashioned corruption — suppressing minority voting rights, purging voter rolls and requiring voter ID where no vote fraud exists.

Clinton has better presidential qualifications than Sanders. But Sanders is speaking truth and righteousness.

The left must figure out who can actually fix our rigged system, or risk another Republican breaking the world — again.

This story was originally published February 13, 2016 at 5:12 PM with the headline "Righteousness vs. experience: Will Bernie or Hillary prevail?."