A vote for what?

HOW radical is Bernie Sanders? The self-declared socialist likes to remind voters that many of his policies—say, on health care, or on paid family leave—simply copy most of the rest of the rich world. Compared with left-wingers there—Jeremy Corbyn in Britain, for instance—Mr Sanders is no socialist. It is freewheeling America which puts Mr Sanders on the far-left. The truly socialist thing about Mr Sanders’s admirably detailed economic plan is not its goals. It is that it is completely unworkable.

Under President Sanders taxes, particularly on high earners, would soar. Mr Sanders wants to make public universities free, increase infrastructure spending and expand Social Security (pensions). His most ambitious policy calls for the government, rather than private insurers, to pay health-care bills. That would cost $14 trillion over a decade, requiring new taxes on most workers worth 8.4% of their income.