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NY Times, March 7, 2020
A Sanders Voter, Weary of Debt at 29: ‘I Have Nothing to Lose’
By Sabrina Tavernise
MADISON, Wis. — Debt has dogged Brian Michelz his entire adult life.
It started with an ambulance ride when he was 18 and two hospital stays.
Then came college loans. By the time Mr. Michelz made it out into the
world, his credit score was so low he could not even get a credit card.
He has paid for everything he has ever bought — televisions, furniture,
cars — up front. After grocery shopping on Wednesday, his bank account
had three dollars in it.
Mr. Michelz, 29, has never worn a political T-shirt or been to a
campaign rally. But when he voted for the first time in his life, in the
primary of 2016, it was for Bernie Sanders.
“I wouldn’t say I’m on the left, or a liberal progressive,” Mr. Michelz
said in his apartment one morning last week, sitting next to his wife,
Sarah Michelz, who had just come home from her work as a nurse. “I feel
like Sanders understood — there’s too much medical debt and college
debt. I was like, ‘OK, he’s speaking the truth.’”
Mr. Sanders has staked his campaign on the promise that he can draw in
voters who have felt left out of politics — in particular the young and
the working class, especially in regions like the Midwest where
Democrats lost to Donald J. Trump in 2016.
Now, as the fight for the Democratic nomination approaches what could be
a final, critical stage with primaries in Michigan and Wisconsin, the
future of his candidacy rests on these voters and whether they will turn
out in larger numbers than they have so far. The Democratic Party also
faces a risk: Should Mr. Sanders lose the nomination, some of his
supporters — tired of being offered conventional solutions — could sit
out the general election, or vote for Mr. Trump or a third-party candidate.
For voters like Mr. Michelz (pronounced Michaels), Mr. Sanders has
inspired loyalty because he is the rare political leader who has both
diagnosed the source of their problems and tried to offer solutions. Mr.
Michelz is part of a generation scarred by the Great Recession. After
borrowing more money for their education than their parents did, many
are treading water in jobs that do not pay enough and delaying marriage
and children.
Mr. Sanders’s message has resonated deeply with these voters. In the
recent California primary, 47 percent of voters who said income
inequality was their most important issue picked Mr. Sanders. Just 13
percent voted for former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Mr. Michelz’s wife has debt, too, as do most of his friends. One is so
anxious about it that he takes medication. The only ones who do not have
debt come from families that can afford to help them.
Ms. Michelz, 30, borrowed around $100,000 for nursing school, and pays
$800 every month, a sum that is more than half their rent in the small,
tidy apartment on the southwestern edge of Madison. They both want
children, but Ms. Michelz thinks they should wait.
“I want to be slightly more comfortable financially,” she said, “to have
a little extra cushion.”
Mr. Michelz has heard the critiques of Mr. Sanders: He is unelectable.
He is radical. His programs cost too much. He knows the senator is not
perfect. But he likes his direction.
He plans on voting for Mr. Sanders in the Wisconsin primary next month.
But he is not sure what he will do in November if Mr. Sanders is not the
nominee.
Mr. Sanders is certainly a better choice than Mr. Biden, he said, who
looks like “an ordinary, run-of-the-mill politician,” who is influenced
by money and power in the same old ways.
“When I look at him, I don’t see real change or anything like that,” he
said.
Early Skepticism
Mr. Michelz grew up in a large house with a pond at the end of a long
driveway a few miles from Yale, a tiny town in rural Eastern Michigan
known for its annual bologna festival. His grandparents lived nearby and
owned an apple orchard. He spent summers clearing it of brush and weeds.
His grandfather was political — an avid Rush Limbaugh listener who
always voted Republican. But his parents, absorbed with their own
troubles, were not. His father, who worked on telephone lines, abused
his mother, sometimes violently. He could be loving, playing catch with
Mr. Michelz and his brother after work. But he could also be
frightening, once shoving Mr. Michelz across the living room when he
misbehaved. When Mr. Michelz was 13, his father killed himself.
The experience turned Mr. Michelz into a skeptical person who did not
trust easily. He developed a keen sense for when adults were being
sincere — and when they were not.
“I sought out anything that was real,” he said.
News and popular culture — and by extension politics — felt fake. One
day something was true, and the next day it was not. He remembers seeing
something on TV that said chocolate was bad for you. The next day there
was something that said it was good for you.
“It was like everything was for sale,” he said. “I always thought
reality TV shows were really embarrassing. News was lumped in with that.”
In 2008, the financial crisis tore through his family. His mother lost
their house that she had fought to keep after his father’s suicide, and
she and her two sons had to move in with Mr. Michelz’s grandparents.
That year, when Mr. Michelz was 18, he took a part-time job cleaning out
houses after they had been foreclosed on. He saw closets stuffed with
cherished possessions — photographs, prom dresses, watches — and threw
these things into dumpsters. Once, a man begged him to open the door so
he could retrieve his belongings.
It was a searing experience and the beginning of his political education.
“When I hear Bernie’s forgiving debt and people say, ‘It’s way too
expensive,’ I think, you did the craziest thing for the banks,” he said
of the bailouts. “Yet normal families were thrown in the street, literally.”
He continued: “The middle finger was given to our family, while the rich
guys got off scot-free.”
Finding Sanders
By 2012, Mr. Michelz was attending a small Lutheran college in
Minnesota. He started paying more attention to the news. He was spending
a lot of time online and started looking up things he had heard, like
the line from the protesters at Occupy Wall Street that the top 1
percent of Americans had more wealth than close to half of the rest of
the country.
“At first I thought it couldn’t be true,” he said. “It just didn’t make
sense.”
It was around this time he first saw Mr. Sanders — on his grandparents’
TV talking about health care. Mr. Michelz looked him up and saw that he
had been saying the same thing for years. He liked what he heard. He
thought about his $24,000 in medical debt and how arbitrary it seemed.
As for the economy, nothing made sense. He spent years in college
classes learning teaching, but ended up working in a tire store because
it paid better. He went to college, just like everybody said he should,
but is now working in a job that does not require a degree.
Mr. Sanders seemed to be telling him why his life looked and felt the
way it did. His financial instability was not some individual failure,
but a function of a broader economic system that had become so unequal
that fixing it was a moral calling.
What Mr. Sanders proposed “was creating the conditions to make people’s
lives less stressful,” he said.
And as for the arguments against Mr. Sanders — all these things he
wanted would cost too much and would cause economic chaos and people to
suffer — that was already happening, he thought. Domestic violence,
families breaking apart, children not getting the care they needed — the
common thread was the economic system.
The fact that Mr. Sanders was rejected by the establishment merely
proved his worth for Mr. Michelz.
“I knew it was OK to be hated by the mainstream,” he said.
So on March 8, 2016, he rode to the polling station in Yale with his
grandfather. Rush Limbaugh was on the radio. When they walked inside, he
voted for Mr. Sanders and his grandfather voted for Mr. Trump. It was
his first time voting, but he does not remember feeling much of anything.
“I just thought, I’m going to at least put my voice in a direction, even
if no one hears it,” he said.
Mr. Michelz never considered voting for Mr. Trump, finding him
unappealing and bothered by his stance on climate change. But he does
not hate him. Some of the people he loves most voted for him. He
understands why.
“The truth is, they are speaking to a frustrated America,” Mr. Michelz
said of political candidates. “That’s why someone who is as ridiculous
as Trump got elected. People wanted to see someone who wasn’t proper,
who wasn’t afraid of the establishment. He appealed to people who
thought it was all becoming a sham.”
He added: “It’s the same thing with Bernie.”
A few months later, Hillary Clinton became the Democratic nominee.
In November, he did not vote. Looking back, he does not regret it.
This November
Four years later, he has even more at stake.
Mr. Michelz is now married. After years of blocking out his ruined
credit score, he cares a lot about it. He still cannot get a loan, which
means leasing a new car is out of the question. He wants badly to buy
one with heated seats for Sarah. Instead they are stuck with their old
models. He recently poured $3,000 in bonuses from his job at the tire
shop into his car.
Sometimes Mr. Michelz worries about not providing enough for his family.
“I think about Sarah,” he said. “She’s around doctors every day. Does
she ever have a thought, ‘I could be with someone who makes way more
money?’ I know that’s irrational. On the one hand I’m bothered by it.
But on the other, I know I’m giving 110 percent.”
So, he tries to show her every day that he loves her. He often buys her
flowers. Last Thursday, a small vase in the kitchen held two carnations
and a rose.
All of this has brought him back to politics, which he now knows is the
thread that runs through many of these problems. This year he found that
he loved Andrew Yang.
“To me, he made Bernie seem outdated,” he said. When Mr. Yang dropped
out, “I was bummed, but I was happy, too. His message got out there.”
He feels wiser now. He no longer believes the American story that
everyone should be able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
“That’s a big lie that benefits the rich and keeps the system the same,”
he said.
He will still vote for Mr. Sanders, though he knows it is a long shot.
“Even if it doesn’t work, I’m going to throw my vote that way,” Mr.
Michelz said. “I have nothing to lose.”
Will he vote in November?
If he thought Mr. Sanders had been treated unfairly by the Democratic
Party establishment, “it’s possible I might just vote for Trump,” he said.
He sounded a bit sheepish.
“That might be immature, that might be bad,” he said. “But I guess I
still don’t view Trump as Hitler either.”
Even if Mr. Biden won against Mr. Trump, he said, millions of Americans
will still be in poverty, schools will still be underfunded, “all the
stuff they are blaming on Trump will still be there.”
But would he vote for Mr. Biden?
“You know, I don’t think I would,” he said. “Nothing against him as a
person. But my life probably wouldn’t change if he became president. I
don’t think other peoples’ would either. So, what’s the point?”
Amanda Cox contributed reporting from New York
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