It was a pleasure to Bern

Bernie Sanders is a literary genius. His platform is all magical realism; suspension of disbelief is a prerequisite to understand the stuff. For every proposed increase in spending, there's a deus ex machina tax increase. Verisimilitude is not Sanders' strong suit.

Sanders' work has inspired an entirely new genre of economic fiction. Earlier this month, one economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst released a report predicting that the full implementation of Sanders' economic platform would increase median household income by $20,000, more than halve the poverty rate to 6 percent, fuel economic growth of more than 5 percent annually and even turn the federal budget deficit into a surplus by a second Sanders presidential term. The Sanders campaign enthusiastically embraced this analysis and passed its predictions off as fact.

Economists squarely on the left—including former Obama advisors Christina Romer and Austan Goolsbee, as well as Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman—have roundly criticized the UMass report for poor analysis and overly optimistic assumptions. As Krugman wrote in last week's “New York Times,” "Sorry, but there’s just no way to justify this stuff. For wonks like me, it is, frankly, horrifying."

Echoing the sentiment, Goolsbee, referencing an earlier put-down of Sanders' economic agenda as "puppies and rainbows," joked last week that those cuddly creatures had since "evolved into magic flying puppies with winning Lotto tickets tied to their collars." Goolsbee and Romer, both architects of President Obama's 2009 economic stimulus plan, possess impeccably progressive credentials. Krugman's columns routinely criticize Republican economic policies. These economists are not motivated by any particular animus toward Sanders or any favoritism for Clinton, but they are instead motivated out of concern for how one rogue economist's projections could harm the credibility of their profession.

Here are the facts: Sanders' economic agenda would increase federal government spending by more than 50 percent, the single largest peacetime expansion of government in recent American history. One study from a respected Emory University economist argues that, under Sanders' "Medicare for All" plan, 70 percent of those currently covered by private insurance policies would actually pay more.

Sanders' plan for free college tuition, far from being progressive, would largely benefit wealthy families who are currently paying full-freight at public universities. "The cost of this $75 billion a year plan," Sanders' website reads, "is fully paid for by imposing a tax of a fraction of a percent on Wall Street speculators who nearly destroyed the economy seven years ago." Class warfare rhetoric aside, Sanders' proposed financial transactions tax—to call it by its proper name—would not only affect finance-sector employees ("Wall Street speculators") but anyone who commissions trades on the financial markets, including unionized public-sector employees whose retirement funds invest in stocks and mutual funds. While imposing a financial transaction tax would not be disastrous for the economy, it is misleading to call it a tax on "Wall Street speculation" when it would affect all investors. After all, how can a tax discern a trader's speculative intentions?

This is not to say that Sanders is somehow especially naïve or dishonest. Sanders' political positions have remained remarkably consistent over his 25 years in Congress and his frank style is refreshing in an era of poll-tested soundbites. But to suggest that he is somehow uniquely honest or trustworthy—the myth of the "authentic Bernie"—is ludicrous as well. His platform demonstrates a tendency common to politicians, especially to those contending for the highest office in the land: a propensity to promise more than he could possibly deliver for far less than it would actually cost. Sanders is not special. By distorting the costs of his plans, by bending the truth to win votes, he’s merely behaving like any other politician.

One aspect of Sanders' campaign is beyond all doubt: his commitment to socialism. The Sanders of 1977 produced a glowing 30-minute documentary on socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs (an inspiration, no doubt). The Sanders of 1988 embarked on a self-described "honeymoon" to the Soviet Union (the gulag didn't seem to trouble his conscience). Until his declaration of candidacy last year, Sanders wasn't even a registered Democrat; he served as an independent Senator from Vermont and described his orientation as "democratic socialist." In this sense, Sanders is the most static character in American politics. His socialist worldview has little changed over his decades in public office, while over the same time period real-world experiments have demonstrated why socialism is a failed idea whose time has come and gone.