Where was Bernie today?

[JCanete]

72. Because he has been advocating for things that nobody else was on board with or willing to entertain

You might want to consider that his relatively low legislative achievement according to your metric of success had had to do with that reality. He may have determined that using his vote as leverage to affect legislation, he was more effective than writing bills that would die without ever seeing the light of day.

He used his role to be a thorn in the side of the wheeling and dealing, and to speak truth to power, and I think, given that they certainly weren't going to help him do more than that, he used his position as effectively as it could have been used.

What cosponsorship could he have gotten on bills about the money? To think that all legislation and ideology is equal in Washington and that all Bills are capable there in the inner sanctum, without outside pressure clamoring at the gates, is truly living in Pollyanna land.

BUT, who fucking cares. I'm not actually interested into trying to defend Sanders at every turn. What I like about him, and would still like about him more than the rest of the field, if he himself even had seriously complicated baggage, is that he has really been the only one to talk about the money affecting not just our elections but our policies, and that he has been able to get that message heard. I would still prefer him because he is talking about social improvements to our system that aren't middling, but are dramatic, and have become possible just by getting them into the national discourse. Hey lookie over there! New York just adopted free college for people making under 125 thousand.