Bernie, Bernie, Bernie...

[delisen]

37. Bernie decided to be the Ralph Nader of 2016. There have been consequences.

The Nader revolt against the "establishment" and the Sanders revolt against the "establishment." Every so many election cycles we relearn the harsh lesson: There is a difference between the two parties.

Clinton connected with enough men and women to win an election by almost 3 million votes.

Bernie Sanders is a big boy. He does not seem to feel harassed. He played hardball politics, heeded some good and he did some damage. He doesn't seem to be worrying about the damage and seems comfortable working within the confines of the new illegitimate government. He is a reformer and that is OK.

I find his vision narrow-and in the tradition of that Democratic Party mistake of 2004 -John Edwards. (Sanders being more ethical however). I myself am not a true believer in any political leader. I think true believers damage Democracy which requires reasoning and judgement in an electorate.

Democracy is under attack in a way it has not been since World War II. We had a gutsy Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who publicly denounced the new authoritarianism in Russia and stood up for free elections. She has paid a political price. Maybe she should have kept her mouth shut, played it safe, ignored human rights, figuring few of us would care anyway, worked out oil deals with Putin.

I suspect Putin would have preferred to hack an election for a pragmatically evil but well-organized person rather than the unpredictable Trump-but we will never know.