Possibly a Good Politician

Why is it always the intelligent people who are socialists?
Alan Bennett, playwright

This is a politician I could truly get behind and support. I don’t know if I would like all his politics, but he does seem like the antidote for the government we currently have in office. The Associated Press reported this story:

The government that we have today in the White House, the House of Representatives with Tom Delay, the Senate with Bill Frist, is the most right-wing, extremist government, perhaps in the history of the United States," he tells labor activists at a May Day celebration in the century-old Labor Hall.

"Time after time they pass legislation that benefits the rich and the powerful, and they pass legislation that hurts the middle class, working people and low income people."

The crowd roars. They have come to hear this unlikely man who is likely to be the next U.S. senator from the Green Mountain State, and they love what they hear. This is Bernie Sanders at his best: one part revivalist preaching, two parts theater, all served up with a biting sarcasm.

It is vintage Bernie - literally. The words and the message have not changed in more than 30 years. Millions of times, he has decried - in a strong Brooklyn accent - what he sees as an outrageous, growing gap between the rich and the poor.

For half of those years, though, Sanders has been part of the Washington he loves to attack.

In his eighth term in the U.S. House, the independent socialist has carved out a career in Congress as a Congress-basher. Now he is setting his sights on the Senate, and everyone agrees he is the man to beat for the seat now held by the retiring Jim Jeffords.