A few thoughts on Bernie Sanders

As anyone who reads this space knows, I rarely if ever write to excoriate Senator Bernie Sanders. It's just not my bag. I have other fish to fry, and other sayings.

But his behavior, and that of his minions, the past few days has been on another order of magnitude.

First there was the New York Times interview where he proudly stated, in effect, that he's an asshole. But he's an asshole because he's laser-focused on the working class! This is why in the thirty years he's served in Congress he's never gotten anything accomplished. Members of Congress are human beings. They, *shock*, like it when someone remembers their birthday, or says "hello", or they get asked how their spouse is. This isn't glad-handing, as Sanders calls it; it's human interaction, the kind of human interaction which greases society. When a person thinks that wishing someone a happy birthday is somehow compromising their principles, this person isn't fit to be in a position of leadership. Someone who has an admittedly radical agenda to move would have served himself well by dripping honey to his colleagues; but Sanders is so monomaniacal that such niceties are beyond him. The righteousness of his cause should be enough to convince the benighted, and that's all he's going to do. The fact is that Sanders is an awful politician, with only a few renamed post offices to mark his time in Congress.

Then there was the hit job on Joe Biden penned by Bernie acolyte Zephyr Teachout, she of the Dungeons and Dragons character name and multiple failed candidacies. Appropriating Trumpian tropes to attack Biden is just the kind of thing Sanders did in 2016 against Hillary Clinton. The Biden camp takes it as a given that it needs to go scorched earth on Biden, because try as the other candidates might, no one can make a dent in his numbers. The latest polling shows him winning Iowa and coming in a close second or winning New Hampshire. Losing either of both of those states won't hurt Biden; but losing either or both of those states will be a death knell for Sanders. So out come his flying monkeys. Reporters, to their credit, hounded the Sanders campaign for this article; the spokesperson huffily asked when has Sanders personally attacked Biden. Well, there's this, for starters. But the Sanders MO is to have surrogates attack his opponents, while he tries to stay above the fray. (Sanders has apologized to Biden for the accusations of corruption. Even Bernie knew that was an attack too far.)

The fact is that Sanders is a coward. He, much like Trump, gets others to do his dirty work for him. He's cocooned in his virtue, refusing to descend into the messy world of politics. He fails because no one is as enlightened as he is; if he tried to actually try to enact his vision, he'd risk rejection, and he doesn't have the stomach for that. He's fine with no one liking him, because that way he doesn't have to risk anything. Living a life without risk is the mark of a coward. We already have one in the White House. We don't need him replaced with another one.