There was a diary earlier today asking Bernie Sanders supporters to provide some positive talking points: An HONEST Question For Thoughtful Supporters of Bernie Sanders: Your POSITIVE Talking Points? . This was a welcome request, and I wish that it had attracted more attention before it slid off the recent posts. I prepared a list of points in which I attempted to present positive facts about Bernie without mentioning his willingness to attack a corrupt campaign finance system, a rigged economy, and a failed criminal justice system. What resulted were some perfectly reassuring indications of normality in Sanders the Candidate, presented as apolitically as possible.
I take the liberty of re-posting my response here, since I think it helps show another side of the Bernie Sanders appeal, to voters who are concerned about traditional criteria for selecting our President :
Bernie Sanders has prior executive experience as Mayor of Burlington, VT., a smallish city, but he left it better run than when he entered office;
Bernie Sanders has served in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, is personally well liked by his colleagues from both parties, and has actively participated in drafting and passing essential Democratic legislative initiatives, including the Affordable Care Act, which he helped to write;
Bernie has shown unparalleled political skill in winning election to successively higher office as an Independent, and by the large margin of his victories in his recent state-wide campaigns;
Bernie has consistently critiqued the conventional interventionist foreign policy, domestic economic and criminal justice policies, and trade policies of both Republican and Democratic administrations where he foresaw the harm that would result to the American people;
Bernie Sanders is Honest, Humane, Diligent & Intelligent;
All of Bernie’s economic proposals are consistently supported by majorities of the American people in surveys;
If not now, when?