The Bernie Sanders story is about two things:
1) His authenticity in contrast to the phoniness of the Clintons. In other words, the guy is real and speaks from the heart. He does not need a consultant to tell him to be more genuine.
2) He is telling many Democrats what they want to hear. Forgive me for saying it, but this is not your dad's or grandpa's Democratic Party. Hard to think that JFK, Humphrey, or Scoop Jackson would be cheering at a Sanders rally.
Once upon a time, a man like Sanders would have enjoyed little success as a Democrat. No way he'd be leading in polls. He would have been ridiculed by the party's mainstream as a lunatic, a lefty, a "pinko," unelectable.
That was then and this is now, as our friends at IBD tell us:
This summer, MSNBC's "Hardball" host Chris Matthews took Debbie Wasserman Schultz by surprise when he asked her: "What is the difference between a Democrat and a socialist."
For the head of the Democratic Party, that should be an easy enough question to answer. But she didn't. So Matthews asked again, and again, to no avail. Instead, Wasserman Schultz blathered on about how the GOP is captive to its extreme right.
A few weeks later, Chuck Todd tried to get her to answer the question on "Meet the Press." Again she refused. Asked a third time at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast for reporters, Wasserman Schultz replied: "I'll give you the same answer that I gave both of them." And then proceeded not to answer the question.
This isn't a game of gotcha. It's a legitimate question that deserves a straight answer. After all, self-described socialist Bernie Sanders is beating Hillary Clinton in some state polls for the Democratic Party nomination.
The reason Wasserman Schultz won't answer the question is because Democrats have moved so far to the left that there isn't a dime's worth of difference between the two anymore.
That's right. There is no real difference, and that is not a good path to national election for the Democrats.
President Clinton tried to move the party to the center. He worked with the GOP to pass welfare reform and signed free trade agreements like NAFTA. Clinton understood that the party had gone too far to the left and was losing the middle class.
Perhaps V.P. Biden can put the party back in the middle. At the same time, how can he please the Sanders vote if he does that?
Not long ago, the left mocked the GOP as the party of old guys clinging to their guns and the 10th Amendment.
It looks like the Democrats are the party of old guys (and ladies) clinging to the Great Society and their Woodstock LPs.
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