A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.

30 April 2015

Bernie Sanders announces he's running for President

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Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) announced today that he’s running for President as a Democrat. At 73, he’s six years older than Hillary Clinton, but he’s not the old fogey on policy that she is. He supports a single-payer health care system, while she was the principal architect of the awful Hillarycare proposal that emerged and died during her husband’s Presidency.

Sanders’ candidacy begins a long overdue policy debate in the Democratic Party. He’s a genuine liberal who will expose Clinton as the opportunistic centrist that she’s always been and always will be. Paradoxically, that will help protect her from accusations that she’s a wild-eyed redistributionist who will take Harry and Louise’s hard earned money and give it to black welfare bums.

Former Democratic Governor of Maryland Martin O’Malley, 51, is expected to announce his candidacy for President sometime this spring. He’s more liberal than Clinton but more conservative than Sanders. He also served eight years as mayor of Baltimore, leaving what some say is a legacy of too aggressive policing, which is why he just published a long essay in the Huffington Post.

Clinton’s camp will say it welcomes the competition. But privately it won’t. Hillary Clinton isn’t rusty and doesn’t need a tune-up primary. She’s the same candidate she’s always been and always will be — politically tone deaf, unpleasant, and overweeningly ambitious. All she can do in a primary is spend money and make mistakes.