Barney Frank has an opinion piece in today's Politico which pretty firmly states why he thinks progressives should stand with Hillary Clinton as opposed to Bernie Sanders.
The full title of the piece is Why Progressives Shouldn’t Support Bernie:
Wishful thinking won’t win the White House.
Frank outlines a variety of reasons which range from pure electoral strategy to a listing of what he sees as Clinton's longstanding progressive bona fides. He also mentions his disagreement with her on Iraq.
What I found most interesting was Frank's barely veiled annoyance at Sanders for his career-long refusal to be part of the Democratic Party:
Decades ago, Sanders made a principled choice to play a valuable part in our politics — the outsider within the system. He defied the uniquely American aversion to the word “socialism.” We are, after all, the only Western democracy in which no self-identified socialist party has ever played a significant governmental role. While voting with the Democrats to organize first the House and then the Senate, he made clear he did so as a regrettable necessity, not a preference, and cited his nonmembership in the party as an indication of his political integrity. Substantively, he has consistently, forcefully and cogently made the case for a larger federal government role in improving both the fairness and the quality of life in our country, refusing to soft-pedal in the face of declining support for this view in public opinion.
His very unwillingness to be confined by existing voter attitudes, as part of a long-term strategy to change them, is both a very valuable contribution to the democratic dialogue and an obvious bar to winning support from the majority of these very voters in the near term.
An endorsement, pro or con, from Barney Frank is probably not going to make any difference to anyone, but I wasn't surprised that Sanders' unwillingness to be part of the Democratic Party is not sitting well with some of the party stalwarts.