Let the rumor-mill rumors turn into rip-roaring reality ...
Bernie Sanders Is Serious About Running for President
by Josh Eidelson, businessweek.com -- November 11, 2014
Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders has lined up veteran Democratic campaign strategist Tad Devine for a prospective 2016 presidential campaign, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday morning. “I believe he could deliver an enormously powerful message the country is waiting to hear right now and do it in a way that succeeds,” Devine, a former senior adviser to the Kerry-Edwards and Gore-Lieberman campaigns, told the Post’s Robert Costa.
Tapping Devine is the latest sign that Sanders is serious about exploring a run, and not averse to the attention that comes with being seen as a presidential contender. [...]
“I don’t wake up every morning with a huge desire to be President of the United States,” Sanders told me last year. “But what I do wake up believing is that this country is facing more serious crises than we have faced since the Great Depression.” Among them, he said, are deepening income and wealth inequality, persistent mass unemployment, and looming environmental catastrophe. “The nature of media is that presidential campaigns and candidates are a means, to some degree at least, of getting these issues out there,” Sanders said. While “you can give all the speeches you want on the floor of the Senate,” he added, being on the campaign trail and on the debate stage “gives you the opportunity to talk about these issues in a way that you otherwise could not.” Announcing a high-profile hire doesn’t hurt, either, whether or not Sanders actually takes the plunge.
And here's a little something here for the Sanders Nay-sayers ...
Why a Bernie Sanders presidential candidacy is good for Democrats — and for Hillary Clinton
by Paul Waldman, washingtonpost.com -- November 11, 2014
[...]
Sanders says he’ll center his campaign on economic inequality and the struggles of the middle class, and this is what Clinton needs to address as well. [...]
[...] If by focusing on the economy Sanders forces Clinton to articulate that story and support it with a specific agenda that she could implement if she wins, he will have done her a great service.
Of course, he’d say he isn’t running to do Hillary Clinton any favors. But the reality is that he would. By critiquing her from the left, he could pull her in his direction in order to satisfy primary voters, which on many issues would wind up being to her advantage. At the same time, the broader message their debates would communicate to the general electorate is that she’s a moderate. When Republicans try to argue that she’s some wild-eyed Alinskyite radical bent on turning America socialist (just as they did with Obama), she can say, “I ran against an actual socialist in the primaries, and it’s pretty obvious we aren’t the same person.”
A strong Sanders candidacy will do something else: make liberal Democrats feel that their opinions and their concerns are getting a fair hearing in the 2016 process. [...]
I for one would welcome a Sanders candidacy. Not only could he help the Democrats re-find their collective voice, he could put
Populism squarely in the middle of the Electoral Map ...
(and take it back from the Tea Party.)
What do you think about Bernie Sanders taking such a 'non-conventional' primary stand?