NH-01: Oh dear lord. Levi Sanders, the 48-year-old son of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, just kicked off a bid for New Hampshire's open 1st Congressional District, and in a word … nope. For starters, Sanders doesn't live anywhere near the 1st: He lives in the small city of Claremont, on the Vermont border, while the district he's hoping to represent occupies the eastern portion of the state. Sure, in some places, this kind of carpetbagging might get greeted with a yawn, but not so in the Granite State. As longtime New Hampshire political analyst Dean Barker observes, it would be "like running for NYC mayor from Buffalo."
If that were all, we'd hardly care. But it's not, by a long shot. Sanders' recent social media postings, very helpfully curated by Barker, are just downright disturbing. He favorably retweeted a video by NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch defending Donald Trump, calling it a "very sophisticated message which taps into the anger and frustration so many feel in working class America"; he declared that former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe's order to remove the Confederate flag from state license plates "hurts peoples [sic] rights"; he linked to a piece headlined, "Let's Get Rid of the Term 'White Privilege'"; and he even declared, "There is nothing to say about Hillary except that she has no new ideas and is working closely with a spinster."
As for Sen. Sanders, well, he didn't exactly seem to endorse his child. The senator simply said, "Levi will be running his own campaign, in his own way, with his own ideas." Levi doesn't seem to agree that he's got his own ideas, though: He told Vice that, as between him and his pops, "The basic difference is that I'm a vegetarian and he's not." Well, there is one other distinction: Bernie Sanders has at least won elective office. Levi Sanders is not likely to join that club.