Josh Kraushaar of the National Journal has
stepped up the criticism of Sen. Bernie Sanders, suggesting that he is
essentially creating a tea party-style lefty insurgency within the Democratic
Party.
Though the Vermont senator is performing surprisingly
well in some Democratic primary polls and has drawn huge crowds in New
Hampshire and Iowa, Kraushaar views Sanders as little more than a dangerous distraction in Hillary Clinton’s march to the party’s nomination.
He is not a pure liberal, he is “further left than that,”
a candidate who believes he can lead a political revolution, according to the
NJ columnist.
perspective:
“In the past, the notion of an unreconstructed socialist
winning widespread support — even as a protest candidate — would have been
fanciful within the Democratic Party. The closest recent parallel to Sanders is
Dennis Kucinich, who tallied less than 4 percent of the total primary vote in
2004. Ralph Nader’s high-water mark was in 2000, when his 2.7 percent
third-party tally was nonetheless enough to spoil Al Gore’s hopes for the
presidency.
2009, the Sanders boomlet is a sign that liberal activists are getting
restless, and looking for a fight.
(is) not as a candidate, but as a sign that the Democrats’ version of the tea
party is ascendant at the worst possible time. By nonideological standards,
Sanders is a weak challenger — he’s got an unhealthy mix of Donald Trump’s ego
and Michele Bachmann’s bombast. He’s won statewide office in Vermont, the most
liberal state in the country, with a population smaller than Bachmann’s old
congressional district.”
