Bernard Sanders

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont announced his candidacy for President Thursday

(Cliff Owen/AP)

Truth is good. Truth should be the coin of the realm in public policy, but public servants rarely reveal the endorsements they value most, rarely assert the principles they claim to embrace, and rarely manage to have these two things overlap on their personal Venn diagram.

No one ever said that Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is not truthful about whom he serves. He may exaggerate, he may cherry-pick his stats to make a point, and he may not speak artfully enough to make that point resonate. But the self-described "democratic socialist" essentially has used his career to help those who cannot help themselves - the poor, the disenfranchised, the neglected, or anyone else from a voting bloc that cannot help him reach the White House.

So he was honest Thursday in announcing his 2016 presidential bid: He expects no help from billionaires, he can speak his mind on things like carbon tax and low-cost education and less military intervention abroad, and his quixotic campaign is designed mostly to get the party's frontrunner to remember Americans who have been forgotten.



For that reason alone, Sanders is welcome at the debate, even if it often seems pointless to attempt an end run around a political process that is drenched in money.

But he'll make that his predominant theme, and relate it to the populist preoccupations with wage stagnation and corporate power run amok.

He will decry, ceaselessly, that the top 1 percent - he calls them oligarchs - has amassed more wealth than the bottom 40 percent, and that the current economic model is unsustainable. And he will denounce, ceaselessly, the concentration of trusts - banks, airlines, telecoms, et al. -- that has elided the influence of the general electorate.

The subtext to this message is that Hillary Clinton is indebted to special interests, in an attempt to force her to abandon a centrist campaign, and give the progressive wing a louder voice.

It might actually work, if it gets Clinton to tap into the political passions of the moment. This is a healthy development for her party, for the country, and for the truths we are often too busy to address.

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