Let me follow.

Bernie doesn’t take money from Wall Street. I admit this is a very honorable thing to do. So this makes him more likely to represent we-the-people’s interests as president, yes?

Because his policies will be for the people rather than for the big interests, yes?

But then he has to get them through Congress to change the laws, about 500 people all of whom take money from special interests. So then what? He has to compromise to get his ideas passed into laws, just as any other Democrat does.

So how is this different? Honorable yes. But let’s talk about when we can change the rules of the game, to keep money out of politics and not pretend that by not taking money he will be any more able to do so. honorable but false premise.

Another example: Bernie says he will withdraw Obama’s Supreme Court nominee if he gets elected. Bernie will presumably nominate a real liberal.

But then he will need 60 Senators to approve him or her. Obama’s moderate Supreme appointment has been dead-on-arrival in a Republican Congress. So Bernie’s liberal nominee will get approved how? S/he won’t. So his rhetoric is cheer-inducing but meaningless.

All good intentions. But what are the real implications?

Bernie wants an infrastructure bill. He’s going to pay for it by “a tax on the richest people.”

Taxes need to be approved by the House, which will likely be republican after ‘16. So, dead on arrival.

So there’s a point when Bernie’s good intentions sound, to Hilary supporters, like what politicians say : what people want to hear. Add to that free college and free health care.

You have Hillary Clinton, whose greatest strength is pragmatic reality — a message that doesn’t exactly sizzle — and whose saving grace is strong support from minorities, without which her candidacy would have long ago tanked. And yet she is surrounded by people, like her husband, who seem to be working assiduously to damage that minority support. Just last week, Bill Clinton launched into an awkward, rambling defense of the 1994 crime bill and his wife’s use of the term “superpredator.” This week her supporter Bill de Blasio, New York City’s mayor, made a cringe-worthy joke (with which she happily played along!) about running on “C.P. time,” which I have always understood to be “colored-people’s time,” a corrosive stereotype of the perpetual lateness of black people. And then there’s Bernie Sanders, the pied piper of pipe dreams, who articulates a noble set of principles but outlines unworkable and, in some cases, outlandish policies that will never see the light of day with the next Congress, which is not likely to be dissimilar from the existing Congress. The New York Daily News was brutal in its endorsement of Clinton this week: the paper’s editorial board referred to Sanders as “a fantasist who’s at passionate war with reality” who has “proved utterly unprepared for the Oval Office while confirming that the central thrusts of his campaign are politically impossible.” www.nytimes.com/...

#Hillary