Bernie Sanders

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has gained in recent polls of the Democrats' 2016 presidential primary race.

(J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo)

To the Editor:

Forget Joe Biden, Martin O'Malley, Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee. Next year's Democratic primary looks like a two-way race between U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Sanders is gaining in the polls, and his campaign appearances are drawing huge crowds.

That's because the Vermont senator is the only candidate discussing the serious issues that interest serious voters. He defends Social Security, and supports free public higher education and single-payer health care. Sanders also wants to fight income inequality by raising taxes on the rich to pay for needed improvements to our deteriorating infrastructure. He also wants to create jobs that can't be exported, and he supports clean energy.

Things that Sanders opposes include bailouts for "too-big-to-fail" banks, National Security Administration spying on American citizens and ruinous "trade" deals like the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership. (TPP). This started with his 1993 vote against the North American Free Trade Treaty.

And on those three issues above, some grassroots Republicans are closer to Sanders' views than to those of their own party's candidates.

Like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama before her, Hillary Clinton is only posing as a populist on the campaign trail. She's very much a pro-corporate, pro-Wall Street Democrat - as her record shows - and as her failure to unequivocally condemn TPP makes painfully clear.

Many in the media and the leadership of both major parties are dismissing Sanders because Wall Street and corporate America are behind Clinton. She has serious money, and they can't admit that serious issues could beat serious money. So they'll try to convince us the Sanders can't win because he'll bring out more progressive voters to cast ballots in the primaries, and they might vote for progressives in contested congressional primaries, too.

That may be a frightening prospect for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, party bosses and corporate-controlled media, but it's an encouraging one for the rest of us.

JACK HANNOLD

Clayton

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