The savants of Conventional Wisdom in the Mainstream Media have anointed Bernie Sanders as the logical front runner for the Democratic Party's 2020 Presidential nomination. My reaction? You've got to be kidding me, what a joke! What turns the very idea from merely mistaken to totally absurd is the fact that Bernie Sanders is not now, nor has he EVER been a Democrat!

Now for some people that doesn't mean a whole lot. Of course, these are the same people who hissed at Hillary Clinton during the 2016 primary season and who petulantly sat out the general election, thus enabling Donald Trump to become the 45th President of the United States. Why the Democratic Party should even care about the political sensibilities of these yahoos is beyond me.

I understand that the more naive out there are totally enamored of Bernie's so-called "honesty". In their minds, Bernie tells it like it is. For me, Bernie essentially is trying to sell the Brooklyn Bridge. He proposes the most outlandish, "pie-in-the-sky" solutions that he knows ahead of time have absolutely no chance of passing this or any Congress. This isn't honesty, it's salesmanship, it's marketing. The best way I can describe the Bernie Sanders political platform is "bait and switch", the last hiding place of the truly dishonest salesman!

Now, I know SOME people, let's be honest about it, a LOT of people will try to consign me to the lower depths of hell for even daring to question Bernie Sanders' veracity. They will try to tar me with the same brush they used so effectively on Hillary Clinton. They will call me that most dreaded of all political beasts, a centrist. Fact of the matter is, I'm probably just as far to the political left as Bernie is. The basic difference is that Bernie likes to pretend he's a Democrat, while I actually AM a Democrat. While Bernie was looking down his nose at Democratic liberals like Hubert Humphrey and Paul Douglas, I was working to elect Hubert President and re-elect Paul Douglas to the Senate. So I will put my liberal credentials up against any politician claiming to be a "progressive", period. I am a Democrat, which is more than I can say for Bernie Sanders.

Now, if Bernie wishes to transform the Democratic Party into the Socialist Party of his dreams, that's fine with me. After all, Barry Goldwater did much the same thing with the Republican Party, taking it from middle-of-the-road conservatism to become the de facto Conservative Party of the United States. But when Barry worked his magic on the Republicans in 1964, he did it as a REPUBLICAN!!! And that's the point.

I may not like the way my local block club operates. I may feel that it needs to be more aggressive, more insistent, more muscular. And that's fine. But I don't think it would be right of me to try to change the heart and soul of that block club while at the same time refusing to join it in the first place. Why should the Democratic Party be any different?

At the end of the day, ANY political party has to have sufficient self-confidence to reform itself. It has to have the courage to say to the world that it proudly stands for SOMETHING, no matter what that something may happen to be. Can the Democratic Party be more forceful? Absolutely! Should it stop being so wishy-washy? No question about it. But the Democratic Party can't allow itself to bend to the will of someone who isn't a Democrat, someone who is too ashamed or too disdainful to even consider becoming a member. Bernie Sanders may be a wonderful man with a whole host of fabulous ideas. But one thing he is not, and that's a Democrat. If he seriously wants to become the face of the Democratic Party, then for God's sake, the least he can do is deign to become a Democrat!