Eugene Robinson opines:

Deal with it: Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who is not even a Democrat, is leading the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. And it looks possible that none of his rivals will be able to catch him. If you want to get rid of President Trump, prepare to get behind Sanders and do everything you can to make him president.

Now hold on to your hats and sit down if you are already taken aback and woozy:

Commentators have warned ominously that the party will be committing “political suicide” if it nominates Sanders. I admit to having flirted with that theory myself. But democracy, done right, can be messy. The whole point of having primaries and caucuses is to allow voters to select the nominee they want, rather than let party insiders make the choice.

          Without a firm control of practices and procedures Nuclear Energy is a non-starter. As sloppy as you could be wind turbines will not cause harm (outside the zone of collapse) to the environment, but Nuclear Power Facilities are quite a different story.

          Oh, by the way, coal fired plants release radioactivity.

RIP

Robert Reich:
Calm down, establishment Democrats. Bernie Sanders might be the safest choice (“Moderate” candidates won’t be electable if they can’t speak to middle- and working-class frustrations.)

Some background: In the fall of 2015, I visited Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Missouri and North Carolina, researching the changing nature of work for my book, “The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It.” I spoke with many of the same people I had met two decades prior, when I was secretary of labor, as well as some of their grown children. I asked them about their jobs and their views about the economy. I was most interested in their sense of our system as a whole and how they were faring in it.

What I heard surprised me. Twenty years before, most said they had been working hard and were frustrated that they weren’t doing better. Now they were angry — at their employers, the government and Wall Street; angry that they had not been able to save adequately for retirement, and that their children weren’t doing any better. Several had lost jobs, savings or homes during the Great Recession. By the time I spoke with them, most were employed, but the jobs hardly paid any more than they had years before.

I heard the phrase “rigged system” so often that I began asking people what they meant by it. They spoke about the bailout of the banks, political payoffs, insider deals and out-of-control CEO pay. The resentments came from self-identified Republicans, Democrats and independents; white, black, Latino and Asian American; union households and non-union. The common thread was that everyone was either middle or working class...

With the 2016 primaries on the horizon, I asked which candidates they found most attractive. At the time, party leaders favored Democratic former secretary of state Hillary Clinton or former Florida Republican governor Jeb Bush. But the people I spoke with repeatedly mentioned Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. They said Sanders or Trump would “shake things up,” “make the system work again,” “stop the corruption” or “end the rigging.”

The next year, Sanders — a Jewish, 74-year-old Vermonter and self-described Democratic socialist — barely lost to Clinton in the Iowa caucuses, beat her decisively in the New Hampshire primary, garnered 47 percent of the caucus-goers in Nevada and ended up with 45 percent of the pledged delegates from Democratic primaries and caucuses.

Trump, then a 69-year-old egomaniacal maybe-billionaire and reality TV star who had never held office and never had any previous standing in the Republican Party, won the GOP primaries and then went on to beat Clinton (though not, of course, in the popular vote), one of the most experienced and well-connected politicians in modern America.

It was seismic, and it cannot be fully explained by Sanders’s or Trump’s appeal to their core base voters. It was a rebellion against the establishment. Clinton and Bush started with all the advantages, but neither could credibly convince voters they were not part of the system.

A direct line connected decades of stagnant wages, the 2008 financial crisis, the rise of the tea party and the occupy movement and the emergence of Sanders and Trump in 2016. The people I spoke with no longer felt they had a fair chance to make it. National polls told much the same story: According to the Pew Research Center, the percentage of Americans who felt most people could get ahead through hard work dropped by 13 points between 2000 and 2015. In 2006, according to Gallup, 59 percent of Americans thought government corruption was widespread; by 2013, 79 percent did.

Wow. More people though the country was corrupt under Obama than under Bush. That's saying a ton, but hardly anyone seems to refer to this.

Then he states the obvious, but what needs to be stated over and over and over again:

The best way for Democrats to defeat Trump’s fake populism is with the real thing, coupled with an agenda of systemic reform. This is what Sanders offers. For that reason, he has the best chance of generating the energy and enthusiasm needed to regain the White House.

He will need a coalition of young voters, people of color and the white working class. He seems on his way: In Nevada, according to entrance polls, he won with Latino voters and white voters, women and men, college and non-college graduates. He was the first choice of every age group except for over-65. Nationally, he is narrowing former vice president Joe Biden’s edge with African American voters.

In a general election, Republicans would surely do everything they can to tag Sanders with the “socialist” label. But that hasn’t hurt him so far, partly because it doesn’t come with the stigma it once did.

And worries about a Nixon-McGovern-like blowout in 2020 seem far-fetched. In 1972, the middle class was expanding, not contracting. And polls currently show Sanders tied with or beating Trump: A Quinnipiac poll released last week shows Sanders beating Trump head-to-head in Michigan and Pennsylvania (but shows Trump beating all Democrats head-to-head in Wisconsin). A CBS News-YouGov poll released this week has Sanders beating Trump nationally.

Instead of hand-wringing about Sanders’s electability, maybe establishment Democrats should worry that a “moderate” Democrat might be nominated instead.

As for me right now I'm sitting at the kitchen table sipping coffee on this lovely grey overcast day, with my little daughter napping away, making phone calls to NC for Bernie.

Nice support for Bernie everywhere, with more having already voted early or interested in doing so than not.

One call went like this:

Caller's identity pops up as 30yr male, says he's voting for Bernie. I notice he's occasionally slow to answer to which he says he's at a restaurant working.

I follow the script until the end to when I ask if he'd be willing to sign up to volunteer, then ad lib a little to make it more real:

"Every little bit counts, man. We got 'em on the ropes."

Him: a pause, then "You believe this guy Bloomberg?"

"Yeah. Ugh, he's such a..."

"Piece of shit? I can't believe this."

"I'm calling you from NYC. I hate this guy. He epitomizes everything that Bernie stands against."

"Um, yeah. I gotta go now; I'm getting called back to work. But thanks for what you're doing. I'll see if I can volunteer too."