I'm a hard no on Bernie. Too old, too white, too male. If he couldn't beat Hillary (hell, even Trump managed to beat Hillary, so how hard is it?) last time, he's not going to be the nominee this time. I love me some uncle Joe, but I don't want him to run either. I'm an even harder no on Howard Schultz.

Ugh, I knew this was probably coming, but seriously? Regardless of whatever else you think of the guy, Bernie is pretty freakin' old. Remember what a mess Reagan was when he left office? If Bernie were elected this time around, he'd already be a full year older at his inauguration. If he won two terms, he'd leave office at 87!

Sure, I'd say Bernie is in better health than either Reagan was then or Trump (8 years younger) is now, but the strain of the office is very real-- ever see the side by side pictures of Obama in '08 and '16? I don't think we can safely expect ANY octogenarian to stand up to that sort of strain.

(This goes for you too Biden!)

Trump just got reelected.

Bernie is doing really well in the polls so far. It's going to be fun to see the right wing panic.

Bernie is old (and healthy) but his voters are young and it is what matters.

@7
"panic"
That's funny.

@1
Democrats wear their racism (and sexism) so casually and comfortably,
it's like a second skin.

We definitely don't need Bernie Sanders running for president. We don't need another old white man for president (and he will be 80). This really pisses me off. The Bernie Bros and the white supremacists and the misogynists (plenty of whom made up the Bernie Bros voter bloc) put Trump in office (along with gerrymandering and Russian interference). And it's already starting - reading a ton of shit attacking Kamala Harris today about how it's over for he because Bernie is running. THIS IS PURELY ABOUT EGO. We already have one white man squatting in the Oval Office who only cares about his ego. No Bernie, No Biden, hell no Beto either. The United States has has 44 white male presidents (well 43 and one illegal squatter) and it's time for someone else to have a turn.

Barack Obama was the best president this country has ever had (and no he wasn't perfect and no he didn't please everyone and yes he made mistakes but goddamnit he CARED ABOUT THIS COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE IN IT)!!! And he knew how to move through and negotatiat with the rest of the world!

We need another person who is young, extremely intelligent, capable of filling the white house administration and his cabinet with people just as smart or better yet smarter, and someone who might have a snowball's chance in hell of proving to the rest of the world that we might not be the white supremacist, misogynist shit show bent on destroying the world that Donald Trump has shown them we are.

ENOUGH. Fuck Bernie Sanders because Bernie Sanders should know better.

actually not gerrymandering, the electoral college.

If I were a democrat I would simply nominate someone that could win and had good policies. I respect the parties decision to keep all the advisors that lost the last election though. I'm sure pictures of your candidate pouring hot sauce on common food is only the tip of the "winning ideas" iceberg.

@2 Hillary and Gore? you sure know how to pick winners who couldn't even energize democratic constituencies to bother voting.

Maybe y'all should get in line this time... https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/430573-sanders-campaign-says-it-raised-1-million-in-less-than-4-hours

The bernie Cultists are almost as frightening as the tRump cultists!

Throughout its history, America has been extremely insensitive to the plight of the old white man. Let's hear Bernie out! What could go wrong?

@10 "We definitely don't need Bernie Sanders running for president"

You couldn't be more wrong. Even if he doesn't get the nomination his being in the primary is going to be critical to the way other candidates position themselves regarding progressive policies. I'll bet that regardless of whether he actually thinks he can win, he was going to run to influence the race.

I am all for new blood but if no one measures up to Bernie, then it becomes rather obvious what the choice has to be.

@10
Correction- We need someone who will fill her White House and cabinet with intelligent people.
That just eliminated 90% or more of the ridiculous candidates.

@10: Wow lady, we're 623 days out from the election, 350 days from the New Hampshire primary. Maybe if you looked at this from a more macro point of view you won't be "really pissed off" so much; unless of course you enjoy being so.

That aside, you can't be a control freak and enjoy democracy at the same time. Celebrate anyone whom wants to run for the President of the United States - including Schultz, Sanders, or anyone else. Applaud them even if they run against the grain of your politics or preferred demographic, gender, age, or skin color.

The number of Russian troll bots in the comments makes Slog AM feel more like Red Dawn.

@18: Yes, Bernie's influence will be felt not only by Democrats, but by that malleable group of Trump voters whom voted for him in the 2016 primary but couldn't stomach voting for Mrs. Clinton in the general.

I don't know why you're all responding with logic to #10. "Sanders should not run because I hate men" is not a logical position to begin with.

On Kamala Harris by Lee Fang who is typically a very good investigator.

In Her First Race, Kamala Harris Campaigned as Tough on Crime — and Unseated the Country’s Most Progressive Prosecutor
https://theintercept.com/2019/02/07/kamala-harris-san-francisco-district-attorney-crime/

@23
I have to say that I agree with you on this one raindrop.
I live and work in Michigan's 13th congressional district. We just elected Rashida Tlaib.
During the 2016 primaries the Western half of the 13th was full of Bernie supporters. There are still lots of cars around proudly sporting Bernie stickers.
In the general election the Western half of the thirteenth voted trump. They wanted Bernie, and they wanted a populist. They didn't want act 2 of the Clinton Dynasty.
I don't know how things are going to shake out here in the 13th this time around. A lot of the people who voted for Trump turned around and voted for Rashida Tlaib.
The only thing I know for sure is that they're not going to vote for someone that doesn't at least give lip service to being for working people. Most of them knew trump was lying to them, but at least he wasn't ignoring them.
If the Democrats try to run another Third Way Centrist like Clinton they will lose, at least in Michigan's 13th.

I don't particularly care who gets the nomination - trying to guess who is most "electable" is a mug's game. Like trying to guess the weather a year in advance. Anyone who can assemble the coalition required to gain the Democratic nomination will have a plausible shot at the White House.

That said, I think Sanders has evident difficulty actuating certain important Democratic constituencies that will be crucial to a win in the actual election. But that sort of thing will sort itself out in the primaries. Just like it did in 2016.

He's also waaaay too old. ffs. If it was up to me, they wouldn't let anybody over 60 run for that office.

I appreciate Anyone who can move the solidly Centrist Democratic party to back to the Left -- someplace approaching the time we had a Democratic Socialist President so popular, he won the Presidency FOUR FUCKING TIMES* -- who gave us Medicare, Social Security, put America to work on Infrastructure (unlike Trump, who hands out only empty promises to the Citizenry, like John Rockerfeller handed out dimes), and put the Banksers of olde firmly in their place.

We desperately need a leftward push.
Trumpfy's hard, far far rightward tug to Fascism
needs a very strong counterweight.

It don't hafta be Bernie.

*which terrified the "right" so bad, they came up with Presidential term limits

@27 - Interesting, except for Adams and Reagan - presidents elected at age 60 and over haven't been particularly remarkable:

Harry S Truman 60 years, 11 months, 5 days
Gerald Rudolph Ford 61 years, 0 months, 22 days
John Adams 61 years, 4 months, 5 days
Andrew Jackson 61 years, 11 months, 18 days
Dwight David Eisenhower 62 years, 3 months, 7 days
Zachary Taylor 64 years, 3 months, 10 days
George Herbert Walker Bush 64 years, 6 months, 28 days
James Buchanan 65 years, 10 months, 10 days
William Henry Harrison 68 years, 0 months, 24 days
Ronald Wilson Reagan 69 years, 11 months, 11 days
Donald John Trump 70 years, 7 months, 7 days

The current sitting President is already the oldest person to ever hold the office, and Sanders, if elected, would be nearly a decade older come Inauguration Day, 2021.

If Sanders is going to run - again, as a Democrat even though he continues to bill himself as an "independent" - he should do the right thing and state unequivocally that he will fully support the Democratic nominee, regardless of the outcome, and that he will encourage his supporters to do likewise. Otherwise, I see no reason why rank-and-file Democrats should support his candidacy, given the previous outcome. If he just wants to be a spoiler he can run as a true independent, like Schultz, and let literally any one of the New Progressives in the Democratic Party carry the torch instead.

@28 Oops. FDR didn't give us Medicare. That was actually 36, LBJ.

Speaking of FDR: "the backlash provoked by U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal bears resemblance to the opposition President Franklin Roosevelt faced when he implemented his sweeping New Deal economic and labor reforms during the Great Depression. 'FDR faced exactly the kinds of criticisms and challenges that the Green New Deal faces today.'"

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fdrs-new-deal-faced-similar-backlash-as-green-new-deal-steve-fraser-historian-says/

@29: You take Eisenhower's name out of your mouth if you are not going to respect it. He was a remarkable man, practically a prophet, and a great president.

@30: Considering how fully supporting the Dem nominee was exactly what Sanders did last time, it stands to reason he would do the same this time as well. I mean, the alternative is basically campaigning for Trump.

@32:

I think we have to disagree on what "fully supporting the Dem nominee" actually meant in the context of the 2016 election. For example: in the joint appearance they made in NH just after the Convention, Sanders' support of Clinton was tepid at-best. If you read the entirety of his speech, he only mentioned his "endorsement" once, and chose to spend the overwhelming majority of his time speaking about HIS candidacy, HIS success in moving the Party leftward, HIS policy proposals; it was about as left-handed an endorsement as one could get and still nominally define it as such. Interestingly, it would be another two months before he would participate in another campaign event on behalf of Clinton, again in his home state, and which was comprised more of attacking the then Republican nominee than it was in support of the Democratic nominee. In actual fact, he didn't really even start stumping for Clinton in any substantial way until nearly October, essentially squandering nearly two full months when he could have been out on the hustings actively supporting her.

@19: pat L for the WIN!!
@28 kristofarian: Spot on, baby!
@31kristofarian: Thank you for the history lesson. Hopefully younger commenters unfamiliar with the WWII (FDR) and Vietnam (LBJ) eras will become enlightened to all the benefits FDR fought so hard to provide the people of the United States---including labor unions.
@33: If only you'd shave that hideous rug, muffy, and get your shots. Your avatar suggests that you're really praying for four more years of Trumpty Dumpty / Dencey Pencey and their Evil Empire. Stop being so batshit crazy.
@34 COMTE: I know, right? And just imagine how the 2016 election would have fared Trumpty Dumpty and its Russian allies had been caught and their illegal-as-fuck dealings had been stopped. Hillary would rightfully be #45 today, and without all the daily media bullshit on Twitter.

@1, yet Clinton got three million more votes. Go figure US democracy. That’s right, they were the wrong three million votes.

You Bernie acolytes do realize that most of your talking points about Clinton came from trolls in Russia don't you? The Russians, and Trump, preferred Bernie because he's an unaccomplished blow hard with more baggage than a cruise ship. And Clinton didn't attack him because she knew how sensitive cultists can be and didn't want to alienate his swooning base (a birdie landed on his podium! lol).

I hope to very soon see an ad that features Sanders standing on the stage with the murderous Sandinistas, clapping and grinning as they called for the destruction of the United States, and the interviews he gave upon returning to Burlington, where he praised their bread lines, their clampdown on the free press, and defended their army by saying that it's leader "is a hippy!" who writes poetry for the troops ("ode to slaughtering thousands of indigenous people" maybe?) And he was going to turn Burlington into a similar paradise and set an example for the country and the world! After similar trips to Cuba and the USSR even his very liberal hometown newspaper, that had once endorsed him, called him a "useful idiot for communist dictators around the world."

This is a pathetic and ineffectual guy who can't even figure out how to tuck his shirt in or comb his hair, yet his dreamy-eyed sycophants somehow think he's going to single-handedly and fundamentally change the country, and no doubt set an example for the entire world! Jesus, WTF is wrong with you people. Your as bad as the Trump toadies.

Oh yeah, when do we get to see his taxes?

@32
Yes, Ike is underappreciated.
He sent troops to Little Rock for desegregation in 1959.
Think back to his "humanity hanging on a cross of iron" speech. Very few would dare give that speech today.

Sanders is important not because he's going to win (he won't) but because he serves two important, related purposes.

1) He presents ideas that shift the Overton window to the left. He's how you get to ideas like a $15 minimum wage or Medicare for all going mainstream.

2) By occupying the space as the viable "fringe" candidate, he creates space for "centrists" to take up more progressive themes and still be seen as moderate.

For both of those reasons, he deserves early support in the primaries, even from centrist Democrats who have no intention of voting for him. Unless you're a member of the vulture-capitalist Wall Street class that's trying to buy the Democratic party, that is.

"... his [Bernie's] dreamy-eyed sycophants somehow think he's going to single-handedly and fundamentally change the country... " mfg5k

PollyfuckingAnnas, we must be to hope for shit like:
Tuition-free Education
Actual Heathcare
REAL Oversight on Business
Monopolies broken
The Cap on income removed for funding Social Security

Ths list goes on;
but, apparently, only Fools think we can --
in the Richest Country on the fucking Planet --
hope for Sanity / a level playing field.

All those things Senator "Pie in the Sky!" Sanders has prescribed for Amerca.
Have you looked at the polls lately? Most Americans seems to think his Ideas are NOT full of shit.

But but but: SOCIALISM!
Be AFRAID America!
Be Very Afraid.

40: It's not so much that his ideas are full of shit, it's that he's full of shit. And anyone who thinks that the election of Trump was actually a cry for more socialism is equally full of shit.

@41 -- Well, to be fair, mfg5k, Hair Trumpfy promised a veritable tonne of Socialist shit; that he's failed to actually deliver on ANY of it should surprise no one -- except the Rubes who voted for him.

Eg -- Healthcare, that was gonna be waaaaay cheaper than Romneycare/ACA?
Where the fuck IS it?

'Spose there's much Buyers Remorse, now that his TRILLION point FIVE dollars tax cuts to the Richest failed to help the Middle Class, who were fooled/tricked into voting for an Idiot? I'm guessing there's more than tonnes.

“During our 2016 campaign, when we brought forth our progressive agenda, we were told that our ideas were ‘radical’ and ‘extreme,’” Mr. Sanders said on Tuesday in an email to supporters. “Three years have come and gone. And, as result of millions of Americans standing up and fighting back, all of these policies and more are now supported by a majority of Americans.”

And here's Bernie in today's NYT on Trump's claim that 'Bernie wants to turn us into Venezeula':

“'Bernie Sanders does not want to have the United States become the horrific economic situation that unfortunately exists in Venezuela right now,' he said. 'What Bernie Sanders wants is to learn from countries around the world why other countries are doing a better job of dealing with income and wealth inequality than we are.'”

Gosh -- that sounds Reasonable. Smart. Pragfuckingmatic.
Glean from the best and emulate it here.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/19/us/politics/bernie-sanders-2020.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

From the same article in the nyt:
"While some presidential candidates have avoided direct broadsides against President Trump, Mr. Sanders, ever combative, addressed his potential opponent head on.

'We are running against a president who is a pathological liar, a fraud, a racist, a sexist, a xenophobe and someone who is undermining American democracy as he leads us in an authoritarian direction,' he said."

Speaking Truth to Power.
Precisely what We, the people Need.

Among the many huge problems (age, not a Democrat, etc.) with Bernie Sanders running for the Democratic nomination is that, when he loses the primary in the end, a key part of his energized base has such a victim complex that they will happily become a conduit for anti-Democrat messaging, whether willingly or unwillingly.

It would be better if the well meaning among them had a chance to start with a clean slate, with the Democratic supporters doing there thing, and the other supporters doing whatever they're gonna do. Plus, no matter what anyone says the Sanders candidacy drags the toxic fallout of decades of CDS into the 2020 Democratic primary and beyond.

Like @10 said, "Fuck Bernie Sanders because Bernie Sanders should know better."

@32: Yes, you're right. I liked Ike.

Why would anyone trust the EPA anyway since it is so absolutely corrupt? In any case, the Sound is so polluted with PCBs that one would have to be nuts to eat anything out of there. The J, K and L pod orcas that die and wash up on shore are treated as hazardous waste, accordingly.