Lol. Newly powerful Sanders flexes Senate muscles
Far away from the halls of Congress, as he continues to rankle Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail, Bernie Sanders is fashioning a new role for himself in the Senate: The next Dr. No.
The Vermont senator, remade as one of the most well-known members of Congress, is throwing his weight against some of the most significant bipartisan deals pending in Congress this year. He’s actively urging Senate Democrats to reject a deal reached by House Republicans and the Obama administration to ease Puerto Rico’s debt crisis and has emerged as one of the few opponents of a landmark overhaul of chemical safety laws — the first major environmental legislation in a generation.
Sanders’ stands against those measures are the first signs of how he intends to leverage his newfound notoriety to become a force for the left in Congress once his presidential run ends.
Asked how influential Sanders would be on these and other issues once he returns to the Senate, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) responded: “Very.”
“He’s grown a movement, and he is the leader of it, although there are others,” Schatz added. “I think his voice is louder and stronger than ever.”
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Sanders has long been an iconoclastic voice of the left in the Senate, but his positions generally drew little notice. Before he launched his campaign last year, the last time he had commanded serious national attention was when he waged an eight-hour speech railing against renewal of the Bush tax cuts in 2010 — a maneuver that dazzled liberals.
But at whatever time he comes back to the Senate, Sanders is poised to be more powerful than ever, backed by more than 2 million Twitter followers and millions more admirers nationwide who’ll be looking to him to help set the progressive agenda.
Read more:
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/senate-bernie-sanders-223538#ixzz49lC1tLvC
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