Sanders believes that such progressive ideas have a broad popularity, not just among a lefty fringe but across the working class, even in red states. And yet progressive movements in recent years have wound up marginalized in the face of establishment pushback (Dean, the Occupy Wall Street movement) or else, as in the case of support for Obama, left as promises unfulfilled. Sanders believes that by keeping his focus on economic populism, he has a shot — a long one, he admits — at beating the historical odds. "Once you get off of the social issues — abortion, gay rights, guns — and into the economic issues," he says, "there is a lot more agreement than the pundits understand."

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The bigger question facing Sanders, whatever you think about the merits of his ideas, is how he would ever possibly implement them, assuming he's not elected along with a Democratic sweep of both houses of Congress. Sanders, on the stump, praises President Obama for running a brilliant campaign in 2008. But then he goes on to say that the president's biggest mistake ("and I had the opportunity to tell him this — I'm not sure how happy he was to hear it, but that's what I do!&quot was to demobilize his millions of passionate supporters after Election Day: "Politics in Washington is not about a president sitting down with Mitch McConnell or John Boehner and having a drink [and] trying to work it out — that's just media nonsense. You guys want free tuition at public colleges and universities? You bring a million of your friends to march on Washington, D.C.!"

Sanders insists that the nation is less polarized than it is portrayed in the mainstream media. Through the Obama years, the Democratic Party's strategy has been to specifically target the so-called coalition of the ascendant — young people, minorities, college-educated women — by heightening contradictions with the GOP on issues like immigration, LGBT rights, overpolicing and abortion.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/weekend-with-bernie-sanders-20150709#ixzz43l0QCylQ
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