Senator Bernie Sanders is the candidate for a stronger America of enhanced global influence. He is a sober, clear-eyed, foreign-policy realist. Yet few recognize this, mainly because of his impassioned focus on broad domestic reforms. Most view Sanders as anything but a realist—more like a utopian idealist—and concede the foreign-policy advantage to former secretary of state Hillary Clinton or any of the tough-talking Republican candidates. But they are wrong, and the liberal Sanders is paradoxically the only foreign-policy realist in the presidential field.

This comes as a surprise because realism in the popular mind has grown synonymous with overweening might and unilateral assertion of US objectives; think “shock and awe” and “regime change.” Sanders is none of those, and most equate him instead with foreign-policy idealism: allergic to the use of force, and naively trusting in multilateral diplomacy. But these are not Sanders either. Moreover, such simplistic definitions have diverged very far from their original, nuanced meanings, which it behooves us to recall at this most troubled time in international affairs.

I was highly interested to see your letter of yesterday's date to Senator Sanders and Professor Gerald
Friedman. I respond here as a former Executive Director of the Joint Economic Committee – the
congressional counterpart to the CEA.

You write that you have applied rigor to your analyses of economic proposals by Democrats and Republicans. On reading this sentence I looked to the bottom of the page, to find a reference or link to your rigorous review of Professor Friedman's study. I found nothing there.

It is not fair or honest to claim that Professor Friedman's methods are extreme. On the contrary, with
respect to forecasting method, they are largely mainstream. Nor is it fair or honest to imply that you have given Professor Friedman's paper a rigorous review. You have not.

What you have done, is to light a fire under Paul Krugman, who is now using his high perch to airily dismiss the Friedman paper as “nonsense.” Paul is an immensely powerful figure, and many people rely on him for careful assessments. It seems clear that he has made no such assessment in this case. Instead, Paul relies on you to impugn an economist with far less reach, whose work is far more careful, in point of fact, than your casual dismissal of it. He and you also imply that Professor Friedman did his
work for an unprofessional motive. But let me point out, in case you missed it, that Professor Friedman is a political supporter of Secretary Clinton. His motives are, on the face of it, not political.

For the record, in case you're curious, I'm not tied to Professor Friedman in any way. But the powerful – such as Paul and yourselves – should be careful where you step.

When you dare to do big things, big results should be expected. The Sanders program is big, and when you run it through a standard model, you get a big result.

That, by the way, is the lesson of the Reagan era – like it or not. It is a lesson that, among today's political leaders, only Senator Sanders has learned.

U.S. Rep. Peter Welch says he'll support Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign as a voter and as a Democratic superdelegate.

The announcement Friday ended months of speculation over whether Welch would endorse Sanders, a fellow Vermonter, or former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

"I’m supporting Bernie because I think he can win, and I believe in what he stands for," Welch said in an interview after announcing his support on Vermont Public Radio.

Welch said he made his final decision Friday while preparing to drop off his absentee ballot for Vermont's March 1 presidential primary in the town of Norwich.

“Let’s give Bernie a shot," Welch said, noting that Sanders' economic policies and campaign finance reform goals have resonated with voters, especially young voters.

Sanders responded with gratitude.

"I very much appreciate Congressman Welch's support," Sanders said through a campaign spokesman. "We have been friends for years and have worked together on issues of great importance to Vermont. His support means a great deal to me."

“I’m a strong supporter of immigration reform,” Hillary Clinton stated during last Thursday’s debate in Milwaukee. “And I have been ever since I was in the Senate. I was one of the original sponsors of the DREAM Act. I voted for comprehensive immigration reform in 2007; Senator Sanders voted against it at that time.” This is where my partner Rocio looks over at me from the opposite end of the couch. “Is that true?” she says, her voice tinged with a sense of betrayal and disappointment. How could Bernie Sanders, the people’s candidate, have voted against an effort to end one of the United States’ major injustices?

Hoping to maintain her lead in the polls among Latino voters, Clinton is trying to present herself as a more consistent advocate of immigration reform than Bernie Sanders, and in this her most effective attack is pointing out that Sanders voted against a bipartisan comprehensive immigration bill in 2007. The Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Reform Act of 2007, introduced by Senate majority leader Harry Reid on the heels of the Democrats’ retaking control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, was largely a compromise between earlier legislation proposed by Senators Ted Kennedy, John McCain, Jon Kyl and John Cornyn. It was also a last ditch effort by George W. Bush and the Republicans to stem the flow of immigration, while eliminating issue from the Democratic Party’s platform. Containing all of the DREAM Act, which would’ve provided a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought to the country as minors who graduated from high school and met other requirements, the 2007 bill also included provisions for increased border security, a guest worker program, and restrictions on future immigration.

The bill called for 20,000 more Border Patrol agents and 370 miles of additional fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border. It removed four of the five family-based categories under which an immigrant could apply for permanent residency, keeping only the preference for spouses and children of U.S. citizens. The guest worker program would’ve allowed 200,000 Latin Americans to work in the United States for two years, after which they would have to return to their home countries for a full year before they could reapply for temporary work.

Bernie Sanders supported the DREAM Act part of the bill, but opposed the guest worker bit and the downgrading of family reunification. So did one of the United States’ most venerated Latino civil rights organization, the League of United Latin American Citizens, and the country’s largest trade union, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations.

There is something belittling about the language of the “Bernie Sanders is unelectable” fallacy—something that is subliminally dismissive.

How is it possible that we live in a time when progressives say #blacklivesmatter, but call the ideas of Bernie Sanders too “radical” to implement, and conclude his “radical” ideas make him unelectable?

When people say Bernie Sanders’ ideas are not politically viable, what they are really saying is:

Satisfying the needs of the people his policies would support is not politically viable, therefore, we should not vote for him.

Perhaps we should change the narrative: A politician who does not believe healthcare is a human right is unelectable, a politician who votes for preemptive war is unelectable, a politician who supports policies that lead to mass incarceration is unelectable.

We live in an America where people have to be explicitly reminded that #blacklivesmatter, we live in America where it is unordinary for a presidential candidate to advocate for health care as a human right, and we live in an America where it’s unusual for a presidential candidate to critique capitalism for all of its inherent inequities. We live in an America where advocating for expanding access to higher education is “radical”.

A candidate advocating for change and equality shouldn’t be castigated as radical; the candidate should be propagated as the standard.

“MDCNY is proud to make its first ever endorsement in a national race by supporting Bernie Sanders. His honesty, integrity, and progressive agenda are in line with the principles of our club,” said MDCNY President Murad Awawdeh. “For too long, anti-Muslim rhetoric in this election has attempted to push our communities to the margins. Our voice and vote will be felt as we activate our members throughout New York to mobilize our communities to vote for Sanders in the April primary. We also plan to volunteer remotely to provide support in the earlier primary states.”

The Democratic primary, partisans of Hillary Clinton typically frame the contest as being between an unserious radical whose proposals won't work and can't pass (Bernie Sanders), and a pragmatic political trench warrior whose less-ambitious proposals are more likely to lead to improved outcomes in the long term.

There are two problems with this. First, there is little reason to think that less-ambitious proposals will be more likely to deliver the goods. Second, in many key areas, Clinton hasn't actually proposed anything at all.

That leaves the argument that Clinton's proposals are more realistic. On health care, how, exactly? Krugman doesn't say.

That might be because she has proposed nothing whatsoever that would seriously advance the state of American health care. Honestly, head over to her issues page and check out the section on health care. There's no plan of any kind to address ObamaCare's rather serious underinsurance problem, let alone bring insurance to the roughly 30 million people who still don't have it. There is some oblique acknowledgement of the problems, but no hint of what to do about it — rather reminiscent of Clinton campaign manager John Podesta's set of bullet points about how she would defeat ISIS, the first of which was "defeat ISIS in Syria and Iraq."

If any candidate's ideas deserve the "magic unicorn" epithet, I'd say it's the one whose proposals don't actually exist.

As Steve Randy Waldman points out, the entire point of political campaigns is to advance moral values and set priorities. I think the wonk class doesn't much like this. They would, perhaps unsurprisingly, prefer that politics proceed in a way that maximizes the importance of their hard-won knowledge. But the simple truth is that the vast majority of people don't pay attention to 2,000-page bills, or tortuous political negotiations, or independent multiple-regression analyses of policy proposals. Instead, they vote for people who seem closest to their values, and rely on them to figure out all that incomprehensible garbage. Experienced policy people are there for when you need someone to hammer out an actual bill. An important job, but a distinctly secondary one.

Now, people can support whomever them want. But let's not pretend like there is an open-and-shut policy case for Hillary Clinton. Her policy book is missing some very important pages.