The notion among the Party's Deep Thinkers is that Bernie is a disaster.

[Recursion]

100. Will Sanders be better at dealing with the existing oligarchy than someone else?

Seriously. Would he be better at making actual change happen than Clinton, Schweitzer, etc?

The fact that I agree with him on most issues doesn't matter. The fact that his positions are right doesn't matter. For that matter, as long as a President is to the left of a hypothetical median Congressman, being further to the left doesn't help anything.

His Congressional record is a long series of very excellent bills that go absolutely nowhere (the fact that a law is great doesn't matter if it isn't passed), punctuated by some puzzling votes on gun control (but I know Vermont is weird about that) and a pretty brilliant set of floor amendments, most of which also went nowhere. It's the same hesitancy I have about Kucinich: I don't need a President to be right and show everyone he's right; I need a President who can actually effect policy changes.

Now, his time as mayor of Burlington is probably instructive, but I haven't looked into it too deeply (I will if he ends up running). Still, simply being elected of a symbol of how pissed we are at investment banks won't actually make those banks change their behavior.