Yes, Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat and Hillary represents the very worst of the party/SALON

[Sparkly]

36. I take issue with this.

The terms "Left" and "Right" don't mean much unless we get down to specifics, and separate the goals from the means.

Half of this is about President Obama, counter-terrorism, and the disasters left behind by the Bush administration -- along with a lot of hyperbole (such as the terrible WWI treatment of "whistleblowers&quot .

When the essay finally gets down to specific issues, we're told:

"Clinton has flatly insisted that Americans cannot have basic things that much of the world takes for granted — single-payer health care, free public higher education, environmental policies that don’t rely on fossil fuel corporations that destroy the planet. Sanders says otherwise."

This is not true. She has never "flatly insisted" any such things. She wanted single-payer a long time ago, but there's a difference between wanting something and getting it. Republicans are still talking about "repealing Obamacare." Does anybody think words and wishes about single-payer will make it so?

Free public higher education -- Clinton has a plan for this, as well. The difference is that she doesn't want to make it free to millionaires, and her plan includes work/study programs. If we get any of that done, it's ambitious.

Her environmental policies are not about destroying the planet. Good grief, Al Gore pioneered the issue with Earth in the Balance, and he's been considered "DINO" since Nader ran against him! Her goals:

"Generate enough renewable energy to power every home in America, with half a billion solar panels installed by the end of Hillary’s first term. Cut energy waste in American homes, schools, hospitals and offices by a third and make American manufacturing the cleanest and most efficient in the world. Reduce American oil consumption by a third through cleaner fuels and more efficient cars, boilers, ships and trucks."

It's ironic that the essay laments: "Yet the Democratic Party of the mid-20th century is long gone."

YES IT IS. We had Dixiecrats in those days. We didn't have total support for equal rights for women, let alone LGBT rights. We still fought in wars, and in fact had a draft. So the idea that there used to be a perfect leftist Democratic party in America and just lately it's gone off the rails to the right is as revisionist as the Republican idea that happy Ozzie and Harriet households were the norm once upon a time, and we just need to get back to that.

And the idea that we have purists who CARE, and evil "establishment" Democrats who DON'T, is simplistic and dumbs down the debate. If Sanders' campaign has convinced people that the Democratic Party is "corrupt," I don't see how that moves us forward from where we are -- not where we imagine we once were, not where we wish to be in future, but where we ARE.