Ok, I'll go there: A coalition between Harris and Sanders could be very formidable.

[ehrnst]

71. Sen. Ted Kennedy was leading the push for single payer in 1972, long before Sen. Sanders

Ted was also far more accomplished in making affordable health care into a reality, along with HRC, in the form of CHIP.

Bernie 'led" the way in environmentalism? I guess that depends on your definition of "leading the way."

I think it's pretty clear that by any reasonable definition, that credit goes to Al Gore, who was more effective in leading the way starting back in 1976 while still in Congress: In 1976, at 28, after joining the United States House of Representatives, Gore held the "first congressional hearings on the climate change, and co-sponsor[ed] hearings on toxic waste and global warming, and has continued after office with "An Inconvenient Truth" successully promoting enviromental awareness.

Peace: You think that Jimmy Carter doesn't merit the title of having led the way in Peace? Anyone can talk about peace - I do that often. That's not the same as leading, votes aren't the same as leadership.

Wealth inequality - Elizabeth Warren has moved the conversation about this more than anyone, both in her acheivements and her influence.

From 2015:

Warren's real power lies in her outsized influence, not just for a freshman senator, but for virtually any elected official in Washington. Her pen may not have touched many pieces of legislation that made their way to Obama's desk since her election in 2012, but her fingerprints are all over them.

Warren would be a strong spokeswoman for the party in Congress or outside of it; she spurred creation of a federal agency—the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau— without the title of "senator" in front of her name. But allies say Warren's best tool is her seat at the committee table in the Senate. Through hearings on the Senate Banking Committee in particular, Warren's questioning and persistence has lead to rules changes at various federal agencies without needing to get legislation through a Republican-controlled Congress. Most notably, Warren successfully pushed the SEC to require banks to admit wrongdoing in negotiating many settlements.

Even critics acknowledge that Warren's influence, particularly over federal agencies and her Democratic colleagues, goes beyond her fairly brief record of legislative accomplishment.

"She's both at the same time highly ineffective and influential—and I know that sounds inconsistent but it's not," one senior financial services executive, a Warren critic, said. "She has no legislative accomplishment other than to derail a few [nominees], which is easy to do. But to her credit, she is highly influential. Members of the House Democratic Caucus and Senate Democratic Caucus "¦ are really looking over their shoulders."

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/05/is-elizabeth-warren-an-effective-senator/449349/


Bernie has done some good things, but saying that he "has led the way" on all of those doesn't check out when you look at the history of those issues and who has advocated for them most effectively. One can "mean what they say" and still be factually inaccurate. If after one is fact checked, they still persist in saying those things, that moves into other territory.