Washington Post-What we learned from Bernie Sanders's town hall

[lapucelle]

57. Some further context.

BS has a 75% rating for 2018-2019 from Progressive Punch on "crucial issue votes" due to to missed votes. His most recent missed vote was on February 25, 2019, the day of his big publicity event on CNN and the second crucial vote that he missed this year.



http://progressivepunch.org/scores.htm?house=senate

It's little wonder that Vermont's Barre-Montpelier Times Argus editorial board wrote:

Don't run
Jan 5, 2019

Bernie Sanders should not run for president. In fact, we beg him not to.

In this space, we have repeatedly hit the senator on where his loyalties lay: Vermont or a bigger calling? We have asked him to make a choice, which he would argue was his recent re-election to Congress. But in his previous run for the presidency, Sanders, an independent who ran for the White House as a Democrat, missed dozens of votes that likely would have helped Vermonters. And, while he handily defeated his challenger, can Vermonters point to Sanders’ record and say definitively, “This is what he’s done for us?”

snip==============================================

But that’s not our greatest concern. We fear a Sanders run risks dividing the well-fractured Democratic Party, and could lead to another split in the 2020 presidential vote. There is too much at stake to take that gamble. If we are going to maintain a two-party system, the mandate needs to be a clear one. There is strength in numbers, and if anything has been shown in recent years, it is that unless tallies are overwhelming, there can always be questions or challenges raised over what “vote totals” really mean: popular vote vs. Electoral College results.

snip====================================================

In an interview Wednesday night on CNN, Sanders said he was proud of his 2016 campaign. “I’m not going to sit here and tell you that we did everything right, in terms of human resources,” he said. “I certainly apologize to any woman who felt she was not treated appropriately, and of course, if I run we will do better the next time.”

Asked by Anderson Cooper [January 3] if he knew about the staff complaints, he said, “I was a little bit busy running around the country trying to make the case.” That response alone is inexcusable and insulting.

Mahalo!