Posted on 11/01/2006 5:55:50 PM PST by Lorianne
Amid the furious debate over Iraq and the speculation that George Bush may be a lame duck after next Tuesday's mid-term elections, an extraordinary political milestone is approaching: a cantankerous 65-year-old called Bernie looks set to become the first socialist senator in US history.
Bernie Sanders is so far ahead in the contest for Vermont's vacant seat for the US Senate that it seems only sudden illness or accident could derail his rendezvous with destiny, after eight terms as the state's only congressman. His success flies in the face of all the conventional wisdom about American politics.
He is an unapologetic socialist and proud of it. Even his admirers admit that he lacks social skills, and he tends to speak in tirades. Yet that has not stopped him winning eight consecutive elections to the US House of Representatives.
"Twenty years ago when people here thought about socialism they were thinking about the Soviet Union, about Albania," Mr Sanders told the Guardian in a telephone interview from the campaign trail. "Now they think about Scandinavia. In Vermont people understand I'm talking about democratic socialism."
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
He's the only one who owns that label proudly (because he can get away with it in Vermont). There are so many Democrats who talk like socialists, and legislate like socialist busy-bodies.
Don't worry Colonel-a different Sanders.
I count 62 members of the Progressive Caucus. Pelosi was a member in '97 - '98, but is not listed now.
http://bernie.house.gov/website/leavesite.asp?url=http://cpc.lee.house.gov/
I've always said that love him or hate him, you always knew exactly where Bernie stood on any issue. He's been consistant for as long as he's been on the public stage.
Sad indeed. What is more telling is that he is an avowed Socialist who is running as a Democrat..the true color of the Democrat party.
Honesty.
The abuse of the word 'liberal' (which really belongs to us advocates of liberty and free markets) by American socialists is a travesty. Sanders calls himself what he is, rather than trying to pass himself off as something else like the 'rats are always doing.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
He's running as an independant. He has never run as a democrat but almost always get that party's endorsement.
We may also see a Muslim elected to the House.
This is a better (more direct) link to the Progressive Caucus member list.
http://cpc.lee.house.gov/index.cfm?SectionID=4&ParentID=0&SectionTypeID=2&SectionTree=4
Vermont=Vomit
This statement marks the author, like so many Europeans who write about America, as an ignoramus on its culture and history. America, you see, is a really big country where people, even socialists, can geographically self-sort. That we can have socially conservative rural Alabama and loopy-liberal Manhattan and gun-totin,' income-tax-hatin', murderer-executin' Texas and property-rights defenders in Idaho and socialists in Vermont all in the same country evidently strikes the average Guardian reader as some sort of impenetrable mystery.
HA! Commie Carl Levin has been in the senate since '78.
We've had many socialist senators over the years. This just happens to be the first one that will admit to what he really is.
His name was Frank Zeidler, a socialist.
People give him credit for establishing some kind of socialist paradise, but that's wrong.
What he did was lording it over a city that was established by hard-working immigrants and he took credit for it as a socialist.
He was a grinning socialist ass and stupid people supposed he was responsible for Milwaukee's success through the 1960s - wrong.
Zeidler rode Milwauke's success, brought about by the workers and businesses, as his own, cheered on by the moronic Milwaukee Journal, that was infested by liberal jackasses who took over a great newspaper back in 1980, damn shithead assh*les. (I can get more specific for those interested)
Zeidler was a fraud and a clown.
DeLauro from CT.
Thanks for correcting me...but it is just as telling.
Call a Democrat a Socialist and more often than not they'll bristle at the label. But we know better...and so do they deep down.
"...the first socialist senator in US history."
Actually we have a couple dozen of them.
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