“Sometimes people say, you know, you’re 78, all that stuff, and you’ve been doing this for a long time — But should I be quitting now? When you look out and you talk to these beautiful, beautiful young people who want to move this country forward in such a decent, humane way, it really does inspire me. And to the degree that I have gotten those folks involved in the political process, yeah, I am very proud of that. I don’t know that I’ve ever done anything in my life more important than that.”
He was an independent most of his career. He's too friendly with them for his own good, but he pretty transparently ran as a Democrat because that's the only real platform that was available to him.
He literally called for giving workers some ownership over the means of production.
We can move on without shitting on the guy. No one wants to be part of a movement that burns its members at the stake when they fail. He did some good things, he's a spent force now, nothing productive will come of beating a dead horse.
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Absolutely essential stuff.
I don't see this doing anything productive, and to anyone who's not a terminally online leftist (like all the libs in here) it at best sounds bitter and catty. At worst, think of how crucifying Sanders while simultaneously defending Cuba or the Soviet Union comes off to any normal person. "Wait, you're willing to go to bat for [scary communist boogeyman] but you hate that old dude from Vermont?" It's the fastest way to turn off people who are beginning to radicalize.
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If it's a common part of regular discussion in leftist spaces you don't need to start out with it -- someone wanders in and hears/reads it.
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I'm not saying "don't tell people leftist states do a lot of good things, actually." I'm saying that if you combine something that radical with blunt shitting on the most popular politician in the country, that's going to be too much for some people who are otherwise ready to consider more radical ideas. And there's no reason to do the latter, so why do it? It can only hurt us, especially considering so many people find this place and others like it because they like what Bernie has to say and then start digging deeper.
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These are all legitimate criticisms that should absolutely be discussed, but note the difference between this, stuff like "he seems like a decent guy but he deserves criticism," and some of the comments that pop up that make you think he might as well have been in the Bush Administration. There's a way to criticize while being respectful of the good things a person has done, but we're not great at that yet.
Newly-radicalizing folks who wander in here aren't going to be turned off by "he's a decent guy who did some good things, but he's not a saint and here are the receipts." They might get turned off if they see a bunch of "fuck this guy and the horse he rode in on, he's dead to me" takes. That just lacks perspective, and it's going to be extra jarring right next to a thread about how North Korea might be good, actually. People take time to change their opinions and deprogram the propaganda they've internalized -- too hard of a sell can cause them to tune out.