During the 1986 race for governor of Vermont, Bernie Sanders bristled at the popularity of the Democratic incumbent, Madeleine Kunin. Mr. Sanders, who was running against her as an independent, saw himself as a leader, and viewed Ms. Kunin as a lightweight.

“She does very well on television,” he told one interviewer. “She has an excellent press secretary.”

But really, he said another time, the governor’s appeal came down to one trait.

“Many people are excited because she’s the first woman governor,” he said. “But after that, there ain’t much.”
...
More than anything, the recent Sanders broadsides reflect a political strategy he has carried out in previous campaigns: the use of blunt criticisms, sarcastic asides and a thundering style against his opponents.

In the 1986 race, Mr. Sanders argued that he would be a strong feminist and do more for women than Ms. Kunin had. While granting that Ms. Kunin was “not corrupt,” he questioned if she had the same “courage” that he had.....

“In a tough fight, Bernie is hardly the all-positive, all-substance guy that he claims to be,” said Garrison Nelson, a longtime political science professor at the University of Vermont.
...
In Vermont, however, Mr. Sanders was known for belittling opponents at times, rather than merely challenging their ideas. During one debate in the 1986 governor’s race, Mr. Sanders was asked if he viewed Governor Kunin as “the lesser of two evils,” given his descriptions of the Democratic and Republican parties as “Tweedledum” and “Tweedledee,” and if he thought he might contribute to her political “demise.”

Mr. Sanders chuckled and then looked at Ms. Kunin, seated a few feet away.

“Governor, how does it feel to be the lesser of two evils?” he asked. “I think that really is what this campaign is about.” Ms. Kunin was stone-faced.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/us/politics/bernie-sanders-campaign-history.html?_r=0

Yamiche AlcindorVerified account
?@Yamiche
.@BernieSanders is about to take off for NY. We've been served a menu for the 9 hour chartered flight he's taking

https://twitter.com/Yamiche/status/721282252215357442

Vice President Biden on Friday said that the Vatican hosting Bernie Sanders does not mean that Pope Francis agrees with the Democratic presidential candidate.

“I just think that Bernie making the trip is a good thing, but to suggest that the pope embraces Bernie’s policies, I doubt that very much,” he told CNBC reporter John Hardwood. "I don’t know, [but] I doubt it very much. No, I don’t think it could be read that way at all.”
.....
Biden on Friday explained how his understanding of Catholic doctrine might depart from Sanders’s rhetoric.

“I was raised in a tradition called Catholic social doctrine,” he said. "It is that is legitimate to look out for yourself, but never at the expense of someone else. It is legitimate to do well, but never at the expense of not looking at what’s behind you.”

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/276534-biden-i-doubt-pope-francis-embraces-sanderss-ideas

“Over very soul as a nation has suffered as the public lost faith in political and social institutions,” the independent Vermont senator said.

“Illicit financial flows, environmental destruction and the weakening of the rights of workers is far more severe than it was a century ago. Our challenge is mostly a moral one, to redirect our efforts and our vision to the common good.”

Dan MericaVerified account
?@danmericaCNN
Over 1,800 Sanders supporters have said they will attend a protest tonight outside Clinton's SF fundraiser w/ the George and Amal Clooney.

https://twitter.com/danmericaCNN/status/721065501808599040

The negative reviews of and cascading events from Bernie Sanders’ less-than-deft Q&A with the New York Daily News earlier this week continue. But there is one additional passage from that interview that deserves, but has largely escaped, notice (emphasis mine):

Alright, I believe that in the midst of the kinds of crises that we face with a disappearing middle class and massive levels of income and wealth inequality, the only major country on earth not guarantee to healthcare to all people, only major country not to provide paid family and medical leave, it is time to get beyond establishment politics. So to put your question in maybe a simpler way, is she a candidate of the establishment? The answer is, of course she is.

This is an astonishing thing for Sanders to say for a couple of reasons. First because, as he surely knows, it was the “establishment” Bill Clinton who, as one of his first acts as president in 1993, signed the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) after it had twice been vetoed by his predecessor. Second (and maybe Sanders doesn’t know this; few do), having signed the FMLA providing up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to workers to care for a newborn or a sick family member, Clinton, with the active help of his wife, became the first president to use federal power to provide paid leave to American workers.
....
So the “establishment” politician Hillary Clinton can rightly claim a share of the credit for the paid leave programs that exist in the United States. They’re far from universal, but they’re real, up-and-running programs that seem to be working as advertised. And the reason they’re not more wide spread is not “establishment politics”—they are in fact the result of establishment politics—but Republican resistance.

Both Clinton and Sanders sponsored bills in the Senate to expand family leave that didn’t pass, and each has put forward plans to do so if they’re elected president (though the plans differ in how they’re financed). So both are, for progressives, on the “right side” of the issue. But only one of them has actually accomplished anything on this, and it isn’t Bernie Sanders.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2016_04/hillarys_establishment_politic060205.php