All the way to the convention, Bernie!

[karynnj]

92. Were you troubled in the least by his press conference?

I waited a few hours trying to define what made me so negative on the last part of the conference where he addressed Joe Biden on all the issues. Typical campaign -- could be, but why did it make me uncomfortable?

I think I can articulate why. His questions took HIS version of every Democratic goal implying that if Biden could not say he would and could achieve that -- it was a problem. The entire laundry list was basically everything Democrats, including Biden, have fought for for decades - all stated as if Biden were against them.

It ignores that Biden actually worked in the Obama administration for many of these. ACA, which Sanders essentially trashes, was a big deal - and it was something that could easily have failed - as it did many times before. Why did Obama not get M4A - Bernie Sanders himself noted at that time that there were only about 10 Senators who would vote for it.

Another issue is that Sanders leaped on "The Green New Deal" leading some activist groups to give him an A+ on the issue. Yet, he was not in the forefront of this at any time in the House (Markey was) or in the Senate. As to Biden - the Obama administration worked hard on three fronts. 1) They tried to get legislation, but failed in the Senate even though Kerry and Boxer did get a group of Republicans behind it - they could not get some coal state Democrats, some progressives - even when Sherrod Brown was behind it and worked to get provisions to help those states. 2) Without legislation other than an amendment to a bigger bill improving car standards, they did a huge amount through the EPA with two excellent EPA heads (Jackson and Gina McCarthy). 3) Led by John Kerry they managed to get almost every country to sign onto the Paris Accord. Compared to this what did Sanders do - Bubkis!

This could get very long going issue by issue, but the point is that Sanders characterization of the issues - implicitly placing himself for and Biden against is completely dishonest. It also ignores that Sanders is smart enough to know that the changes that he and Biden want are in the same direction and that he was completely unlikely to be able to get the things he demands from Biden from Congress.