Bernie Anderson: Fill & Download for Free

I don’t think you will ever see Bernie Sanders on a third-party line, for one simple reason—if he ever does, he will guarantee victory for whoever the Republican candidate is.Bernie might lure a few otherwise GOP voters, the ones who vote for Trump simply because he is not part of the Establishment, but that is a very, very small part of the electorate. Most anti-Establishment voters are left-leaning and a lot of Trump’s policies are anathema to them. For the most part, Bernie appeals to people who consistently vote Democratic. He is officially an independent, but in reality, he is the standard-bearer for the “social-democratic” wing of the Democratic Party.And if he runs as a third-party candidate, whether it be as a Green, or an independent, or as the candidate of the Bernie Bros Party, he’s going to carry off a substantial portion of the otherwise Democratic vote. A lot of Bernie’s supporters don’t care about the Democratic Party—they believe in Bernie Sanders, and will follow him wherever he goes.Every vote he took with him as a third-party candidate is going to count against the Democratic candidate. That won’t matter in California, or in New York, or in Illinois, or in a few other states. But it’s going to matter in Florida, and in Ohio, and in North Carolina, and even in Pennsylvania and Minnesota. If he took even five percent of the Democratic vote in swing states, then you’re looking at an electoral map something like this:Basically, anything that is even remotely close is going to the Republicans. The Democrats would be forced to not only fight the GOP candidate, they would be forced to fight Bernie. In fact, they’d have to fight Bernie more, because most GOP voters already have their minds made up and there’s nothing that will change it. They would have to win back the Bernie vote and the undecided voters all at once, and they can’t. The last candidate who won an election despite a split in his own party was Harry Truman, 72 years ago. And Joe Biden is no Harry Truman! (You can argue for John Anderson leaving the GOP to run as an independent in 1980, but he took more votes from Carter than Reagan.)Even if they clawed back some of Bernie’s supporters, I think the best-case outcome would something like a repeat of 2016, and that does the Democrats, or Bernie, no good either.Bernie knows all of this. He knows he can’t win a third-party run. He also knows if he does, he assures victory for the GOP, and right now that means another four years of Donald Trump, a man he dislikes more than an average Republican. And he thinks Trump is very, very bad for his constituents—even worse than a candidate like Hillary.So he will not run as a third-party candidate.

From your Fox News article: "We're very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba but you know, it's unfair to simply say everything [about Cuba] is bad. You know? When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing? Even though Fidel Castro did it?" Sanders told Anderson Cooper.Bernie’s right again. And we have to stop thinking as if we all have Borderline Personality Disorder, where everything is either all-the-way right or all-the-way wrong, good or bad, black or white. All systems, even the one in Iran, even the one in Syria, even the one in North Korea, have a few good parts. They all do. That’s what Bernie is saying.He’s 100% correct, and continuing to paint such open-minded thinking as wrong or as unAmerican only serves to perpetuate the mess we’re in.

Bernie Madoff.Bernie had an impeccable reputation.He was the Chairman of NASDAQ for a number of years.He ran a legitimate business as one of the largest market-makers on NASDAQ.Former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt at one point asked Madoff for help developing regulatory policy.He sat on the board of the Securities Industry Association.His son Peter held two terms on the SIFMA board (Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association).Bernie's niece was also on SIFMA and later married an SEC official, Eric Swanson.The man had a great resume and reputation in the industry up until the exposure of his scheme.