...& international. His instincts in every instance are humanitarian and progressive--FOR the advancement of the human race and the people of our country toward a decent life for all, whether the issue is jobs or health care or education or the responsiveness of the political system.
He noticed it, when a Japanese company was thinking of setting up shop in VT and wondered if the children of their employees would receive as good an education in VT as they would in Japan. He tucked that into his brain and looked around him in the U.S. and saw the deterioration of our educational system under Reagan.
One of the things I love about him is his LOCAL experience--running a city, expanding participation of the people in their local government, working with others to solve everyday problems, bringing creative solutions to problems, always with his antennae out there to find out what people need and what they are willing to work together to accomplish.
It's so great that a presidential candidate has gained this sense of how things at the local level work--because this is where democracy happens, not on MSNBC nor on the pages of the NYT, but in YOUR TOWN. And all that time--before he was a Congressman and a Senator--he was thinking of the international implications of what they did in Burlington and what our government was doing. He reached out to the Leningrad children's choir and brought them right into Burlington to sing with Burlington's kids. He reached out to Nicaragua at a time when Reagan's 'contra' thugs were murdering teachers and mayors, and created a sister city program to increase understanding. He traveled to Canada to investigate their wonderful medical system first hand.
And, yes, almost all of the things he was noticing then and trying to remedy locally have grown worse around the country, under both Reagan and subsequent presidents, and perhaps worst of all (though he couldn't have envisioned it then) under Clinton, when our financial system was de-requlated and "free trade for the rich" began our downward spiral to economic collapse in 2008. But he did envision it in a general sense. He was talking at that time about the need for a third party, and the Jackson Rainbow Coalition, because, even then, the Democratic Party leadership had failed us and failed us miserably, in their inept opposition to Reagan "trickle down" economics or in their outright collusion and corruption. He could see it then. He could see where it was going. And he was looking for remedies.
I'm glad he chose the route of running for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, rather than forming a third party which would likely have failed. This way, he can RENOVATE the party that has abandoned us, and RESTORE the "big tent" party of FDR. Even President Obama has been unable to control Democratic Party corporatism. Recently, Clinton's operative at the DNC lifted Obama's cap on the amount of corporate money that the DNC could accept--and did this to favor Clinton, who is dependent on that kind of money. So much for even a modest limit on corporate influence!
The Democratic Party needs strong leadership in the FDR direction! Bernie Sanders is the man to do it because he has stood his ground against Reagan greed and Clinton corporatism for decades now. He understands the situation in our party and in our country inside and out, bottom to top.
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