First, my thanks to Thom and to Senator Senators for the (rare) honesty you bring to public discourse. Second, I’ve said for years that Senator Sanders would be an ideal president, so I was thrilled this morning to discover there’s a “Draft Bernie” movement. I hope it’s okay to cite the link here, for others who’d like to sign on: http://draftberniesanders2012.org.

Now for my rant of the moment. Hearing people (sadly including Senator Sanders) speak of “shared sacrifice” is making me crazy. I wish progressives would work from the premise that the working people of this country ALREADY GAVE. Not one cent more should be wrung out of ordinary citizens who earn less in real terms than they did in 1970 and work much longer and harder to get it; who pay more for the essentials of life (disguised by cooked inflation statistics); who lost jobs, benefits, homes, businesses and savings to the "free" trade boondoggle and a series of financial bubbles that made the rich far richer; and in the past decade were bilked out of trillions that were shoveled at war profiteers and bailed-out banksters.

The transnational grillionaire class has robbed working people around the world for 40 years. Now that we have to borrow from them so heavily (due to failure to tax them fairly, plus ruinous wars and bailouts), they've turned to deficit extortion in hope of eliminating every program that actually benefits taxpayers! They want it ALL -- and expect us to doff our hats to them again and politely beg for nothing more than "shared sacrifice" on their part. This is total bull, especially as they continue deliberately bringing down companies, currencies and entire countries via their insane derivatives casino -- where the bets total more than all the money that exists and most cases have no insurable basis. Expecting taxpayers to turn those worthless paper bets into real profits was a crime. So is paying any heed whatever to crooked rating agencies that collude with the banksters (and could be easily put out of business, if our own investment regulations didn’t make us their captives).

Both my son and I, life-long Democrats who ALWAYS voted in the past, will never vote again for any politician who’s willing to cut American social programs that are already laughably inadequate by contrast to those of any other advanced nation. Until Democrats start acting like Democrats again – or wonderful progressives like Senator Sanders offer a genuine alternative – we’re unlikely to vote at all. It would be better for Republicans to win, so people will wake up faster to the need for REAL change. President Obama has gotten away with more of the same old mischief than George Bush could have. That’s because people understood what Bush was, whereas Obama confuses them. He should – indeed, must – be primaried.