[jmalicki]

And how has that changed anything?

If he was not able to change policy in any way as a Senator, how would he be able to do so as a President?

He can veto a bill then get it overridden. He has already proven 100% he lets the more conservative parts of Congress walk all over him - he can have the best ideas in the world but that won't change a thing.

If you want someone to make people discuss ideas - great, you can be at a think tank. The point of electing someone to political office is to get bills passed, so that things actually change.

[culi]

Name any other politician that has galvanized the youth the way Bernie did

[yabutlivnWoods]

Your claim is his acting as a voice for America abroad has not benefited the US?

"Walk all over..." when he is clearly out numbered not just in Congress but by voters. You want him to show up with a flamethrower and show what he's really made of?

You're not at all engaged in a sincere discussion. Coming off like an intentional astroturfer just out to propagate Bernie hate

Don't get me wrong I am not a Bernie Bro. Just aware there is a world outside him working against him this whole time too.

[jmalicki]

He can do that without being an elected congressman.

If you are elected to congress, your job is to get bills passed.

If you like his politics, there are other people like Elizabeth Warren that have remarkably similar political positions, yet are some of the most highly effective politicians in the sense of enacting policy.

Oh, but she is a woman. So better support Bernie instead.

The conspiracy of people who hate the left are the ones who prop of Bernie, because he is a joke. The more the left supports Bernie, the more people like Warren struggle to get elected, and the authoritarian likes that because Warren is actually a formidable foe, so they want to prop up ineffective people like Bernie instead.

[lapcat]

> If you are elected to congress, your job is to get bills passed.

This is a vast oversimplification. Your job is to represent your consistuents. In many cases, this means your job is to stop bills from getting passed, especially in the current political situation.

> The more the left supports Bernie, the more people like Warren struggle to get elected

This is a very strange take. Sanders and Warren are mostly close allies and rarely compete. Both are successfully elected Senators, from separate states. Warren declined to run for President in 2016 and appeared to be supporting Sanders. In 2020 they both ran for President, but guess what, neither one of them won the Democratic nomination. In any case, it's important to recognize that elections are popularity contests and not competency tests, as should be obvious from our current President.

The issue is not even "the left." Sanders is more popular than Warren, indeed more popular than almost any politician of any party (including male politicians, if you insist on making this about gender), among political independents. Because of his popularity among independents, he's the most popular politician in the US and would have a better chance of winning the Presidency than any Democrat (of any gender), but the Democrats nonetheless refuse to nominate him. If Warren were equally popular among independents, then Democrats should nominate her, but she's not. Of course this lack of popularity among independents is not specific to Warren: most non-Democrats dislike Democrats.

In 2016, Sanders put up an unexpectedly stiff challenge to Clinton, who was considered an overwhelming frontrunner at the beginning of the race. The natural next step for the left would be to build on that momentum and push Sanders over the top in 2020. In my opinion, it's quite delusional to expect that the left would for some bizarre reason abandon Sanders in 2020 and throw their support behind Warren instead. That would make little sense. Why start over from scratch? In any case, I doubt that Warren would have fared better. The establishment doesn't want a leftist, no matter who, and they quickly conspired to consolidate around Biden, who didn't even pick Warren as his running mate.