Despite what Republicans say, the Democratic party isn’t like the Communist party where you have to declare total party loyalty. It’s always been an unruly coalition of special interests since it’s inception as the Democratic-Republican party in 1799. Some special interests have bailed, others have joined, but the dynamic has always been the same. It’s a big tent. It’s within my living memory when politicians who supported segregation and states’ rights caucused with politicians who kindled and propelled the Civil Rights Movement and politicians who were instrumental in preserve the welfare state enacted by the New Deal and the Great Society.

Sanders gets a lot of flack for criticizing the Democratic establishment, but this is exactly what neoliberals/Third Wayers did when they supplanted New Deal/Great Society Democrats. It’s how the party evolves.

Sanders—whose policies are a spiritual continuation of the New Deal that was so recklessly abandoned by the neoliberals—is one of our own.