But one of the infuriating things about the Sanders movement is that people treat him as being more honest, more genuine, and more "pure" than other politicians, when in fact his career has been built on careful manipulation of interest groups (you might even say, "special interests") just like any other politician. And the will of those interest groups, as reflected in his stated policy positions for this very campaign, are not all in the best interests for the country or the world, as it appears most of the people in this thread would agree.

Though it's obviously a bit of a postjack, I'm taking this opportunity to remind people that nobody gets a perfect candidate. We've seen people in OKP pretend it's a disqualifying sin that Hillary Clinton only proposes to raise the federal minimum wage by 66%, instead of by 107%; or that her plan for regulating the financial industry, though overall more comprehensive and more relevant to the actual crises of today, doesn't come along with unfulfillable promises of putting bankers in jail and splitting up banks whether or not they pose risks to the economy.

There really are imperfections in Hillary Clinton's platform. But there are imperfections in Bernie's platform as well, and I wish people were more willing to admit them. It's not fundamentally that Bernie tried, decades ago, to sell his "hippy dippy" friends a story about cancer being cured by sexual liberation. I don't expect him to block cancer research on those grounds any more than I expect Hillary Clinton to go out rounding up "superpredators." But if we can be disturbed by what part of her intellectual makeup motivated Clinton to raise the latter line of thinking, we can also be disturbed by what part of Bernie's makeup motivated him to raise the former.

Nowadays most people think science is something fun to talk or argue about. But I don't think people admit, really, how vitally important it is for the running of our government and the structure of our society. It's not there to be appreciated, it's there to be used. Even in this very thread, the consensus seems to be: all this stuff is settled, CaptainRook is a funny rube, but he's just an isolated nut and we can all feel satisfied in our superiority. But there are people all over the country who hold to beliefs just as irrational as his with regard to scientific issues, and in the Democratic race, they support Bernie Sanders almost universally, because as a politician he intentionally chose to fill that niche.

If Bernie Sanders became president, I would worry about the future of nuclear power (and by extension, the climate and energy crises), about regulation of agricultural practices, of biotechnology, of aspects of medical research. I'd worry about the mainstreaming of the anti-fracking movement, which could have been built upon reasonable concerns but quickly began to flirt heavily with pseudoscience. In general, I would worry about the left being relegated to just another movement, with just another set of axes to grind with no more justification than its own internal groupthink. When the right gave up any pretense of rationally justifying their positions, they went down the path of the tea party and (hopefully) electoral oblivion. The left should exploit that opening to build the new electoral center. We shouldn't try to emulate it.

If we can be concerned that some fraction of Hillary Clinton's campaign contributions came from people who've worked on Wall Street, then we should also be concerned that some fraction of Bernie Sanders's campaign contributions came from people who think vaccines cause diseases.