Originally Posted by Josef K

Let's just remember that Bernie Sanders is a firmly establishment figure at this point - him being powerful and getting things done relies on his affiliation with the Democratic party, and he's not going to practically ask to be kicked out of the Senate caucus which grants him his committee assignments. In addition such a run would massively hurt his credibility not just with the party, but with the public.


That's because super PACs weren't an issue - like, nobody had ever even used the term - until the Citizens United and SpeechNow decisions in 2010, which also opened the door to increased corporate influence in politics. While of course corporate influence has been an issue forever, unlimited (and anonymous) corporate campaign contributions weren't allowed until the former decision. There have been lots of politicians who care a lot about lobbying reform, but that's way less appealing than "the Koch brothers are buying elections!" and it never had nearly the political support that generically pro-campaign finance reform sentiment does now - see what I said above about Sanders being a fairly savvy politician.

In addition I just don't think it's true that Sanders has momentum. I think that largely you're seeing people looking for someone to talk about other than Hillary and landing on Bernie, because the other pointless candidates are not only pointless but boring (Martin O'Malley might actually be the dullest person alive, and his trying to solve this by constantly posing with his guitar isn't helping matters), which is one thing that Sanders is definitely not. And even if he were experiencing some kind of surge in numbers right now that could reasonably lead you to believe he could compete with Clinton (although, for the record, he is not and could not), he still lacks the kind of infrastructure and the kind of institutional support a candidate needs to get nominated. What's more, there's no evidence that any gains he's making are plausible reasons why he could win the nomination, any more than Herman Cain's brief surge in the 2011/2012 election cycle meant he had a real shot at beating Romney.

In short, I like Bernie Sanders well enough but he has no chance at this election and it's foolish to vote for him - that said, I'm glad he'll be in the debates, because hopefully Clinton will make some promises to do progressive things to win over his audience.