Can "Socialist" Sanders make Democrats live up to a liberal agenda?

Senator-elect Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
at his office in Burlington, Vermont
Nov. 28, 2006. {REUTERS/Brian Snyder}

Here's a fascinating story By Jason Szep (from Reuters), which I think highlights the political divide on the Democratic side of the aisle in the new Congress.

"From pressing for hearings on Iraq to probing no-bid contracts awarded to Halliburton Co., America's first socialist senator aims to give Congress a hard tilt to the left.

"Bernie Sanders, a 16-year veteran of the House of Representatives who swept 65 percent of the vote in Vermont running as an independent in the November 7 elections, says Congress owes voters an exhaustive probe into the White House.

"'It is time to ask some hard questions. Why did we go into Iraq and what did the president know and when did he know it,' Sanders said in an interview in his Burlington office on a hillside above Lake Champlain near Canada's border.

"'The war in Iraq has been an absolute disaster and it's absolutely imperative that America never again goes that route. That's why we have to ask those questions,' he said."

These are obviously the questions that any self-respecting Congress (Democratic or Republican) would ask. Why does it require a "socialist" to make them do their job?

Oh wait, maybe there's an answer.


"Sanders has voted with Democrats in the House since his first election in 1990 and plans to continue to do so in the Senate, where his vote is needed for Democrats to keep its slim 51-49 majority. Democrats ran no candidate against him in this year's election.

"His views described as democratic socialist underscore tension in the new Democratic-controlled Congress between urges to confront and investigate President George W. Bush's administration and to govern from the middle while refraining from the most controversial elements on the liberal agenda."

So, in other words, there's going to be a steel-cage match between the right-wing Democrats (led by independent-Democrat Joe Lieberman and the Democratic Leadership Council) and "the liberal agenda" of independent socialist Bernie Sanders. Well, it's going to be interesting.
Perhaps most interesting will be on which side of this political divide the potential Democratic presidential candidates will fall.


(The article is also available at CommonDreams.org news center)