As Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders watches his Presidential hopes fade, supporters are rushing to defend him. Though he has never campaigned as a Democrat in his entire career, he expected Democrats to embrace him because he always caucused with them in Congress; instead, he is a Democrat-Socialist campaigning for the nomination in the same party as a guy who got a standing ovation for killing Osama Bin Laden and will leave office with America in three wars and who let the AquAdvantage salmon get approved. That is going to be a struggle for acceptance in mainstream America when they see a guy coming from a state that says GMOs must have warning labels and has actively campaigned against the very thing the sitting President is taking credit for improving - the economy.

Regardless, academics who side with the views of Sanders are staying the course, insisting he is "resonating with many Americans" (well, so did Lyndon LaRouche and George Wallace one time) and that he gave "one of the landmark speeches of the 2016 election" (what??) when he explained that his socialism was somehow good for the public who invariably already pay for far more from government than they ever get.

Comparisons to Franklin Roosevelt that he always makes also don't work very well - because by doing so he is comparing President Obama (the guy leading the party whose nomination he is trying to win) to Herbert Hoover (a Republican) when he does that. He doesn't see it, of course, which is why he is lucky to live in a tiny state that likes wacky. In a real election, though, he would lose as many states as Mondale.

Still, he and a dozen Republicans have made this the most interesting pre-primary season since the 1980 election, when a booze-addled Senator ran against the sitting President in his own party.