Michael Brenner is a professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

to read his article "Bernie Sanders - Halfway There" published on 8/10/2015, click on

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-brenner/bernie-sanders-halfway-th_b_7965644.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592

"No, not to the nomination, much less the White House. What Sanders has done is to establish himself as a force in the Democratic Party's selection process. He has done so by demonstrating two qualities that have largely disappeared from America's political life over the past few decades. One is conviction and intellectual honesty. The other is articulate statement of a progressive creed that was the party's heart and soul when it dominated the country's electoral life, before lapsing into the "me-too" wing of our current Establishment uniparty. Sanders, thereby, has flinted a spark of life into those nominally liberal circles whose lazy and complacent inertia had led them to declare the compromised Hillary Clinton as their latest champion.

None of this was foreseen by the commentators and strategists who set the tone for our political discourse. Their domination of the electronic airways generates the Washington Consensus that few dare dispute. That consensus is invariably wrong - on almost every matter of electoral and policy consequences. They boast a record of unrelieved obtuseness that does nothing to undermine their authority in delimiting what or who qualifies for "serious" discussion.

The "experts," in their typical blinkered way, overlooked or grossly underestimated some stark truths. Most Americans are poorer today than they were 45 years ago..."