A bit more about my political worldview, so you'll know where I'm coming from.

First, my worldview changes, as either the facts or my grasp of them changes. People who admire Bernie because his politics hasn't changed since the 60s are to my mind revealing more than they intend.

Having said that, my politics have always leaned left rather than right. (I flirted with an oposing view in my teens reading early George Will, until I noticed he tended to lie. Oddly the MSM that employs him still hasn't noticed.) But how far left, on what issues and in what way, has evolved.

Let me also note that I have never been a bleeding heart liberal, because my heart does not easily bleed. In fact by temperament I ought to be on the Right, since my tastes in culture are almost reactionary (I have never developed a fondness for that roll and rock music, and rap to me is just noise) and I generally prefer animals to people.

On the up side, my misanthropy has prevented me from being racist or avoidably sexist (some unavoidable sexism comes from being a straight male, as in a fondness for nude women on film) because I have too low a regard for our species to find distinctions based on color, gender, or cultural background worth making. No doubt my being a half-Jewish/half-Baptist non-believer also helped keep me from the temptations of religious bigotry: they are all fictions to me, and my concerns about Islamic extremism have everything to do with their actions, and not the particular fictions they believe.

At one time, like Bernie, I called myself a socialist, but I grew out of it when I realized that "democratic socialism" in the west was no longer meaningfully socialist, and that actual socialism had failed everywhere it was tried. Bernie isn't a socialist either, nor are Revolutions voted into power: he is just an extreme liberal with an unfortunate affectation based on a need to feel ethically superior to most Democrats.

I am not anti-Capitalism, as it has proven a remarkable tool for making stuff. But that is all it is, an economic tool, and those who turn it into a religion demented. It is in fact both a tool we can't do without out, and one that has to be kept within strict bounds. Just as a hammer is a good thing until you give it to a four-year old, capitalism is a good thing until you hand it over to capitalists. It needs to be kept under strict observation and control so that it builds rather than smashes everything in site.

"Creative destruction" tends to leave too much destruction, and besides regulation,  I support a strong social safety net, so that capitalism's losers can still leave decent lives. And the rich need to be heavily progressively taxed not just to fund that safety net, but because too much inequality is itself bad for democratic societies.

On foreign policy, I'm unwilling to support the dismantling of the American Empire until I'm sure it won't be replaced by something worse. And post-Vietnam (a war I opposed as a teen) the argument can be made the US caused as many deaths by not intervening in Rwanda or earlier in Yugoslavia or effectively in Syria as has been caused as our interventions in places we should have kept out of such as 2003 in Iraq. I opposed that war not because a monster like Saddam had any legitimacy but because it was obviously a stupid idea that could only cause us to fail in Afghanistan against the people who had harbored those who attacked us on 9/11. I'm not a pacifist, but military action is another dangerous tool that is justified only in extraordinary circumstances.

I also note the Isolationist Right and Left have long been connected: Gore Vidal, after all, was an America Firster, and never renounced that teenage romance.

On Presidents, my first vote was in Nov. 1976 for Carter, though in retrospect I think we would have been better off with Ford, who might have prevented RWR's takeover of the GOP in 1980, or at least his election. I do give RWR some credit for breaking from the Right in his late embrace of Gorbachev, but that's it. But the last Republican who deserved to win over a Democrat without indulging in such counterfactuals was Ike.

Bill Clinton was a mediocre President, but he was also constantly on the defensive, attacked not just by the GOP but by the MSM, and without much support from Dems in Congress. W. was a disaster, though Trump is going to make him look better in retrospect.

Obama was another mediocre President, who unlike Bill Clinton squandered a historic opportunity for liberal change. He promised not to give us a new New Deal and it was a promise he kept. And in Syria his unwillingess to either go in seriously or stay out, instead doing just enough to keep the war going, was a disaster not only for the Syrians but for the West, where the refugees have destablized European politics and provided an opening for Russia's fascist leader.

I believe Hillary would have been a better President than either her husband or Obama, but that, alas, is now a counterfactual as well. There is no question that Trump will be the worst one we've ever had.

As for Bernie: he would have lost without the FBI and FSB interventions that gave us Trump. The proof of that is that he couldn't come anywhere close to winning among the most liberal voting group in the country: voters in the Democratic primary.

Well that's enough for now on where I stand. Any specific questions, feel free to ask.