Bernie Sanders was elected to Congress from Vermont, I think, eight times before being elected to the Senate in 2006, “becoming the first non-Republican elected to Vermont's Class 1 seat since Whig Solomon Foot in 1850.” He was then re-elected three more times.

To suggest that the rather conservative voters in Vermont elected a communist in something like a dozen elections, as letter writer Chris Brant does (“Why I think Bernie Sanders is a Communist”) is pretty insulting to them. Brant goes on to say that Eugene Debs was a “Communist Revolutionary” and was “jailed for espionage,” which is a scurrilous misreading of history. In 1912 Debs, while running for president, received over 900,000 votes, putting him ahead of President William Howard Taft and former President Teddy Roosevelt. In 1920, while he was in jail – not for espionage, but for sedition; that was, speaking out against President Wilson’s World War I policies.

Wilson had run for President as a peace candidate. Ask yourself, “What was WWI about anyway?” and I suspect that if you find out you might have been opposed to it, too. Chris Brant begins his letter writing, “I’m not for name calling.” Perhaps he should heed his own advice? 

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