The Democratic debate revealed Sanders’ true strength In politics, it’s character that counts
Bernie Sanders was the clear winner in the first debate among candidates for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. And it wasn’t because he is more “likable” than the front-runner, Hillary Clinton. He won because he is more honest.
Bernie Sanders was the only candidate who wasn't visibly resentful of Cooper’s confrontational tone. When pressed on gun control, the only issue on which Sanders is assailable from the left, he was honest and open about his record on guns — a record for which many on the left will fault him — and open about his reasons for voting no on the 1993 Brady bill, which sought to impose background checks on firearm sales. He represents a rural state, he explained, and voted the way his constituents wanted him to. He has also become a bigger proponent of gun control in recent years, supporting a bill to ban semi-automatic weapons and another to require background checks for people who buy firearms at gun shows (this won him a D- rating from the NRA — respectable, by liberal standards.)
Bernie Sanders says what he thinks. He doesn't waffle because he doesn’t have to. He doesn't have to work to sound genuine; he is genuine. The reason he doesn't have to practice telling jokes or workshop his laugh is that he's tapping into real anger: the anger people feel after decades of stagnant wages; the anger they feel as they're being interred in mountains of debt; the anger born from watching people who already have so much take more while the rest of us accept less and less; the anger that fueled the Occupy Wall Street movement.
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/10/how-the-democratic-debate-revealed-sanders-true-strength.html
