Barny Frank on Bernie Sanders
It didn't take long for Bernie Sanders, who was new to Congress in 1991, to frustrate the very people with whom he might have collaborated.
"Bernie alienates his natural allies," then-Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) told the Los Angeles Times just months after Sanders first took federal office. "His holier-than-thou attitude — saying in a very loud voice he is smarter than everyone else and purer than everyone else — really undercuts his effectiveness."
Frank tempered that assessment just a few months later: "Collegiality didn't come easily," he told the Times. "But he now fits in. He's very much an outsider, but not an outsider in the sense that he is isolated."
Yet, a quarter-century later, Frank's criticism of Sanders endures.
Why has it been so hard for a fellow liberal from New England to get behind Sanders? It's not his principles, Frank said, but rather his approach.
“Is pragmatism the opposite of idealism? Or is pragmatism a necessary adjunct to idealism?” Frank, a strong Hillary Clinton supporter, said in a Tuesday interview with The Washington Post.
"I think Bernie Sanders tends to have the approach, 'Don't be pragmatic, state your ideals, state what you think is the right policy and be very wary of compromise and of accepting less than you want,'" he said, echoing comments he made on MSNBC the night before. "My view has been to fight hard for the leftward, most achievable results."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/04/06/the-case-against-bernie-sanders-according-to-barney-frank/
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