Let's make this very clear regarding the media, Donald Trump and Senator Sanders:

And let me first preface this with the fact that--as one might guess from my avatar--Bernie Sanders is not my first choice for the Democratic nomination. In fact, depending on whether or not Vice President Biden decides to enter the race, he may not even be my second or third choice, either. That said, I have nothing but the utmost respect for Senator Sanders and if in fact he does win the nomination I will do all I can to see that he is elected President. My somewhat dampened expectations for his electoral prospects if he is nominated should not in any way be confused with any sort of unwillingness to advocate for him in the event he is our nominee.

But I've become quite annoyed by the attempts by the media to frame Senator Sanders as the Democratic/liberal counterpart to Donald Trump.

Yes, they both have drawn significant crowds lately. Yes, they both have followers who are actively advocating for them over social media. Yes, they both represent an alternative to their respective party's establishment candidates.

But that's it. That's all they have in common. Senator Sanders has served the public for almost 35 years now. He proposes concrete, specific positions in legislation and policy. By all indications, he speaks his genuine beliefs with little to no political pandering. To be a self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist is not an easy thing to do in America, and yet he's done it and managed to survive politically.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, is a clown, a buffoon, a shameless opportunist, and a textbook case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. He's a self-entitled, self-righteous but very far from self-made billionaire who combines all the snootiness of Old Money with all the tackiness of New Money. He's never served the public a single day in his life. Since declaring his candidacy for the presidency, he's not proposed a single concrete, common sense idea and spends most of his time name-calling and intentionally causing conflicts with people who aren't even running for president. From his casinos to his airline to his vodka to his bottled water to his marriages, he's left a long legacy of failure despite being able to selfishly protect his own personal assets while the people who worked for him lost their shirts.

Yes, they've both carved their niche as the Establishment Alternative candidate of their respective parties, but that's it.

The media claiming they are two sides of the same coin is about as honest as saying that besides their skin color, Martin Luther King Jr. and Adolph Hitler were very similar because they both had two eyes, two ears, a nose and a mouth and could give a powerful speech.

(Cross posted from GD......I rarely go in GD: P because I hate all the intra-party squabbling but I figured this might be relevant here as well.)