We’ve seen it all before. In fact, I’ve seen it up close.

Back in the early 1970s, at the wizened age of 22, I dropped out of college for a while to join a Marxist-Leninist political action group called the Young Socialist Alliance. Based in New York, I became what that era’s media scornfully referred to as an “outside agitator,” someone who gravitated to universities at which he wasn’t enrolled to help organize student protests.

But my most vivid memory of that period originated in a Burlington, Vermont apartment. It was the home of Bernie Sanders, the now-aging US senator, former presidential contender, and much-ballyhooed ideological father of the “democratic socialist” movement currently invading America. Back then, however, he was just an unknown young radical running for governor.

We were watching the pre-taped broadcast of Bernie’s first-ever television appearance when suddenly he jumped up, angrily shaking a fist at himself on the screen. “That guy looks like the village idiot!” he roared in his now-famous lower-middle-class Brooklyn accent. “I........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)