One thing Bernie’s supporters love to say about him is that he’s consistent. And they’re not wrong. With minor tweaks, he’s been saying the same thing for decades. He means it, too. Puts his back into it. Talks mad shit, as they say. Fastest finger-wag in the west.
The problem is, that’s all he does: talk shit.
Bernie Sanders has been in Congress nearly 30 years. Thirty fucking years. That’s longer than most of his supporters have been alive, I’m guessing. And in all that time, he has enacted merely seven bills.
Seven.
Seven bills for which he was the primary sponsor became law. Two of those were for the naming of post offices.
Now, you’re probably not a member of Congress. I am not a member of Congress. So let me wrap some context around that number to make it easier to understand. Here’s a simple graphic I made back when all these people were still vying for the Democratic nomination. (Never thought I’d miss those days, by the way, but here we are.) Since all of these people have been in Congress for varying lengths of time, I designed this so we can see their yearly average. Apples to apples.
Well, would you look at that? Out of all the candidates, Sanders enacted the fewest bills, 0.24 per year. Most of the rest had one per year. That’s a solid number. I don’t know what the overall average of Congress or even the Senate is, but I do know that someone who is asking to be put in the position of leader of this land I love for four to eight years should absolutely not be trailing behind Tulsi “Toenail Eater” Gabbard.
Because if he can’t write legislation solid enough to become law, if he can’t build coalitions with other members of Congress—and he can’t; the man isn’t well-liked or respected by his peers—if he can’t make the compromises that must be made for a bill to get all the way through both houses of Congress and signed by the president, then how in the hell are we supposed to believe that all that do-nothing history will magically change if he were elected president?
It wouldn’t. And his big socialist ideas would go exactly where they have gone for the past three decades: nowhere.
