Favorite new Democratic Senator?

[angus]

At the moment I like Sanders.  He's one of the few senators, Democrat or Republican, who has the balls to tell the truth about the housing market.  He says it isn't the government's job to bail individuals or corporations out of loans that shouldn't have been made in the first place.  This is a huge issue for me.  Any congressman or senator who votes to spend my money buying anyone a house they couldn't afford, or bailing any company out for making loans to people with no verifiable income and little or no money down, will lose my respect.  My own congressman, Bruce Braley, thinks the government should "do something" about falling house prices to prevent mortgage foreclosures.  I do not.  Hopefully Sanders can convince more of his colleagues that an adjustment is necessary and the lessons it'll teach investors is something valuable that you can only get in the school of real-world decision-making.

[angus]

prune-faced resentful 'individualist morality'

"resentful"

I'll accept that charge.  I do resent it.  And so, apparently, does your Number Two favorite senator.

"prune-faced"

Not so sure about that one.  I don't even know what the hell it means.  But I have seen prunes--as a matter of fact I saw three of them today.  my son loves them.  dates too, for that matter--and I'm not quite so wrinkled and not quite so dark as they are. 

"individualist morality"

sure, why not?  That's Lockean.  Actually, I was thinking about individualism vis-a-vis socialism just today.  I had read something about the Tihuantinsuyu, and the Inca.  And I thought about how hard it'd be to have true socialism in any Western society.  Even Cubans and Ukranians and Czechs were never truly socialist.  I'm not sure I can label "individualist morality" as good or bad, but it's part of who we are.  Certainly part of who you are, judging by your posts and rants, so it's a tad paradoxical that you'd knock it.

[angus]

Neither is Sanders!

I thought his inclusion was strange too.  Then I realized that the thread isn't using the phrase "New Democrat" the way Clinton and Gore used it in the 90s.  I think here "new" just means "recently elected, for the first time, to the US senate"

Also, I think Sanders actually is an "Independent" (but someone already pointed out that his committee assignments, etc., are those that the Democrat caucus gives him.