I thought redbaiting went out of fashion with the demise of the Soviet Union 30 years ago, but I see someone named Jake Pickering, who hails from California, has a letter in the January 29 Southern Ulster Times (and in how many other small-town weeklies around the nation, I wonder?) purporting to be a Democrat concerned about Bernie Sanders’s electability but, it would seem, more interested in spewing his venom about Sanders’s supposed “anti-American” “far-Left Marxist” views from many decades ago, going as far back as the early 1960s in his attempt to dredge up dirt.

Sanders is essentially a New Deal-type reformer, but with a passion for doing something serious about the Climate Crisis and related environmental disasters that were not even on the radar in Franklin Roosevelt’s day. And like Roosevelt, Sanders is viscerally opposed to Fascism and racist scapegoating, which, unlike Mr. Pickering’s Communist bogeyman, are once again real and present dangers through much of the world, from Modi’s India to Bolsonaro’s Brazil to Trump’s U.S. of A.

I think the American electorate will focus on Sanders’s exemplary public service over decades as a mayor, congressman and senator. And they will care less about whatever indiscretions might have colored Sanders’s youth than about the threats posed today by that lying, pussy-grabbing, dictator-loving narcissist and plutocrat currently occupying the White House.

Staying strictly with the issue of electability: Each one of the Democratic candidates has certain unique assets and liabilities. Bernie’s assets include his personal integrity and his passion and consistency during his long career in public office, his ability to inspire thousands of volunteers who’ll be knocking on doors and making those phone calls, his ability to increase turnout among younger voters and his truly remarkable fundraising ability.