Would Norman Thomas or Eugene Debs been more effective...

...if they'd run as Democrats?

Many of us who support him against Hillary Clinton now, warned before he declared that, by running as a Democrat instead of an independent, Bernie Sanders risks legitimizing the candidate from Goldman Sachs. Come September 2016, when most voters will be just starting to pay attention to the campaign, he will be either silenced or in the uncomfortable position of supporting a candidate for president he knows will pursue policies against which he has stood for his entire career. As Chris Hedges argues,

If you want change you can believe in, destroy the system. And changing the system does not mean collaborating with it as Bernie Sanders is doing by playing by the cooked rules of the Democratic Party. Profound social and political transformation is acknowledged in legislatures and courts but never initiated there. Radical change always comes from below. As long as our gaze is turned upward to the powerful, as long as we invest hope in reforming the system of corporate power, we will remain enslaved. There may be good people within the system -- Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are examples -- but that is not the point. It is the system that is rotten. It must be replaced.

The rest of the story: Make the Rich Panic by Chris Hedges (TruthDig).