When was the last time you Yanks didn't elect some old bastard?
Also, i'd like to point out that while Sanders is good for the United States, he's got his own set of issues if elected. He's a massive supporter of US imperialism, and has supported policies which undermine American education, such as the Murphy Amendment on EaSE act. Furthermore, he's done little for the socialist cause as a whole. IMO Sanders is a social democrat, not a socialist, and his labelling as a "socialist" just goes to show that he's more of a populist than anything else.
Why would the Murphy Amendment have undermined education? The only negative I really see is the typical Libertarian talking point of federal overreach. However, education, from instructional methods to the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed, are pretty universal... Without a standard, or some sensible minimum requirements, you'll have some states excel, but also many fail. Unlike many state-level issues, a poor early education is immensely damaging to a child's future success; essentially,
a better childhood education results in improved adulthood.
I disagree with current success metrics, accountability, and funding methods for schools, and so far the federal government has done little to improve these aspects, but states have done no better. A solid public education system is one of the most important services a government can provide to children, and in turn, the future generations. If you leave such a critical issue to states, you'll get massive disparities in quality of education and put more burden on other agencies when federal involvement is necessary (such as upholding civil rights). Even now, there's many states that fight tooth and nail to teach "intelligent design" as a plausible theory alongside evolution, and just recently,
Texas schools are now rewriting history to fit their policymaker's biased, conservative viewpoints. Without federal governance, this problem will become increasingly worse.
Regarding your point about Sanders being a US imperialist, I found that surprising, so I did a little research.
Does this article do justice on your stance regarding Sanders' imperialism? In any case, I noticed he tended to vote only for bills that had minimal ground involvement, such as the 2001 bill. His anti-visa stance makes sense when you consider corporations abusing it to essentially import workers to
replace qualified American employees. Funnily enough, pro-globalization (typically a Republican stance) or pro-immigration (typically a Democrat stance), you are essentially introducing the same core issue, forcing Americans to compete with the global workforce, for good or bad, and neither group of policymakers wants to deal with the side effects of their policies.
To be honest, I do not have a problem with the idea of US imperialism (in the sense of protecting our interests abroad). In theory, the US is a pioneering country, ahead of its time from its inception. What we (as a country) stand for was unmatched until relatively recently, and still remains superior in many ways (top one off my head is the broad definition of freedom of speech; hate speech laws, common in many European countries, are unconstitutional, among others, which is incredibly important from a freedom standpoint). In practice, we do plenty of horrible things (recently you have outright constitutional violations with the NSA, shady deals with rebels, invasion of Iraq under false pretenses, so on and so on).
But what other country could hope to stem a more malicious superpower-to-be? For example, China has immense interest in supporting Africa. I would go as far to say as they have better relations with Africa than the US does today. Yet, China is by no means a champion of human rights or freedoms, in words or actions--and they are the most viable future superpower. China is by no means USSR, but their policies are in direct opposition to Western ideals.
Even though Dos Passos wrote his image of the US some 80 years past, I still hold it to be true and an excellent summary of what our country stands for, and post an excerpt here: "U.S.A. is the slice of a continent. U.S.A. is a group of holding companies, some aggregations of trade unions, a set of laws bound in calf, a radio network, a chain of moving picture theatres, a column of stockquotations rubbed out and written in by a Western Union boy on a blackboard, a public-library full of old newspapers and dogeared historybooks with protests scrawled on the margin in pencil. U.S.A. is the world's greatest rivervalley fringed with mountains and hills, U.S.A. is a set of bigmouthed officials with too many bankaccounts. U.S.A. is a lot of men buried in their uniforms in Arlington Cemetery. U.S.A. is the letters at the end of an address when you are away from home. But mostly U.S.A. is the speech of the people."
