>There is Bernie Sanders - who is running as a Democrat, but I think he falls more in line with the independents.
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>ROFL and LOL!!! I am sure that you would see him as an independent. Just tell me where he is going to get the money to pay for all of his freebies. Yep - it is awfully hard to compete with Santa Clause...

The only reason I see his kinda as an independent is because he's really more of a socialist than a democrat. He can get the funds to pay for his ideas by taxing the rich and big corporations pay their fair share in taxes and closing all the loopholes. While his ideas are progressive, they're not outlandish or impractical. Part of the problem is that a top priority of the wealthy is reducing their tax burden and that they largely prefer, unlike a majority of the general public, to cut spending rather than raise taxes as pointed out very well here: http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~jnd260/cab/CAB2012%20-%20Page1.pdf
The naysayers claim he's talking about a redistribution of wealth - but one has to remember that over the past 30 or 40 years we've already had a huge redistribution of wealth in this country - it all went to the rich - which is also where almost all of the new wealth goes right now. Sander's concepts will work and they've worked in the past - look at Franklin Roosevelt as a prime example of this. Personally I would rather see my tax dollars spent on sending kids to college rather than sending them to prison - and what you call a freebie actually pays for itself in time and makes society a better place for everyone to boot.