By Selwyn Duke

“So what does it say about our country that a candidate who is a self-avowed socialist … could be the Democratic nominee?” asked moderator Maria Bartiromo at Thursday’s GOP presidential debate. She was, of course, referring to Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who now leads Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire primary polling. And his rise says nothing good about our country — or about Clinton.

As for Clinton, she just might be having flashbacks. In 2008, she was the presumptive Democrat nominee, poised to make history as our first female president. Instead, Barack Obama, four years after he said he was too inexperienced to run in four years, became the man the media was looking for and made some history of his own. Now Clinton’s dreams may be dashed again, this time by a candidate who’s as different from Obama superficially as he’s similar substantively. Sanders is old, more wizened than wise, in an age of youth; and he’s a white male, hailing from the whitest state in the nation, in an age of quota Democrat candidates. Yet ideologically they’re kissin’ cousins: Sanders is an out socialist, Obama a closeted one, having been a member of the socialist New Party in the 1990s. And a 2007 analysis of the most left-wing Senate voting records placed Obama at number one — ahead of even Sanders.