I watched Bernie Sanders’ speech at Liberty University on Monday with mixed feelings. On the one hand, Sanders is a good, if a little stilted, public speaker. He is energetic and passionate. In his slightly rumpled clothes and with his snow-white hair coming more and more undone as he speaks, he comes off as sort of a cross between an old political science professor and Howard Beale.
On the other hand, I questioned whether it was worth the time and effort for a leftist like Sanders to speak to an audience that likely leaned so far to the right it was in danger of tipping over the starboard rail. What possible common ground could a politician of the left find with a crowd at ground zero of the conservative evangelical movement, a university founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell that teaches creationism in its biology classes?