Midwood Visit Appeals To Bernie Sanders’ Libertarian Side

Midwood residents caught a glimpse of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Wednesday. The Vermont Senator, who met that same day with civil rights leader Al Sharpton, stopped by his childhood home near East 26th Street and Kings Highway for an interview with CBS’ Scott Pelley.

He also grabbed lunch at Memo Shish Kebab — a few blocks from his family’s apartment building — where one of the employees told us Sanders was “beyond a gentleman.”

The CBS interview was less about policy and more about Sanders upbringing as a young Brooklyn rabble rouser. He talked living in a cramped, noisy apartment, having little money, how his mother dreamed of moving into a home.

However, when Sanders’ describes the games he used to play with other kids in the neighborhood, the famously progressive Democratic Socialist — whose platform includes plans to expand Medicare, make public colleges tuition free, and break up Wall Streets’ largest banks — seems to make the case for a far-right, libertarian utopia.

“I learned something also about Democracy. We didn’t have much adult supervision. So the games were all determined, not by adult cultures, but by kids themselves,” he told Pelley. “So we would chose up a team. There was no other person dictating anything. We worked out our own rules.”

Watch the interview here. Do you think Sanders is contradicting his progressive principles?