Better Know A Socialist: Bernie Sanders Visited Stephen Colbert

Bernie Sanders made an entertaining yet instructive appearance on The Late Show on Friday night, faring much better in the politically-essential late-night joke arena than Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, and Donald Trump have thus far.
In his opening moments, host Stephen Colbert noted that Sanders is polling higher than Clinton in Iowa and New Hampshire, adding, “Hillary Clinton’s got the name recognition, she’s got tons of cash… But a funny thing happened on the way to her nomination, and it’s Vermont senator and guy-in-front-of-you-at-the-deli-trying-to-return-salami, Bernie Sanders.”

“Is everybody ‘feeling the Bern’?” asked Colbert, repeating a Sanders campaign slogan. “Well, I’ll tell you, he wants to give you universal health care so you can have that ‘Bern’ checked out.”

When Sanders came onstage, Colbert razzed him about being a socialist, saying that if Sanders were elected, America would become like a Scandinavian country — “eating pickled herring and a high suicide rate.”

Sanders countered that he prefers the term “progressive.” When Colbert called him “a Ralph Nader figure” (i.e., unelectable) and “the Democratic Donald Trump,” Sanders got serious: “I think that what Trump is doing is appealing to the baser instincts among us: xenophobia, and frankly, racism — describing an entire group of people, in this case Mexicans, as rapists or criminals. I think that’s disgraceful… What I am talking about is a vision that goes beyond telling us that we have to hate a group of people. What I am talking about is saying that in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, there are extraordinary things that we can do when people come together, black and white, and gay and straight, and demand that government start working for all of us, not just the few.”

It was a solid two segments of late-night talk. The 74 year-old Sanders set the bar higher for the next late-night nominee… which in this case will be Carly Fiorina on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show next Monday. Gee, I wonder if Carly will have a fake chat with Fallon’s fake Trump?

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. on CBS.