In yesterday’s riff about Bernie Sanders, I suggested that the independent Senator from Vermont “is running a Jay Bulworth-type campaign…a guy who doesn’t care, speaking sometimes uncomfortable blunt truths and nothing but, a guy with nothing to lose and because of that he strikes a chord.” Sanders to Bill Maher last Friday night: “What the campaign is about is a very radical idea — we’re going to tell the truth.” When you look closely at the parallels between Sanders and Warren Beatty‘s philosophically reborn U.S. Senator, there actually aren’t that many. But at least there’s this: Bulworth didn’t give a damn back then and neither does Bernie right now. The latter is about bluntness and clarity and speaking truth to corporate power in a realm that has always been rank with smoke and obfuscation. Sen. Sanders’ speeches are quite conservative in terms of delivery and his phrasings are clipped and precise and bang on the money. But what he’s doing right now is about as close to what Beatty was doing in Bulworth in that obviously prophetic 1998 film…let’s try again. What Sanders is doing is as close to a Bulworth scenario as we’re ever likely to see in a real-deal political campaign.

Thanks to HE’s own Mark Frenden for whipping the poster art together in record time.