This commentary is by Eric Peterson of Bennington. He was a longtime columnist for the Bennington Banner and Berkshire Eagle and has written columns for the Albany Times Union and VTDigger.You’re Bernie Sanders. You’re 83 years old. You’re in your final term as a U.S. senator. In 1981 you were elected mayor of Burlington. Ten years later you were first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Then, in 2007 you became a U.S. Senator. You ran for the Democratic nomination for president in both 2016 and 2020 despite the fact you have never joined the Democratic Party. You’re 83 years old and you’re seeing so much of what you’ve fought for in the political trenches slipping away. You’re watching the final days of the United States proudly owning the mantle of the most important country in the world.U.S. government money for a long list of agencies and programs is at risk, including: rural water and waste disposal, minority business development, community learning centers, literacy, international education, teacher quality, student support, community development grants, nurses’ training, OSHA training, Green Climate Fund, assistance for global food security, the Institute of Museum and Libraries, the U.S. Institute for Peace, the National Endowment for the Arts, etc., etc. These and so many other causes that Sanders has fought for could disappear as Trump wields his ax, destroying gifts given by America’s taxpayers to their fellow citizens and needy people around the globe. A neat political capsule is that whatever Bernie supports, President Trump wants to eliminate. Americans in large cities and small towns all over the country are demonstrating outside the offices of their Congress members. Angry, hurt men and women of all ages who are frightened about Trump’s very different view of the United States are searching — and hoping — for politicians who will stand up and shout “Stop!”Bernie is speaking all over as he and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez travel from podium to podium in state after state. Bernie is 48 years older than Rep. Ocasio-Cortez. She represents a multiethnic district in the Bronx and Queens of about 740,000 people, while he represents a small rural state with about 648,000. She is of Puerto Rican descent, he is Jewish.They are quite an odd couple. Recently the powerful twosome held a rally in Denver which drew 34,000 people eager for political change. Bernie has been speaking, shouting, demanding political change for 60 years, nearly twice as long as Rep. Ocasio-Cortez has been alive. She has ahead of her a possible run for the U.S. Senate and, perhaps someday, a run for the White House. Bernie has only the present.The out-of-control, runaway Trump train must be stopped or everything that Sanders has cared about will crash. Individuals worry that their Social Security will disappear, along with Medicare and Medicaid. Social programs Bernie has supported for generations might not exist soon. That long list of programs Trump is abandoning is getting longer by the week.Recently Sanders told a TV interviewer he was tired. But Bernie fights on. In his last term in the Senate, when asked if he might run for reelection again, he shouted his answer, “I’m 83 years old!” Time is running out for him and for the American safety net.Bernie won’t give up. He’ll keep fighting; he always has and always will. He was born a fighter. There have been many political wins in Sanders’s long career, but Trump’s second term might erase nearly all that Sanders and so many others — FDR, Kennedy, LBJ, Obama, Pelosi, Biden, Leahy, Welch — have built.The infrastructure of a kinder, gentler America is being dismantled brick by brick. One day millions might look back and mourn and say, if only Bernie Sanders was still around. He cared!Read the story on VTDigger here: Eric Peterson: The good old days of Bernie. ...read more read less