One hundred fifty-eight million in all or thereabouts, per a recent Gallup estimate — not all of them poor, of course, but surely most. Even if only 10 percent of that number actually made it across via a true open-borders policy, that would amount to a population larger than all but four U.S. states. And of course it would mean many millions more low-skilled immigrants competing for jobs with lower-skilled Americans. Sanders finds that problematic, to borrow a term.

The man’s clearly a vicious racist.

Here’s your silver lining in the socialist insurgency brewing on the left: For all his radicalism, the guy leading it is enough of a traditionalist to believe the U.S. government should privilege the welfare of U.S. citizens over foreigners, at least economically. Some younger progressives will watch this, I’m sure, and come away wondering why Bernie prefers jobs for poor Americans to jobs for poor foreigners. We’re all human beings, are we not? What strange Trumpish chauvinism compels him to value the economic security of someone born here, a matter of pure chance, over someone born in Guatemala who traveled here for a better life?

That question will consume politics for the foreseeable future if AOC’s brand of socialism infused with identitarian consciousness makes gains at the expense of Bernie’s old-school class-focused variety. When is it “fair” for Americans to prefer Americans over others?

Two clips here, one of Sanders’s answer this weekend and a longer discourse on the subject in an interview with Vox four years ago. As with the upcoming Fox News town hall, this is another case of Bernie having amassed such a tremendous amount of goodwill from leftists that he can get away with affronts to wokeness that more mainstream Democrats running for president can’t.