He thinks college education has become too expensive, but he may not understand Washington’s role in this: Colleges increase tuition to capture increased federal subsidies for students. He passionately favors federal funding for universal preschool and dismisses research, based on 50 years’ experience with Head Start, indicating that its benefits are small and evanescent. He is serenely sure “other research” reaches encouraging conclusions.

Sanders vehemently denounces Supreme Court rulings that limit government’s power to restrict the giving and spending that finance political advocacy. The court says money is indispensable to the dissemination of advocacy, so some limits abridge First Amendment protections.

Sanders’s authentic passion enlivens our often synthetic politics. There is, however, some justice in the fact that his principled rejection of the connection between money and speech might prevent his other principles from being heard.