Sanders had big ideas but litte impact on Capitol Hill Politico

Top Democrats suggest that when it comes to getting things done, there is no comparison between Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren or Sen. Tammy Baldwin, both with many fewer years in Washington.

As for taking on Wall Street, one of the issues Sanders is most identified with on the campaign trail, former Democratic Rep. Barney Frank said Warren’s done much more to protect the landmark Dodd-Frank financial regulation law in the years since its passage.

“She has been more effective at blocking efforts to weaken the bill. [Sanders’]mind-set is that there’ll be a revolution,” said Frank, adding that he doesn’t remember Sanders being involved in any of the affordable housing work he did in the House. “He plants his flag and expects that someday everyone will see he was right.”

Sen. Tammy Baldwin from Wisc,, a supporter of Hillary Clinton who describes herself as a big Sanders fan, fumbled last month when asked to point to a piece of Sanders legislation that was high-impact, other than the "much praised bipartisan Veterans Affairs reform he led as chairman of that committee in the Senate."

“Um,” she said, pausing for a full eight seconds while thinking, “I’m sure I could. In terms of the things that he talks the most about, is when he was chair of the Veterans Affairs committee. But he actually compromised on a whole heck of a lot. Back in … it’s not coming to my mind right now.”

How Toxic Masculinity Poised the 2016 Election Esquire

Parents used to worry about what their kids might say in public, but in today's presidential election, the debate stage turns to dick size, writes Stephen Marche. If you're a Hillary supporter, you have a real clear understanding of the term 'toxic masculinity' -- and we're not only focused on Republicans. The Bernie Bros have sunk to every level of misogyny against Hillary Clinton, and writer Stephen Marche agrees.

Toxic masculinity is not a phenomenon limited to American politicians, of course, but they have come to represent its consequences all too perfectly. Men and women are in a state of unprecedented flux—economic, sexual, and political—which amounts to a more or less complete reevaluation of gender. The process of that reevaluation has left many men scared and stranded. You can call it a hollow patriarchy and you can call the hypermasculinity that has risen in its wake straight camp. Whatever you want to call it, the ancient iconographies of men are collapsing, and many men are lost and suffering in the wake of that collapse. These primaries we're witnessing are living proof.

At the end of the day, there is one grown up in the school yard, writes Marche, and she is the only female left in the presidential race.

When all is said and done, when the soap operatics are over, there's only one candidate who has a reasonable, calm, mature, plan of action that doesn't convert her own identity into that of a Messiah or a minister of death. Strictly in terms of policy, in terms of a realistic appraisal of the political system and basic math, it doesn't really matter whether you're a straight white man from the South, or a black Northeastern teenager, or a mid-transition, Mexican-American from the Pacific Northwest. The only grown-up in this contest isn't talking about dick size because the only grown-up in this contest doesn't have one.