Bernie Sanders 2.0…….

In two unsuccessful bids for the White House, Senator Bernie Sanders made no secret of his disdain for billionaires. Now, in what could be his final act in Washington, he has the power to summon them to testify before Congress — and he has a few corporate executives in his sights.

One is Stéphane Bancel, the chief executive of Moderna, who Mr. Sanders complains “has become a multibillionaire” by developing a coronavirus vaccine with government money. “I think Mr. Bancel should be talking to his advisers about what he might say to the United States Senate,” Mr. Sanders warned in an interview.

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, and Howard Schultz, the on-and-off chief executive of Starbucks, are also on his list. He views them as union busters whose companies have resorted to “really vicious and illegal” tactics to keep workers from organizing. He has already demanded that Mr. Schultz testify at a hearing in March.

Mr. Sanders, independent of Vermont, can put these men on the spot because he is the new chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. The job gives him sweeping jurisdiction over issues that have animated his rise in politics, such as access to health care, the high cost of prescription drugs and workers’ rights.

Mr. Sanders, 81, who identifies as a democratic socialist, has said he will not seek the Democratic nomination for president again if President Biden runs for re-election — a position he reiterated in a recent interview in his Senate office. He is himself up for re-election in 2024 and would not say whether he would run again, which raises the prospect that the next two years in Congress could be his last….

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The chairmanship is the latest turn in Mr. Sanders’s long career in politics, a coda to his rise from a left-wing socialist curiosity to a national figure with respect, power and a devoted fan base. After three decades in Washington, he still manages to cast himself as an outsider. And while he may never ascend to the presidency, there is no question that he has left his mark on national politics, reviving and strengthening the American left….

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With Republicans running the House and 60 votes needed to pass most bills in the Senate, Mr. Sanders has little hope of pushing major legislation through Congress. He intends to introduce a Medicare for all bill, as he has done in past Congresses, because he feels “it’s important to keep that issue out there,” as he put it. But he is well aware that it is going nowhere on Capitol Hill.

“We don’t have the votes,” he said matter-of-factly. “We have no Republican support for it. And I would guess, you know, we have maybe half of Democrats who might support it.”

That is Mr. Sanders the realist speaking, in a tone far more practical than the one he has used during his campaign rallies and familiar rants against millionaires and billionaires….

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image…Bloomberg