Reality: Bernie has the best human rights and foreign policy record in the field.

[DanTex]

There are people who won't care, because for them it's all about the "gotcha" of Bernie saying something positive about Cuba's literacy program (which Obama also said).

But for people who actually care about human rights, Bernie is hands down the best candidate. He opposed MFN with China. He's been the most critical of Saudi Arabia, and the US arming them. He's been the most anti-war candidate.

And then there's the elephant in the room: the US and regimes it has propped up. Nobody who cares about human rights can ignore this. The US-backed coup in Iran in 1953, in Chile in 1973, the death squads and terrorist groups the US supported throughout Latin America, nobody has been more critical of these actions by the US than Bernie. And then there's Israel, which has quite a poor human rights record, Bernie drew the ire of AIPAC by pointing out that Palestinians have human rights too, whereas nobody else the race will go anywhere near that.

It is true that Bernie is out of step with the "Beltway consensus" on foreign policy and human rights. That's because the Beltway consensus is crafted by people like David Frum and Max Boot, and either minimizes or completely ignores the role of the US in propping up murderous tyrants, particularly in Latin America.