Why America needs Bernie Sanders to be its anti-poverty spokesman

Everybody, it seems, has an opinion about what Bernie Sanders should do now that he won't be the Democratic nominee.

It is his campaign, of course, and he can do what he wants, which seems to be continuing the fight for his political revolution. That is, at least until California has voted, and almost certainly until Hillary Clinton — barring a huge surprise — is formally nominated in late July. "This campaign is going to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia with as many delegates as possible to fight for a progressive party platform," Sanders said in a statement Tuesday night, after a "resounding victory" in Rhode Island but defeats in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, and Delaware.

Sanders should continue campaigning. He's making Clinton a better candidate, and more importantly, he's raising issues the country needs to talk about. One issue in particular? Poverty.

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The growing gap between the haves and have-nots is a national disgrace, and Sanders has been talking about that his entire campaign. As Nelson D. Schwartz notes in a searing New York Times article, exploiting and prying open the wealth gap is also a growth industry, which makes income inequality even grosser.

But Sanders has started talking more explicitly about poverty, not just inequality, and it's here that his rhetoric really sears and soars.

Income inequality and poverty are related, inextricably linked issues. But they are not the same. Income inequality measures the disposable income of each economic stratum of a country or community, and how far apart those strata are — when they are far apart, as they are now, that is unjust and, according to the OECD, bad for a nation's economy. Poverty focuses on the people in the bottom strata, living below a defined income level. The fight against income inequality has a lot of high-profile champions today, including President Obama, who has called it "the defining challenge of our time." America needs somebody shouting at us about how there are still poor people in "the wealthiest country in the history of the world."

"Truth is not always pleasant. It's not always something you are happy to hear," Sanders said at a packed rally in Huntington, West Virginia, on Tuesday night. "But if we go forward as human beings, if we go forward as a nation, we cannot sweep the hard realities of our lives underneath the rug."

If we're ever going to deal with our nation's poverty, we'll need a champion with a voice so loud and unrelenting, we can't ignore it. Sanders can be that voice, even if he's not in the White House.

He's off to a good start. During his rally in West Virginia, the most powerful part of his speech was, believe it or not, when he was reading actuarial tables. Here is how Sanders starts off his section about poverty, before listing the life expectancies in impoverished McDowell County, West Virginia, and wealthy Fairfax County, Virginia, not that many miles away:

In Baltimore on Monday, he made a similar point, using inner-city Baltimore statistics, instead. They are just as troubling:

In his West Virginia speech, Sanders said this:

That's true. Or it should be.

Assuming the Bernie revolution doesn't wash over California and the superdelegates, sweeping Sanders into the general election as the Democratic nominee, he will still have a pretty big bully pulpit as a safe incumbent senator and the leader of a movement. The fight against poverty sure could use someone like him its spokesman.