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On M4A: first of all, the reason so many of us (Bernie included) are so passionately in favor of it is that it will save lives AND save money. A recent study in the extremely prestigious medical journal The Lancet concluded that it would save over 68,000 lives and $450 billion PER YEAR. And is it likely that M4A will get passed? Probably not, but if there is even the slimmest chance of saving all those lives then we should absolutely fight our asses off trying. And it would also very likely make whatever the eventual compromise position ends up being a better one than if we started negotiating from a weaker stance.

And Medicare as it is now certainly isn't perfect, but Medicare for All is not just current Medicare given to everyone. The fuller title of the bill is the "Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act". It will include vision, dental, and mental health with no copays or deductibles. And is it free? Of course not. It's paid for through taxes, primarily increasing taxes on the rich. And it will save massive amounts over the amount that the whole country currently spends on healthcare (even the right wing studies agree with this). Bernie's plan is certainly more aggressive than most all European countries, but it's better as a result. I don't see how the US being larger makes anything harder (if anything, it makes things better for the US, as it lets the US make better use of the economies of scale effect), and I definitely don't see how the US being more diverse has any impact on it.

Regarding Bernie being "my way or the highway" - despite how much people like to say that, he's actually notoriously good at being able to work with people he disagrees with, to the point where he was known as the Amendment King for his ability to get his amendments through a GOP congress, and even Pete Buttigieg praised Bernie on his ability to compromise in the essay that he wrote praising Bernie when he was younger.

On gun control - regarding the Brady Bill, Bernie was opposed to the 5 day waiting period that was in the bill but voted for instant background checks. And holding gun manufacturers responsible because someone does a shooting makes literally no sense. It'd be like if you could sue a knife manufacturer if someone did a stabbing.

Supporting primaries is not a bad thing. Just because someone is an incumbent doesn't mean that they should be able to go unchallenged. And Bernie wanted a primary challenger for Obama as a method of pushing Obama left, not to try to actually beat Obama - specifically to try to get Obama to change his stance on Chained CPI - and Bernie was successful in getting Obama to change his stance on that.

He isn't a Democrat in that he's more progressive than Democrats. He tries to push the Democratic party to be more progressive. Fun fact: A recent ABC poll found that ~20% of Americans thought that Bernie was actually too CONSERVATIVE. And he absolutely attacks Republicans more often and much, much more aggressively than other Dems. The reason you don't see that now is because we're in a primary.

Why don't you support free college? We absolutely can do it - plenty of other countries are able to do it fine, and the cost isn't that much (less than the increase in the military budget in one of the recent budgets). Might it end up resulting in some rationing? Possibly, although not necessarily. And there is already rationing, but it's done where the poor people aren't able to go to college while the rich can.

Regarding the Hillary thing - there absolutely were instances of Hillary changing her stance from donations, but Bernie was too nice to bring them up. The most clear example was her changing her stance on bankruptcy reform, from agreeing with Warren that it was an "awful bill" that they had to stop.... to voting in favor of it.

I don't know why you're against paying off student debt - it would be a massive boost to the economy by allowing people to actually buy things with their money rather than spending it on their student debt.

And all of this stuff is absolutely affordable. Dozens of countries do it - we absolutely can. And the problem with approaching things from an incrementalism standpoint is that when you approach a negotiation from a weak place, you come out with a weaker result. This happened with Obamacare, when he started with only a public option and then gave up on that. And when approaching something from a standpoint of moderation results in not saving 68,000 lives per year that we could save... I can't see the argument for moderation.

Now, regarding the debt and the deficit - thinking of the US economy like it's a family doing their budget is fundamentally inaccurate. The US doesn't raise money with taxation and then spend that money like people normally thing. The US spends money into existence and then taxes it out of existence to prevent inflation. I've got a good small youtube channel from a TCU economics professor if it's something that you're interested in hearing more about.