To add to this, Bernie supported this bill, (specifically because it allocated money to protect women and children from domestic abuse) but explicitly noted that these exact consequences would follow:

It is my firm belief that clearly there are people in our society who are horribly violent, who are deeply sick and sociopathic, and clearly these people must be put behind bars in order to protect society from them.

But it is also my view that through the neglect of our government and through a grossly irrational set of priorities, we are dooming today tens of millions of young people to a future of bitterness, misery, hopelessness, drugs, crime, and violence. And, Mr. Speaker, all the jails in the world — and we already imprison more people per capita than any other country — and all of the executions … in the world will not make that situation right.

We can either educate or electrocute. We can create meaningful jobs, rebuilding our society, or we can build more jails. Mr. Speaker, let us create a society of hope and compassion, not one of hate and vengeance.

Does that not count for something in all this? I mean, the original post posits that Sanders has this massive gap in his employment record between the CRM and today that's seen as troublesome, but it is a gap that isn't really a gap. The whole time he was pushing for a fairer and less racially brutal form of governance despite having a pasty white constituency. It's harder to see though because it was done through hundreds of quietly heroic votes rather than through some kind of dramatic gestures. Every time we went to war in the middle east, he spoke out with fire saying that the trillions would be better spent on education or after school programs in impoverished schools or everything else he still proposes to this day as alternatives to war spending.