Does the three-time White House hopeful read about Hillary Clinton’s slide and left-winger Bernie Sanders’ surge in their presidential duel and wonder whether party leaders might, in desperation, turn to a popular, seasoned big-state governor who’s just a few years older?

This prompted some reaction in political circles before it was drowned out Saturday by reports former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg might make an independent bid for the presidency.

But there are two interesting angles here worth noting. One is that the presidential candidate that Sanders most sounds like is arguably … Jerry Brown, the 1992 version.

Sanders 2016 = Brown 1992

Veteran California political analyst William Bradley, writing in the Huffington Post in 2014, described Brown’s “Take Back America” campaign of 1992:

Running a not infrequently angry populist campaign, Brown vowed to “take back America from the confederacy of corruption, careerism, and campaign consulting in Washington.” He called for term limits on Congress and vowed to take contributions only from individuals and in amounts no greater than $100. In those pre-Internet days, Brown financed his campaign largely through an 800 number, which he flogged relentlessly. Just as some do with web sites URLs today. …

 

In addition to his now customary themes on renewable energy and climate change, Brown championed a progressive version of a flat tax (in which corporations and some wealthy individuals would pay more), living wage measures and a single-payer health care system, and questioned international trade deals.

In 2016, this sounds far more like Bernie Sanders than Jerry Brown’s current iteration as fiscal hawk who plays mostly small-ball politics, except on the environment.

Brown alleged Clintons were corrupt

The other interesting angle is that there may be no more prominent Democrat in America to publicly hold a low opinion of Bill and Hillary Clinton than Brown. In  the 1992 presidential race, as the Christian Science Monitor notes, the bad blood was plain to the world:

They slammed each other’s positions and records, sometimes falsely – Clinton suggesting that Brown had raised taxes during his first stint as governor, Brown alleging that Clinton (as governor of Arkansas) had directed state contracts to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s law firm in Little Rock. And of course it’s all on tape.

Since then, Brown has had little good to say about either Clinton. In a March 2015 Washington Post story about his decision not to run for president again, Brown was asked about his relationship with Bill and Hillary Clinton. His vague response: “It’s all been written about.”

And Brown wouldn’t give her a pass on a controversy that is still in the news.

When asked about the recent controversy over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email account as secretary of state, Brown said he is not convinced the issue is a passing storm, as many other Democrats contend.

 

“I don’t know that,” Brown said. “With these things, what makes a difference, you often don’t know until it unfolds because nothing is just what it is. It’s always in part of a larger context. Things unfold and things happen.”

Brown singled out Arkansas to mock

More recently, during his only debate with Republican challenger Neel Kashkari in 2014, Brown held up the Clintons’ home state for ridicule when he was asked about California’s ability to deal in the long term with its large unfunded pension liabilities.

“Are we in Arkansas or Mississippi? This is the eighth-largest economy in the world,” he said, ridiculing the idea that the nation’s richest, most populous state would struggle with such a challenge.

When singling out states that are considered the most socially and economically backwards, comedians and social media yuksters usually cite Mississippi or West Virginia. But not Jerry Brown.

But beginning in fall 2012, the bureau finally began providing such analysis in what it called a “supplemental” poverty analysis. In that report, the one that came out in 2013 and the one that came out last week, California had by a wide margin the highest poverty rate of any state. Here’s part of Dan Walters’ short take on it:

California continues to have – by far – the nation’s highest level of poverty under an alternative method devised by the Census Bureau that takes into account both broader measures of income and the cost of living.

Nearly a quarter of the state’s 38 million residents (8.9 million) live in poverty, a new Census Bureau report says, a level virtually unchanged since the agency first began reporting on the method’s effects.

Under the traditional method of gauging poverty, adopted a half-century ago, California’s rate is 16 percent (6.1 million residents), somewhat above the national rate of 14.9 percent but by no means the highest. That dubious honor goes to New Mexico at 21.5 percent.

But under the alternative method, California rises to the top at 23.4 percent while New Mexico drops to 16 percent and other states decline to as low as 8.7 percent in Iowa.

The supplemental poverty calculations put Mississippi’s poverty rate at 15.3 percent. So someone who lives in California is 35 percent more likely to be impoverished than someone who lives in Mississippi.

Mississippi spurs deep concern — CA, not so much

Will the California media ever forcefully point this out — like, yunno, the folks who have written about Mississippi? Here’s an example of the oh-my-god-it’s-awful treatment that Mississippi gets for its poverty, which is small compared to California’s:

Many families in Mississippi, one of the states where ChildFund works, live below the poverty line, presenting obstacles to children achieving happy and fulfilling lives. In 2013, the federal poverty level for a family of five is a yearly income of $27,570. As of January 2011, about 31 percent of the children living in Mississippi were considered poor, and included in that number were 14 percent living in extreme poverty, according to the Children’s Defense Fund. This means Mississippi has the highest child poverty rate in the nation.

Although there are many factors that can contribute to child abuse and neglect, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services notes that many researchers feel there is a correlation between poverty and child mistreatment.Mississippi has historically seen both high poverty and child abuse rates.

In 2011, the Children’s Defense Fund reported that 7,883 Mississippi children were victims of abuse or neglect, which works out to a case of abuse or neglect every hour. Some children in Mississippi are unable to live with their biological parents for a variety of reasons. In 2011, about 3,320 children were in foster care, and about 50,130 grandparents across the state raised their grandchildren.

Children who are raised in poverty are also statistically less likely to finish high school than their peers, frequently because they are forced to get a full-time job, or they lack crucial support from their families. In Mississippi, about 64 percent of freshmen in high school will graduate, according to the Children’s Defense Fund.

And even students who graduate may not attain the skills they need to succeed in college or the work force. In the fourth grade, 78 percent of students in the state are unable to read or do math at grade level. By the eighth grade, 81 percent of students cannot read at grade level, while 85 percent lack the appropriate math skills, the Children’s Defense Fund reports.

Haven’t seen much downbeat stuff like this about life in Cali, have ya?

Just like the knuckleheads who cover baseball and mock Moneyball, news journalists resist new stats, even if they’re more insightful.

Great, just great.

6 p.m. update: fixed error spotted by reader JL. Thanks.