I understand why Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is preparing for a weekend of rallying across Maine beside Senate contender Troy Jackson. I can even allow that it might boost the Democrat’s campaign.

But I wish Sen. Sanders wasn’t coming here.

Sanders has always struck me as a crabby old man who has spent his lifetime griping about nearly every colleague and issue on the national stage — without racking up any serious legislative accomplishments. 

Everyone I knew who had spent time around him, mostly staffers on Capitol Hill, had little good to say about him. In person, they told me, he was often a jerk.

Somehow, Sanders became a hero to young people when he began running for president in 2015. They bought his mistaken portrait of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential frontrunner, as a corrupt warmonger. 

These idealistic voters wanted change — and believed the crotchety Vermonter could bring it about.

Not me. I worried then, as I still do, that extremists on the left and right will squeeze the political middle into extinction, leaving our leaders unable to compromise and letting major issue linger unsolved.

In the spring of 2016, I was interested to watch Sanders speak to a huge crowd of young people on town green beside Yale University. Those gathered to cheer him on were eager for a more progressive government after two terms with President Barack Obama at the helm.

The lead singer of R.E.M., Michael Stipe, introduced Sanders with a complaint about the “grotesque level of wealth and inequality in America.” He told the crowd, “Brothers and sisters, instead of giving tax breaks to billionaires, we are going to rebuild inner cities.”

Sanders came on and thundered in the same vein, eventually taking a shot at Yale for having such a large endowment while people in neighborhoods next door struggled to survive.

During his address, Sanders told his backers, “Don’t believe what anyone tells you, that we cannot change the status quo.” 

While I didn’t really disagree with much of what he had to say, I feared that in knocking Clinton, who was clearly going to be the Democratic nominee, the only thing Sanders was accomplishing was to help elevate Republican Donald Trump.

We know now how it all turned out. And, rest assured, billionaires are doing well while those on the flip side of economic inequality are not. It’s also clear to us now who the real corrupt warmonger in that race was.

The status quo from a decade ago, before the White House became a gilded playhouse for the ultra-rich to stomp on those who are struggling, now seems like something magical.

I know Bernie Sanders isn’t solely responsible for the revolutionary changes of the Trump era. That shame can be traced back to many, including Hillary Clinton and, sadly, to a majority of Americans who bought into the Trumpian agenda of greed and hate.

Sanders will tell Mainers this weekend that it doesn’t have to be this way, that we can throw out Trump’s enablers in Congress, including Sen. Susan Collins, and pursue the America so many have fought to create during the past 250 years.

Maybe so, but I’m tired of big promises and broken government. Castigating the establishment isn’t the way to a better America. Working together is.