I think the two big differences are that Sanders isn’t Bill Bradley and that 2015 isn’t 2000. But yes, I think you’re basically right that it’s the same structural core.

One duo of scholars, Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann, have gone to the trouble to write two entire books on these problems. In 2006 they wrote Broken Branch about Congress. They proposed no solutions. But Ornstein did say this in a Washington Post that same year:

But ultimately, only a credible threat that the public is prepared to throw the rascals out will change the ways in which politicians in Washington operate.

That hardly constitutes a solution.

Six years later, the duo published a second book that they called: It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism. This time, they made a stab at proposing solutions.
In one chapter, they consider the usual ideas for improving things, and they conclude that they will not work. I agree. In the next two chapters they make several detailed suggestions of their own about how to repair our constitutional system. They make the following comment at the beginning of the second of these two chapters:

We are tempted to think big when it comes to reforming political institutions, because the problems are so large and so vexing. But wholesale change in the political system is not possible and might not work. So in this chapter, we will focus on smaller ways to change American institutions to better fit the contemporary parties and political culture.

Their small ideas have not been heard from since. But they were wrong to reject big ideas because only big ideas can deal with the big problems that they and other scholars are so expert at cataloging.

So, I ask you, who will solve the problems you and they and many, many others have identified? Paul Krugman in his blog in the NYT has over thousands of posts repeatedly described perhaps a dozen problems with our economic system and yet he has no idea how to solve them. Well, he has yet to post them.

So, it is my turn to again identify a problem. Scholars, as far as I can see, propose no solutions to our governmental and economic problems. I have read hundreds of books in addition to those of Mann and Ornstein, and no one has a solution. I have identified this problem in many places and many ways and I have worn out my welcome. I have even been banned twice.

A few years ago I thought that the specter of global warming would galvanize somebody with the power to make changes but it hasn’t. And the danger is even greater than we thought. We are faced with a literal point of no return. If we do not eliminate the use of fossil fuels by 2030 all will be lost.

We should already be hard at work building your bridge.