Another screed of lies about Bernie and his voters
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/opinion/sanders-bernie-bros.html
Bernie’s Angry Bros
The Sanders online army resembles President Trump’s most ardent supporters in more ways than either side might care to admit.
Quote:There is one distinct similarity between Trump voters and Bernie's voters: We are sick to death of the corrupt Democrat party hierarchy that uses a collusion with the MSM to avoid accountability for the same things Republicans do. This is why a lot of Democrats in the midwestern states went to the polls, voted for local Ds and either left the Hillary box empty or actually voted for Trump. Of course, another contingent voted for Stein. Hillary was a severely bad product, rejected by voters who would have voted for Bernie or just about anybody else.
Bret Stephens
By Bret Stephens
Opinion Columnist
Jan. 31, 2020
Quote:Well-timed smear of lies.
Barbara Boxer minces no words when it comes to describing the people usually known as the Bernie Bros — a subset of Bernie Sanders supporters who hope to take over the Democratic Party and remake it in their image.
“There is so much negative energy; it’s so angry,” says the former four-term Democratic senator from California. “You can be angry about the unfairness in the world. But this becomes a personal, deep-seated anger at anyone who doesn’t say exactly what you want to hear.”
I ran into Boxer earlier this week and got to talking about a superb report in The Times by my colleagues Matt Flegenheimer, Rebecca R. Ruiz and Nellie Bowles: “Bernie Sanders and His Internet Army.” The piece briefly mentions a 2016 incident in which Boxer went to Nevada to try to unify the party after Hillary Clinton defeated Bernie Sanders in the state’s caucus.
Boxer was an early Clinton supporter. But she’s also a liberal lioness and felt sure she could mollify the crowd. “I thought I could get the booing down,” she recalled. “I said: ‘Why are you booing? I’m Bernie’s friend. When you boo me, you’re booing Bernie.’ ”
Things only got worse. The heckling got louder. Someone picked up a chair as if to throw it. “Security whispers in my ear, you’ve got to get off the stage,” Boxer said. “When I left, my heart was pounding. I’d never had that before.”
Quote:People desperate for their children to survive free in a punishing, deadly system can get serious.
Boxer’s story is one of the milder ones The Times tells about the Internet trolls whose goals seem to have less to do with building Sanders up than with hounding and humiliating anyone who stands in their man’s way.
Quote:Mostly by telling the truth about lying candidates and sycophants of the establishment. Contrasting policy is called "attacking." If the media would do its job -- and stop playing favorites -- the "bros" wouldn't feel the need to speak up so often. Being cheated constantly when your candidate plays by the rules is infuriating.
“When Mr. Sanders’s supporters swarm someone online, they often find multiple access points to that person’s life, compiling what can amount to investigative dossiers,” The Times reported. “More commonly, there is a barrage of jabs and threats sometimes framed as jokes. If the target is a woman, and it often is, these insults can veer toward her physical appearance.”
Quote:This is a crock of ****. Most Berners attack policy and voting history. If Biden wants to lie about what he said and did re mandatory minimums and trying to get cuts in Social Security four times, we will call him on it. When Warren lies multiple times, we will enumerate those lies. That's not an attack. That's a rebuttal--with evidence.
Does this mean Sanders himself supports this kind of behavior? No, and occasionally he tries to disavow it. But not very hard: Last year, he hired as a top aide and speechwriter David Sirota, accurately described by The Atlantic as “his Twitter attack dog.”
Quote:Sirota is a class act who aggressively brings evidence-based truth and contrast to the false claims of other candidates and Dear Leader Hillary. We need him because Bernie doesn't like to get bogged down in small-minded spats--he has plans on his mind.
Nor does it mean that anything like a majority of Sanders’s supporters support the nastiness carried out in his name. Yet no other Democratic candidate has so many venomous followers — no Biden Brothers or Warren Sisters to return fire with fire. The only real analog in U.S. politics today to the Bernie nasties are the Trump nasties. They resemble each other in ways neither side cares to admit.
Quote:"Bernie nasties" are fighting our asses off for the entire diverse family of Americans -- and comprised of the most diverse group of supporters in this race. Bernie has expert-researched policies to make the American landscape a safe place for minority Americans and millennials who are trapped in an unforgiving economy that DID NOT EXIST when you were trying to go to college and start a life. "Trump nasties" are fighting on behalf on a leader who mocks and marginalizes POC. Trump's economy works for wealthier people, but it is driving struggling people down. People don't need to die because they can't afford a Dr visit or medication for chronic illnesses like diabetes. The suicide rate in this country has increased 40% in the last 17 years. THAT'S IMPORTANT and if you don't think it's driving voters, you need to wake up. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/23/us-suicide-rates-rise-40percent-over-17-years-with-blue-collar-workers-at-highest-risk-cdc-finds.html
The most obvious resemblance is the adulation they bestow on their respective champions, whom they treat less as normal politicians than as saviors who deserve uncritical and uncompromising support.
Quote:We asked Bernie Sanders to run in 2015. He asked Warren. She declined. He picked up the banner for us. We aren't fighting for that man; that man is fighting for us - and we are fighting for our futures and the futures of our family -- the one we live with and the one we haven't met yet.
“Surrender to a leader is not a means to an end but a fulfillment,” the philosopher Eric Hoffer observed in “The True Believer,” a book that remains as relevant in our populist era as it was in the totalitarian one. “Whither they are led is of secondary importance.”
Quote:We hired him. He's an exceptional employee.
Since it’s the usual destiny of saviors to be persecuted before they’re exalted, the response of their followers often is to persecute back. But persecute whom? In the demonology of most mass movements there is usually a near enemy and a far one, and the near enemy must be dealt with first and hardest. To this day, hard-core Trump supporters reserve their deepest spite for Republican NeverTrump holdouts (“human scum,” according to the president).
Just so with the Bernie Bros, who see more moderate Democrats not as kindred spirits or potential converts but as sellouts, even traitors — the proverbial enemy within. Partly this is about the normal competition for power, in which the show of ideological purity is treated as evidence of moral superiority.
Quote:They are traitors. They tell black Americans 50 years after MLK: "We have to go slow... It's about increments. Don't be pushy" because their race hasn't been decimated by 30 years of mandatory minimums, prison for profit plantations, stop and frisk, pot arrests in black neighborhoods but not in college dorms...
But it also goes to the heart of what the Bernie Bros are really about. As they see it, ordinary civility isn’t a virtue. It’s a ruse by which those with power manipulate and marginalize those without.
Quote:First thing he's said that's true. The establishment is only interested in civility on one side.
Democrats like Joe Biden who play by the rules of civility
Quote:Hold on. Joe Biden, civil? Joe Biden who has called people in his small audiences fat? Joe Biden who has physically assauled a reporter and chest-poked at least two Iowans who were askiing him questions? Joe Biden, who yelled whywhywhywhywhywhywhy!!! on camera at a reporter Ed O'Keefe, who dared try to ask him a question?
and bipartisanship aren’t just falling prey to the insidious manipulation. They are perpetrating and legitimizing it. No wonder nearly half of Sanders’s supporters won’t commit to or are unsure about voting for the Democratic nominee in the event it isn’t Bernie, according to a recent poll. Why bother voting for Oligarchy Lite?
If there is a silver lining here, it’s that the world has long experience with this brand of zealotry. Bernie Sanders may not be one of his own awful Bros, and may condemn their worst excesses. But there’s no reason to think they’ll lose their influence should he win the White House — just as Trump’s presidency has emboldened and empowered many of his own worst followers.
Quote:LOL! Influence. Hilarious. The beauty of several million small donations is nobody gets more influence than anyone else.
The policies are what we're voting for. This is a stupid laugh by a desperate minion of the establishment.
Is this the Democratic Party the Democrats want? They will cast their first votes for president on Monday evening at the party caucuses in Iowa. Now is the moment for second thoughts.
We are coming.
