Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/07/26/bernie-sanders-overcome-with-e.html
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Goddammit. I don’t even want to say anything snarky. Few things are as touching as watching an old man cry.
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Not a dry eye over here at my office, and thank Dog the boss is away all week so we can act like normal working stiffs for once.
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This is genuinely great and touching, but as soon as I heard that Bernie has a brother named Larry my first thought was “is his last name ‘David’?”
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Larry Sanders is pretty great anyway
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Well, I’ll be the asshole. I think plenty of things are more touching than old men crying. Old men (especially us white ones) don’t cry enough, if you ask me. But there’s a reason for that:
Ain’t no shame in crying in public, but we have an awfully hard time doing it with dignity.
My hat’s off to the guy, for wearing his heart on his sleeve and having the courage to display love and vulnerability and humility and grief and gratitude and pride and sadness out there in front of the world, even though all those emotions don’t fit comfortably on his face. The people in charge should be able to feel those feelings, and display them so we can all see that they’re not soulless monsters concerned only with power and profit.
If only we could do that without looking like we’ve violently soiled ourselves, maybe we’d cry in public more often.
Sanders doesn’t give two shits how he looks in this picture. One of many reasons why he’s a better man than I am.
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Heck, I teared up too.
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That just breaks my heart for him…when I think of his lifetime of service and hope and dreams…to come so close to being able to help the country and miss the chance in the way that it went down. I hurt for you too Bernie. I’m sorry for all of us for what we might have had
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This would explain why I quickly went from onions to chiles seeing these photos.
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shit, he wasn’t the only one. i was bawling. it was a beautiful tribute, on what must have been a very emotional roller coaster of a day for the sanders family.
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I still like to think that he did immeasurable good with his campaign, even though he didn’t win. It definitely wasn’t a wasted effort, especially if we never let Madame President forget it.
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Yeah, Good point…You’re right, he really did change the shape of the campaign and I’m grateful for that.
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This was an interesting read:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/clinton-won-the-battle-sanders-the-war-1469395517
Of course, it’s the Wall Street Journal, so be prepared to read stuff like this:
This is not your father’s—or even your older sister’s—Democratic Party. It is far more left-leaning than under Bill Clinton or President Obama.
ETA: Paywalled; my oversight. Lemme get to work on that.
ETA: Okay, here’s the full text:
#Clinton Won the Battle, Sanders the War
By JUAN WILLIAMS
July 24, 2016 5:25 p.m. ET
Bill Clinton took Democrats to the political middle. He met with Republicans to pass welfare-to-work laws and put more police on the streets. Barack Obama steered the party leftward with “change we can believe in.” He promised to end long-running wars, deliver an economic recovery, offer medical coverage to the uninsured and unify an increasingly diverse nation.
Hillary Clinton will claim the Democratic nomination this week in Philadelphia, but the party is no longer defined by its standard-bearer. The energy rests instead with a rising generation of Democrats excited to use activist government to protect them in anxious economic times.
Older Democrats and minority voters provided a “firewall” that allowed Mrs. Clinton to defeat her rival in the primaries, Sen. Bernie Sanders. Democrats who call themselves “somewhat liberal” went for Hillary by 13 percentage points, according to exit poll data analyzed by Public Opinion Strategies. “Moderates” backed her by 23 percentage points. But among the quarter of Democrats who see themselves as “very liberal,” she ran even with the socialist.
Bernie Sanders and his activist supporters have moved Mrs. Clinton and the party’s platform to the left. The result is that the Democrats have taken on an identity that comes from a new base: voters under 40 who have no problem with Mr. Sanders’s socialist vision. A 2015 study by the Pew Research Center found that 51% of millennials “identify as Democrats or lean Democratic,” compared with only 35% for Republicans. Two-fifths of millennials are people of color and immigrants.
This is not your father’s—or even your older sister’s—Democratic Party. It is far more left-leaning than under Bill Clinton or President Obama.
Almost 60% of Democratic voters agree that “socialism has a positive” impact on society, according to a February poll by OnMessage Inc. and the American Action Network. In Iowa 43% of Democrats said in January that they would use the word “socialist” to describe themselves, a survey by the Des Moines Register and Bloomberg Politics found.
Forty-seven percent of Democrats told Gallup last year that they are both “socially liberal and economically moderate/liberal”—the highest level in the poll’s history. In 2001 only 30% of Democrats described themselves that way. Between 2000 and 2015 the percentage of “Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters” who consider themselves liberal has gone up to 42% from 27%, according to a Pew study in February.
Mrs. Clinton has been running to the front of this liberal parade. This month she wrapped her arms around one of Mr. Sanders’s biggest causes by backing tuition-free college at in-state public universities for families making under $125,000 a year.
She broke with Mr. Obama by calling for repeal of the so-called Cadillac tax on health-insurance plans, a priority for labor unions. She gave a sop to the teachers unions by backtracking on her decades-old support for charter schools. It is clear that in this new liberal order of Democratic politics, the unions will be the enforcers.
Mrs. Clinton is now even backing a “public option”—a Medicare-style government program to compete against private insurance companies. This idea was so radioactive during the debate over the Affordable Care Act that Democrats jettisoned it for fear of being tarred as proponents of socialized medicine.
With the implicit support of Mrs. Clinton and her allies, the Sanders coalition added language to the Democratic platform calling to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, put a price on climate-altering emissions like carbon, and abolish the death penalty.
The party also stripped out language supporting the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which Mr. Sanders opposed during the campaign. Mrs. Clinton had once praised the deal a “gold standard,” but last fall she withdrew her support.
“It is no secret that Hillary Clinton and I disagree on a number of issues,” Mr. Sanders said this month as he endorsed her in New Hampshire. He correctly noted that the threat of a divided party had forced Mrs. Clinton to accept “the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party.”
Mr. Sanders then urged his supporters to keep the pressure on: “Our job now is to see that platform implemented by a Democratic Senate, a Democratic House and a Hillary Clinton presidency—and I am going to do everything I can to make that happen.” The Vermonter has a stronger hand to play after the success of his populist campaign.
Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress have become more liberal—the mirror image of what has happened to the GOP. Democratic incumbents who were defeated during the Obama years were largely centrists from red states: Sens. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Mark Begich of Alaska.
After the 2012 election, much was written, including by me, about whether the Obama coalition of young people, blacks, Hispanics, gays and single women would keep Democrats in the White House for the near future. No one predicted that first of these core constituencies, young people, would become so vocally liberal.
A final factor is the GOP’s strategy of unrelenting obstructionism against President Obama, which sparked a low-grade fury among the left wing. This is why Monday night’s convention speaker, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, gets hundreds of thousands of views every time she posts a fiery speech on YouTube.
Senate Republicans have refused to have a hearing, much less a vote, on Merrick Garland, President Obama’s nominee to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell even refused to give Mr. Garland the courtesy of a simple introductory meeting.
The result is that the bare-knuckle, activist-driven, take-to-the-streets politics of Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter is becoming the rule among Democrats. This month Senate Democrats blocked Republican efforts to defund so-called sanctuary cities and impose harsh prison sentences on undocumented immigrants.
History will record this week’s convention as a coming-of-age for a new era of liberal Democratic politics. This is now Bernie Sanders’s party: Other Democrats—including Hillary Clinton—are merely living in it.
Mr. Williams, a political analyst for Fox News and columnist for the Hill, is the author of “We the People: The Modern-Day Figures Who Have Reshaped and Affirmed the Founding Fathers’ Vision of America” (Crown. 2016).
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I’m on my cell phone and can’t read the article; it says “subscribe or sign in.” 
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Highlights of the DNC 2016 shitshow so far - http://youtu.be/cnhGMUKeq1A
What a farce
Don’t get berned more. “I’m going to fight for you, the American people like nobody has ever fought before” - Donald Trump
Oh dang, Bernie. <3
Oh, you crazy conservative editorialists. The failures of the economic policies you advocate for should be very clear to you. They’re clear to the rest of us.
And you buy that shit?
Oh you poor dear.
Come, let us show you what it’s like to believe in a party and a platform that actually does what Drumpf pretends he’s going to do so that you’ll like him.
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Waaaaaiiittt… So Larry Sanders is a delegate? o_0 uh… shouldn’t one recuse themselves of this job if they have direct ties to one of the people running for office?
Or is nepotism just so common they don’t even pretend to hide it anymore?
Throw your phone out the window and shout, “Fuck you, I’ll do what I want!”
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How come Larry Sanders is a member of the Democrats? He runs for election as a Green in the UK…
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Bill Clinton is also a delegate. A superdelegate, in fact. I believe though I may be wrong that Larry Sanders is actually a run of the mill pledged delegate, meaning he has to vote along the lines of the people he represents.
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I guess he still kept his American citizenship? He was chosen as the delegate for Americans abroad.
@ActionAbe: You are correct, Larry was a pledged delegate.
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