Bernie’s manner doesn’t bother me at all, but I have many high-quality colleagues in my workplace who are just like him. (Not in my department, where probably I’m the guy like him.) However, I know some people find this kind of person offputting, since my workplace regularly runs workshops for department heads on how to manage people like, um, me.
I have to say, though, that while I was strong supporter of his 4 years ago, and still prefer him to Biden, he hasn’t demonstrated the kind of flexibility or adaptability I like to see in a political leader, nor am I impressed by his judgment in some of the people he has chosen to work for him. I kind of wish he had stuck around as the spirit of the movement, but let someone fresher lead the way.
I really wonder if AOC had endorsed her if things would have worked out better. Warren actually had momentum at the time and while many of her policies weren’t that different from Bernie’s, she framed them in terms of trying to save capitalism from its own excesses rather than claiming they were “socialism” (which they weren’t, and just served to alienate anyone outside of his fan group).
I don’t think the article @milliefink posted says what you seem to think it does. It doesn’t claim those people don’t exist, just that they aren’t a proportionally higher percentage of Bernie’s supporters online than of other candidates’ supporters. It just seems that way, both because he has more partisans on Twitter than anyone else, and because the media has hyped it up, rather than try to have a substantive discussion of the issues.
I have certainly seen plenty of vile and toxic shit from a lot of candidates’ supporters, both online and on mainstream media outlets, and including surrogates as well as random assholes on the internet, but I don’t see that as an argument against any of them. There is literally no ideology that I couldn’t find dozens of total assholes supporting it if I spent a minute on google looking for them.
Having people actually working for your campaign doing it is much worse, though, and is something people need to address. That is a separate issue from random assholes on Twitter, and they shouldn’t be conflated.
I get it; I even led with that in the part of my post you quoted. You definitely have a point that there are plenty of assholes to go around. However, what always surprises me about the ones who associate with Sanders is that they seem to me to primarily go after their closest allies.
Honestly people acting this way are making me feel bad about myself for voting for Sanders in the primary. Like, honestly, it makes me doubt him even more. I already disagree with several key points in his platform but think that his overall efforts are worth pushing for and I support them (M4A mostly) with such depth and sincerity that I’m willing to tank personal loss even if it would make for a better outcome. However, I have at risk family. I have parents with issues like COPD and mental health problems/dementia etc. I have only my savings to live off of. I did not have a rich family. I do not have anyone or anything to fall back on in this world and if I go down everyone who depends on me goes along with me. That’s a feeling of responsibility and duty that just doesn’t fit with the kind of glib jock attitude I’m seeing here. It truly nauseates. If that’s what the left is becoming then it is the same thing as the right. So far I’ve seen Trump used like a cudgel to browbeat others among way too many people I actually know IRL. “Give me what I want or I’ll sick Trump on you and you’ll deserve it!” Like it or not that is how it comes off. And the way I see it if you can say that then he works for you.
Then you get people like this who really do not get that many of us do not enjoy being spoken of like a sacrifice for their favorite candidate’s chances or whatever short term score it would net them. “Who cares if you die if it gets me what I want !!!”
“Friends” like that aren’t friends. They’re not even allies. Far as I can tell they’re just naive fascists who like a different authority figure but haven’t sussed out that it’s not about who but how.
If I could pour empathy through the internet, you’d need a towel. Never feel bad about yourself for hoping. Because that’s what Sanders has in common with Obama. When we’re voting for Sanders (or Warren, for that matter), that’s what we’re really voting for: something better. Not just the same old. Change that makes life for us, for those we care about, simply better.
I’ll vote for Biden. Hell, I’ll spend money and time to get Biden elected, if he’s the nominee. But that’s an investment in not making things worse. If Sanders is the nominee, I’ll know I’m working to make things better.
Yeah, it does sound like him a bit. I thought Cowicide was older (not a fresh college grad), but I never really figured it out. (No, I’m not Cowicide.)
While every candidate has supporters for whom the ends justify the means, Bernie seems to have a disproportionate number of them. I don’t blame Bernie for the vocal fraction of his base who are assholes, but from a purely practical as well principled matter he’d do well to take a harder line against them. The strategy of not doing so in order to preserve every last vote of support seems shortsighted. Some supporters aren’t worth courting, and some supporters support a candidate precisely because that candidate is willing to court them.
The stereotypical Bernie Bros are real. That said, it seems a little tribal when people paint all Sanders supporters as Bernie Bros, particularly since now that our first choice in Warren has dropped out, many have thrown their support behind Sanders.
Politics is brutal business and I don’t expect everyone to always tag #NotAllSandersSupporters, but it admittedly gets a little discouraging when so many references make no distinction between Sanders supporters and those stereotypical Bernie Bros.
I’m just sick of being told, over and over and over again, that the misogyny aimed at Warren, and literally any other woman in history, isn’t real or isn’t important.
The irony isn’t lost on me. That’s why I normally don’t complain. And honestly, Sanders other supporters will live if a little of the backlash for the misogyny of Bernie Bros stings a bit. Mostly I just wish Bernie himself would take a harder line against those misogynistic supporters. That would do more good than anything else. And it would have done even more good if he’d done it while Warren was still in the race.
I like Sanders and agree on much of his platform… doesn’t mean that it can’t be improved by focusing on specifics that relate to gender and race…but the people who think these are distractions from “real” issues aren’t helping.
The real tragedy is that not having women’s voices reflected in either campaign means we get screwed yet again, and the paternal head is infuriating on that.
And age is pretty irrelevant - being insufferably overbearing and obnoxious are not good traits to have in ones allies, no matter what demographic they rep.
I’m really hoping that Biden or Bernie will right this ongoing wrong. It’s a knife through America’s heart to shut women out of high office. We would be so much better off, and just can’t seem to get enough of a majority out of the year 1892.
Maybe I’m misremembering. Was OtherMichael the one who was posting all kinds of weird hieroglypical characters all the time? That was the one I don’t miss. Maybe that was not OtherMichael and I am mistaken.
