There's Something About Bernie

[LiberalAndProud]

“The campaign is moving so fast the infrastructure can’t keep up,” Sanders confesses. “It sometimes reminds me of a military campaign, where the front line of the army is moving faster than the supply chain.” Since Berniemania began this summer, he and a small band of aides have been scrambling to turn it to their advantage.

You don’t often hear politicians admit that they didn’t expect to catch on. But Sanders and his team have a bracing habit of saying things politicians and their aides are not supposed to say—a minor violation of norms that reminds you how accustomed we are to being lied to in politics.

Another basic tenet of campaign spin is that consultants must never admit their candidate isn’t totally perfect, but Sanders’s people apparently missed that lesson as well.

“I give him advice—not always advice that he follows,” says Tad Devine, the veteran Democratic consultant, a former adviser to Al Gore and John Kerry, who is Sanders’s top strategist. “He is not interested in the niceties of appearance and hairdo.”

Sanders’s communications director, Michael Briggs, adds: “He goes on for an hour—long, eat-your-spinach kind of speeches. And people are clapping for it!”

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/theres-something-about-bernie/399740/

[99th_Monkey]

1. Yes, and that "something" is not only endearing

it's also apparently contagious ...

[LiberalAndProud]

2. It's a good article.

No rosy analysis of Bernie's chances to win, but an acknowledgment that something is stirring out here.

[daybranch]

7. This is an obvious attempt to refute the article's message

leading with the Hillary group










































by declaring it to be moot. You may not even know how condescending you and other Hillary supporters are. One thing for sure, it ain't all roses for Hillary to your obvious consternation. I guess you would have us believe you are realistic and we are just tilting at windmills.

[winter is coming]

11. WTF? That's not the way I read the post you're responding to at all. n/t

[leftynyc]

12. Who said anything is moot?

Are you denying that Hillary is FAR ahead in the polls? And really, what's with taking up so much space to say nothing at all?

[kdmorris]

13. wth?

I'm not sure how you got that screed out of L&P's post? I thought it was a rational analysis of the article.

Take a breath man, it's not even 2016 yet...

[Curmudgeoness]

16. I think that you missed the point

of that post. All that was said was that the article did not do a rah-rah on Bernie winning....it just was giving information. Which means to me that it was just making statements instead of forecasts. And the statements were interesting.

At least, that is all I got from the post. I think that both sides of this primary race are getting a little too touchy.

[KoKo]

8. I thought it was an interesting read. Another Snip:

The Vermont senator’s revolutionary zeal has met its moment.

For the length of the Obama presidency, liberals have fallen, mostly quietly, into line, content to watch from the sidelines as Republicans ate each other alive. Their unity was a marked contrast to Democrats’ traditional fractiousness—as Will Rogers famously joked, “I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.” In 2012, when I would ask the attendees at Obama rallies what they hoped to accomplish by reelecting him, many said it would be enough for him simply to stop the GOP.

---snip

Finally, the left has been pushed to the breaking point.

[LiberalAndProud]

9. Just so you know, I will be caucusing for Bernie.

Did you read the article?

[artislife]

17. Me, too! Nt

[daybranch]

3. Maybe Bernie just speaks a truth we progressives have long known

and millenials are willing to believe out of recognizing where things are headed for them. A true partnership of old progressive activists and the youth is blossoming to take the country from the oligarchs.
Bernie is substance and people want that. He is humility and people trust that. He is not top down as Obama became in 2012 and people like real grassroots. Yep, the last thing Bernie needs is change. He puts the emphasis on the change that matters, the rulers of this country must be changed back to the people. Ideas matter.

[LWolf]

4. "“There is a lot more anger and frustration on the part of the American people …

than I think inside-the-beltway pundits perceive.”

"Finally, the left has been pushed to the breaking point."

Believe it.

At the press conference, I meet Les Bailey, a retired ironworker who lives in Marion, Iowa. He has a salt-and-pepper goatee and wears his hair in a mullet under a black Vietnam-veteran cap. In 2008, he wore himself out walking miles and miles knocking on doors for Barack Obama. Now, he thinks Sanders can win Iowa in a similar upset. “This is not the country I fought for, where billionaires buy elections and anyone can get a gun,” he says.

“I’m a farmer and a commodity broker—I should not be a Bernie Sanders supporter,” says Keith Kuper, a 61-year-old in jeans and an untucked plaid shirt. “If that’s true, how come all my friends are for Bernie?”

I love the grannies:

The grannies bang their fists on the table as Sanders speaks. They chant. They get up and sway back and forth. “That’s right! That’s right!” they yell. “Woo, woo, woo!” They drum on the table with both hands.

“We need jobs and education, not jails and incarceration!” he says. The grannies are literally screaming: Ber-nie, Ber-nie, Ber-nie!

And the Republican message man listening in?

He is astonished by what he heard from Sanders: “He really hates rich people!” Luntz exclaims. He predicts that Sanders will do very well in Iowa and New Hampshire: “He says what he really thinks,” Luntz tells me. “She doesn’t.”

[KoKo]

10. ...!

[AlbertCat]

14. “He says what he really thinks,”

Ahhhhh....

But I keep reading complaints about what Sanders DOESN'T say....



Which is of course ridiculous.


But statements like this: “He really hates rich people!” are equally ridiculous and not true. He hates crooks and liars, no matter how much money they have or don't have. He is interested in this country benefiting ALL its citizens. He thinks government should work for EVERYONE, not just a few.

[LWolf]

15. Of course.

It's not surprising that a Republican would make a ridiculous statement about "hating" rich people.

[hootinholler]

18. If Luntz said it...

Just turn it around, he really meant that rich people hate him.

Bernie is not a hater.

[LWolf]

19. Truth. nt

[djean111]

5. About Bernie not being totally perfect - it fascinates me that the very same people who

howl the canard about Progressives being purists because they don't care for their candidate or politician - are totally gobsmacked when we are not purists, we just look at the overall person - deeds and words - and make a choice. They don't like our choice, it seems.
No candidate is perfect. We support the one that comes closest to what we believe in. If that applies to Hillary and Obama, it also applies to Bernie. It is like the supporters of other politicians did not see that coming.

[LiberalAndProud]

6. I'm a Molly Ball fan now.

She has some really insightful articles on the site.