While trolling Google+ last night, I found a fascinating article at the DailyKOS. it's a list of 25 myths about Bernie Sanders that are being propagated by conservatives and Hilary Clinton supporters. You can find that article, "25 Unfounded Myths Being Spread About Bernie by The Clinton Machine", here. It's rather long but it's well worth the read, even with a few grammatical and spelling errors. The meaning is in the message.
I bring this up because I've been having debates with people in social media who claim that Bernie is unelectable, that he's a second rate politician, or that he's too pie in the sky with his lofty ideas and plans and that he will have no way to pay for them. Whatever you think of him, he's been doing what he's doing for more than 30 years with very little deviation. What he says now is something you can find over and over again for the last 30 years. He doesn't change with the wind or the polls just to say what he thinks you want to hear.
He's attracting enthusiastic followers and supporters from the Democrat base and from third parties who can identify with his message. He's attracting the much sought after and growing class of independent voters who eschew party identification. As I read the social media, day after day, and as we close in on the first primary, I see that enthusiasm growing louder, more organized, more persistent.
That article at the DailyKOS also notes that Hilary has been running for president for 10 years whereas Bernie has only just started last year. Yet, as noted in the same article, Clinton supporters have been cultivating and spreading myths about Bernie Sanders as if there is a genuine concern, an urgency that sees Clinton's campaign in real peril. If they were confident, why would they need to spread myths about Sanders?
The same article also points out that Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, now Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, used to be co-chair for Hilary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. Now there's a statement we don't see too much in the news. It's almost as if we're not supposed to notice that a former Clinton campaign manager is chairing the DNC. It would be one thing if Clinton had already won her prize in the White House, for a former campaign manager to be sitting in the DNC chair. But personally, I find that association far too close for comfort and doubt Debbie's ability to provide an even playing field for the candidates while Hilary is running. Just how did Debbie get that seat, anyway?
Her tenure coincides nicely with the change in the rules for debates, the reduced number of debates and the late schedule. It also coincides with an attempt to deny the Sanders campaign access to voter information that they need to prosecute their campaign over an alleged data breach on DNC computers. The Sanders campaign sued and the DNC decided that it wasn't worth the fight or the negative publicity so they restored access. The declining fortunes of the Democrats in Congress and in statehouses in recent years seem to suggest that Debbie Wasserman-Schultz has been more focused on setting the stage for Clinton than on the health of the Democratic Party.
If Clinton were truly a first rate candidate, she would come to Bernie's defense just as Bernie did for her, on stage, during a debate, to help debunk the myths about Bernie. But that's not what is happening. Clinton is in it for herself. She is telling us what she will do when she is president, not what we can do together.
The meaning is in the message. If Clinton were truly comfortable with her candidacy, she'd tell her dogs to "cut it out" and focus on a positive campaign. So far, no one has heard her call off her negative campaign, but it won't surprise me to see that it's only going to get more negative as time goes on. Perhaps she is starting to Feel the Bern.
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