Why is Bernie surging? The national media is doing everything they can to not give him air time or column inches. He is, after all, screwing up the pre-written narrative of Hillary Clinton’s coronation. The 1st female President triumphantly ascending to the Oval office after the first African-American President. This is just good television. It works, dammit! And this old New York Jew shows up and is creating a hell of a disturbance. Why? Why is anybody listening to him in spite of NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, FOX, CNN all doing their best to paint him as a wild-eyed, frothing radical leftist?
Well, for a whole host of reasons. Bernie Sanders is not to the left of Dwight D. Eisenhower or Richard Nixon. He is, however, to the left of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. And therein lies the rub.
His ideas resonate. They do not sound either radical or impractical. He believes in many of the same things that the Tea Party believes in. He is not a corporatist.
What he is--is fundamentally honest. He is speaking from a mind informed by his heart. He believes what he is saying. He is a very, very dangerous man. When he talks I have no sense that he is trying to blow smoke up my metaphorical skirt. His message is not calibrated nor is there some democratic equivalent of Frank Lutz standing behind him telling him what words to use. This guy is the real deal and his populist message is being drunk in by the thirsty masses. I have a sense that this is one of those times where the events will get out ahead of the media and they will have to revert to what they should be doing—reporting not editorializing. Rather than defining the narrative they will be left to try and keep up with it.
It is possible that this old man might be the leader that we hoped Barack Obama would be.
Our so very well entrenched power structure (which I assure you is deeply bipartisan) is being made very nervous by this gentleman. He has nothing to lose. He cannot be bought.
The attacks against him will only increase from here on in.
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