WAPO: Bernie Sanders's strange behavior

[BainsBane]

187. NO

The majority of Americans are pro-choice. It's not even close. Polls consistently show that. Bernie's tactic is to claim pragmatism about issues like guns and women's rights but completely ignored it for the issues he cares about. Pragmatism is irrelevant when it comes to the wallets of the demographic that already make 2-7x the median income. His much lauded "white working class" earns well above the average. Meanwhile, single women and their children suffer alarming rates of poverty.

Bernie approves of virtually no one, yet he has signaled out this guy, even though a mayoral race has zero impact on the party or anyone outside Nebraska. Bernie is for the second time choosing to back an anti-choice, anti-equality candidate. To pretend there is anything progressive about abandoning half the population is ludicrous. Women are already poorer than men. Without access to reproductive rights poverty rates rise. Bernie has been in DC for three decades. There is no way he hasn't heard that argument.

He voted for women's rights when presented to him but he has on a number of occasions now indicated they aren't central to his cause. The effect he is having is to convince his supporters than your rights and mine are a "wedge issue," a "distraction from what really matters." That is a position that can only lead to greater inequality. If you want to sacrifice your equal rights and relegate yourself to second-class citizenship, that's your problem, but I will not be subjugated to advance the careers of a few men.

There is absolutely nothing progressive or just about what is happening now. We are seeing the party taken sharply to the right under the guise of progressivism. We are supposed to be tolerant of racism, of the denial of our rates and our own increased poverty so that the already privileged can become even more so. I am standing for none of it.