Senator Sanders: We ARE Smart [View all]

[Haveadream]

Last edited Sun Feb 28, 2016, 08:35 PM - Edit history (1)

You would think that Senator Sander's experience of outspending Hillary in South Carolina and being thoroughly trounced would give him reason to pause and recalibrate his message. That he would realize that all the money and staffers in the world cannot make a difference if you simply don't understand the voters or the issues important to them. If you aren't listening, your message is going to be wrong. And having more staffers around to repeat it and yelling, insulting or wagging your finger is actually going to make it worse. That reality was born out by his deplorable results in SC. But rather than using that failure as an opportunity to learn, he has doubled down and is now saying that going forward, "smart" people will vote for him. What?!

What he doesn't seem to understand is that we ARE smart. Bedsides being incredibly insulting, telling us otherwise is not going to get our votes. Which makes him not so smart if he wants not just to win but to solve our problems. We have an excellent understanding of the day-to-day challenges we face. And it is a candidate's job to understand US and them before laying out solutions.

Senator Sanders sincerely (and I do believe he is sincere) does not understand that all our social justice problems cannot be solved with the solutions he goes on and on and on and on and ON about. He's starting to sound like the not-always-so-beloved Uncle Bernie at the Thanksgiving dinner table who shouts about his pet peeve every time someone shares something about anything. Some quick examples involving crime-- which is a massive problem for women and many minorities who just happen to comprise a huge chunk of the Democratic Party-- show his alarming tone deafness: "Becuz socialism!" just. isn't. working. And for large swaths of the American people, worrying about Wall Street is a luxury problem. Being 'splained that it is all interrelated is not dissimilar to listening to how trickle down economics is going to pay the rent.

That is the reason that he and some of his supporters can actually unashamedly accuse Jim Clyburn, John Lewis and Planned Parenthood of being part of the "establishment" and not realize that they are part of the problem. That is the reason he can address victims of crime and respond with his knee jerk boiler plate solution of "free school". Talk about blaming the victim. It takes a stunning amount of privilege and condescension to denigrate the lived experiences of others as "low information". President Obama has started a conversation about how all men (and women) are not equal in our society and the more Senator Sanders talks, the more I realize Hillary Clinton is the best person to continue it.