Salon: The media’s big Bernie Sanders myth

[portlander23]

The media’s big Bernie Sanders myth: Here’s how we build the coalition that shatters Clintonism, neoliberalism

It is a myth created by the establishment media that Sanders’ appeal is limited to well-educated white coastal liberals, particularly males, and that he has a natural barrier to how far and deep his support can extend.

But the truth is that Sanders’ potential appeal to minorities is unlimited—unlike Clinton’s upper limits due to the nature of her past and present policies and her utter incapacity to enunciate anything real that resonates with people beyond recycled neoliberal micro-platitudes. Therefore, Sanders must go for broke in reaching out to African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians as their natural candidate, and in the process rewrite the whole script for how the Democratic Party courts voters. New, and unprecedented, promises must be made to shatter the silence around issues that neoliberal candidates have zero interest in highlighting.

[LWolf]

1. This article makes my primary point.

Pun intended. I am getting what I asked for: a primary candidate who is not a neo-liberal, who will oppose neo-liberalism.

That's what this country needs to get back on a path that serves the 99%, and that's what we're getting, and will get, with Sanders. He's right when he talks about revolution; the neo-liberals hold too much power for one man to do it all. I know that I'm energized and willing, and I hope it helps. I know that neo-liberals get none of my time or energy.

They might as this message becomes clearer: Sanders is a much better deal for minorities of every stripe—from embattled African-Americans to Hispanics and Asians and others—because of what his policies of economic justice represent compared to the neoliberal repressiveness of Clinton and the establishment Democratic Party.

The Clintons talk a good game when it comes to African-Americans (Bill, after all, was supposed to be our first black president before the real first black president showed up) but the truth is that Clintonian neoliberalism really tightened the screws on African-Americans by legitimizing extreme income inequality as the normal course of things—smashing, in effect, the Democratic Party’s bargain with minorities since the New Deal.

It's not personal. I don't "hate" the Clintons. It's neo-liberalism, stupid, to coin a Clinton phrase.

New, and unprecedented, promises must be made to shatter the silence around issues that neoliberal candidates have zero interest in highlighting.

There’s a reason why Hillary Clinton—like Tony Blair in Britain—has always been utterly incapable of humor. It is not a character flaw, per se, as it wasn’t for Blair, but the fact that neoliberalism demands a pure administrative outlook, managing at the margins with faith in private enterprise as the only salvation, that simply does not allow any glimpse of humor—by which I really mean humanity—to peek through.

Neoliberals, it should be noted, will continue to indulge in the false bromides of the culture wars when pressed to the wall; they remain immersed in this methodology of false attack and counterattack, rather than seeking the roots of liberty in economic fairness.

[KoKo]

2. K&R..!

[99th_Monkey]

3. K & R nt

[Skwmom]

4. How to take down Bernie: Bernie the champion of minorities, poor Hillary: for the working class

when we all know who she works for.

Did Team Clinton come up with this strategy?

The group of self-identified nameless Bernie supporters have already been pushing this winning strategy for quite a while. It's a winning strategy all right - For Clinton.

Oh, and I notice all of the recommends.

[liberalmike27]

5. Can't speak for others

But my facebook wall is full of women who love Bernie, who #FeeltheBern.

Part of the "he can't win," meme the MSM projects deals with "He can't get women," and "He's got a problem with blacks," apparently based on the fact that not many blacks live in his State, not based on any actual history of support of black people and their goals, throughout his history in life.

They seem stuck on the media matters event--I've heard no actual reporting about him since that event, nothing about all of the steps he's taken to include BLM into his mix.

[portlander23]

6. Fair Criticism

I think it's a fair criticism that racial justice had not initially been a central theme of Mr. Sanders' campaign, and it's one that the campaign has rectified. On the topic of support among various groups, I think the core issue is that Mr. Sanders is not well known and that his campaign is a lot smaller than Mrs. Clinton's. It's only recently that Mr. Sanders has begun concentrating on states other than New Hampshire and Iowa. In many ways, Mr. Sander's state by state campaign is how campaigns used to run without enormous influxes of money. Focus heavily on the states voting next, and move on.

It will be telling to see how the numbers change as Mr. Sander's campaign expands, the impact of debates, and eventually the outcomes of the two early states.