Bernie Sanders gets the NewYorker profile treatment, is dubbed "The Populist Prophet"

[kpete]

Last edited Thu Oct 8, 2015, 10:36 AM - Edit history (1)

The Populist Prophet
Bernie Sanders has spent decades attacking inequality. Now the country is listening.





some snippets:

At the Portland rally, I met a group of five friends who were drawn to Sanders because of his commitment to banish money from politics: he has sharply criticized the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision, in Citizens United, to permit unlimited campaign spending by corporations, and has lamented the outsize influence exerted by billionaires. Several of the friends praised Sanders’s pledge to raise the federal minimum wage to fifteen dollars an hour. One member of the group, Erin Kiley, a millennial who owns Portland Flea-for-All, a marketplace of vintage and artisanal goods, said that she developed “a huge political crush on Bernie” in 2010, after Sanders delivered an eight-and-a-half-hour speech on the Senate floor to protest the extension of tax cuts instituted during the Presidency of George W. Bush. Sanders’s gruffness, didacticism, and indifference to appearances—both he and his wife, Jane, told me how much he loathes shopping—are central to his appeal. All the friends described Sanders as “authentic,” a word that many people would be hesitant to apply to Hillary Clinton. Kiley acknowledged that Sanders’s unvarnished qualities might turn off some voters, but noted that in the current election cycle “the whole spectrum of candidates is less schmoozy, polished, and warm.” She went on, “Everyone seems a little off the wall. Howard Dean was thrown off the national stage for being angry. But people like Trump because he’s an asshole and says whatever he wants.” Kiley’s friend Dawn York, who runs a vintage-clothing shop, said, “Most candidates are robotic and rehearsed.” She saw “a real person in Bernie.”

Sanders has been known as a democratic socialist for decades. This didn’t matter much to Kiley or York, or to most other Sanders supporters I met during the next few weeks; mainly, they were impressed that he hadn’t shed the term. York thought that, because of Sanders and his “social-media-driven fans,” socialism was “getting a bit of a P.R. makeover.” She noted that sites like Reddit and Twitter were circulating videos of “Bernie explaining why he identifies as a socialist, and what it means to him, in a really positive light.” She added, “The word had a retro connection to Communism and was originally thrown at him as a damning label by his opponents. But for his supporters it isn’t a deterrent.”

...............

In mid-September, Sanders spoke before the weekly convocation attended by the student body at Liberty University, the evangelical school in Lynchburg, Virginia, founded by the Reverend Jerry Falwell. Unlike many liberal élites, Sanders does not seem to prefer talking to people who share his views; because he is not an especially convivial person, he does not require conviviality from others. Sanders relishes the opportunity to enter enemy territory, where he believes that he can find secret allies.

At Liberty, he began by acknowledging that his positions on women’s reproductive rights and gay marriage are strongly at odds with the views of many evangelical Christians. He did not make knowing jokes about these differences: as usual, Sanders was dead serious. The students were poker-faced but polite. He sought common ground by adding new valences to one or two of his standard arguments. When he called for federally mandated, paid family leave to bring America in line with the rest of the world, he dwelled a little on the preciousness of the bond between mother and baby. He was rewarded with applause. But the occasion also played to the prophetic side of Sanders—the register in which he can sound like an Old Testament preacher. Unlike his slicker rivals, Sanders is most at ease talking about the moral and ethical dimensions of politics. “We are living in a nation and in a world—the Bible speaks to this issue—in a nation and in a world which worships not love of brothers and sisters, not love of the poor and the sick, but worships the acquisition of money and great wealth.” His voice broke—all those stump speeches had been leaving deep scratches on the record. But his outrage was unmuffled. Staring at the crowd, he quoted the Hebrew Bible, his fist punctuating nearly every word: “Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream.” ♦


Read it all:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/12/the-populist-prophet

[Smarmie Doofus]

1. Rec for pic.

And to be able to find this later for what looks like a promising profile.

[Motown_Johnny]

10. Argh!! The RWingers will see it as sacrilegious

Bernie as Jesus and the Wall Street Bankers as Money Changers in The Temple.

I see what they were going for, but maybe they could have had some different inspiration.

[Babel_17]

2. Great article from a respected source

This is reaching people who once thought Senator Sanders was inconceivable as the nominee for President. Well, so was the son of a bootlegger, or a man who was a peanut farmer, at one time. But once the country got to know them, they saw their Presidential qualities.

[KoKo]

3. Recommend...

[Babel_17]

4. Thanks!

[KoKo]

12. Was Glad to Do It!

[Fawke Em]

5. Not sure I like his being depicted as a Jesus-like

figure whipping the money changers out of the Temple. Just gives a nod to those around here who already think we consider him "St. Bernie."

That said, the article looks interesting and I'll need to settle in to read it at some other point.

[daleanime]

7. +1

[questionseverything]

9. for those that don't know

the one time Jesus was depicted as anything but peaceful and loving in the bible was when he picked up a whip and drove the "money changers" out of the temple

[KoKo]

13. I know but isn't "Kicking the Money Changers Out of Temple" Still a Good Thing?

Last edited Thu Oct 8, 2015, 09:08 PM - Edit history (2)

Taking the Religion out of it, it seems that when "Money+Power" against "The People" that many Outside of Religion could Cheer That!

Ya' Think?

[dae]

14. Personally, I like the comparison.

[eridani]

15. They're both socialist Jews, right? n/t

[stupidicus]

6. it was inevitable

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=651039

given the record he cultivated in the last few decades. I'd argue that the disappointments many have felt in the BHO admin were a contributing factor in the "Network Moment" he's trying to imbue at least the left-leaning electorate with, and the uncompromising manner in which he's selling his democratic "socialism" stands in stark contrast to the efforts at compromise and appeasement BHO wasted so much currency and time on. I have long contended to BHO's more enamored and strident defenders of what the rest of us found and felt disappontments in, that we were the majority here and in the wider public -- and I oh so hope he proves me right about that one...lol

He's pretty much beyond reproach, and has reduced the HC supporters to the pants/bedwetting status rightwingers have long enjoyed and deployed, given their baseless claims of unelectabilty that are likely due in no small part to their fear of modern rightwingnuttery.

[Todays_Illusion]

8. That they are calling him a "populist prophet," is an insult but they admit, " Sanders has been

as a democratic socialist for decades."

But nice of The New Yorker to notice after all these months.

[nashville_brook]

11. k and r