Dear America: Meet Bernie Sanders. Properly, This Time | Emil Mella
Bernie in the Lion
Iowa State Fair attendees pick Sanders over Clinton | TheHill
In the race to decide the next President of your arguably great nation, there is one candidate who has been drawing the largest crowds of any candidate visiting the key primary state of Iowa (including the Republican primary candidates, who probably estimate about 1 percent of the American population at this point). A candidate who out-fundraised Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul in any of their first 24 hours as candidates. A candidate whose policies align with the majority of Americans on everything from income inequality to money's role in politics to the minimum wage to federally financed political campaigning to abortion to overturning Citizens United to global warming and government taking action to combat it to the affordability of a college degree to gun control to government surveillance to passing a law legalizing gay marriage in all 50 states.
A candidate who was one of the thousands of Americans who marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. in his historic March on Washington in 1963. A candidate who has served as a mayor (being one of the earliest proponents of a lot of the policies that are nowadays commonplace in municipal government), a congressman and a senator, with deep knowledge of the American political system and equally deep, authentic convictions that he has held onto for his entire political career.
There is also only one candidate who so far has been either ignored or ridiculed by the massive majority of the American media during his entire campaign. A candidate whose campaign kickoff had the most attendees of that of any candidate so far, and yet was mostly ignored by most media outlets, or relegated to a side-note about a general story on the race, while candidates like ex-Governor and current-who-are-you-supposed-to-be George Pataki got major coverage.
A candidate whose disproportionately tiny actual coverage includes headlines such as "Bernie Sanders for President? Why Not?" and flattering subtitles like "Why Sanders draws the crowds, excites the base, polls relatively well -- and still won't make much of an impact in 2016."
A candidate who straight-up got asked by Katie Couric whether he'd like to be Hillary Clinton's vice presidential candidate and who is constantly reminded that "success" would be pulling Clinton's campaign farther to the left on certain policies. I mean, come on.
That candidate's name is Bernie Sanders, and he could, and should, be the 45th President of the United States of America.
Sanders is polling better among the Democratic primary electorate than any candidate in the Republican electorate. That is a fact. He is drawing larger crowds than any other candidate in Iowa. Also a fact.
Hillary Clinton only beat him by 8 points in a recent Wisconsin Democratic Party straw poll. Fact.
His positions are not far-left or fringe; by the mere definitions of those terms, they cannot be if they are accepted by a majority of the American people. Fact.
So, why is the media ignoring and/or acting like a gang of grade school bullies about Bernie's campaign?
Don't make it about socialism either, now. FDR and Martin Luther King, Jr. both got called socialists in their day, so good luck arguing that it's a step in the wrong direction, Sanders just happens to use the label. A majority of Americans don't identify as libertarians, but the media is not treating Rand Paul like a fringe candidate. A majority of Americans don't identify as sympathizers of the Tea Party, but the media is not treating Ted Cruz like a fringe candidate. Also, one quick thing, he's a democratic socialist. There's a difference. One word. An entire word that references a completely different set of policies, a different set of foreign examples.
It is not the media's job to decide what the American people can and cannot hear. That is dishonesty, that is lying. It is the media's job to keep the American people informed. That's what it's there for, and doing anything else is simply abusing the trust millions and millions of Americans have for the current news media system.
Bernie in the Lion
Sanders made no effort to paper over the political divide between his vision of a just society and the values inculcated by a university that describes itself as “a Christian academic university” in the evangelical tradition. “I believe in a woman’s right to control her own body,” he began. “I believe in gay rights, and gay marriage.” The small but spirited contingent of Sanders supporters, some of whom had driven from Tennessee and West Virginia to be there, erupted in cheers. Sanders continued: “We disagree on those issues. I get that. But let me respectfully suggest that there are other issues out there that are of enormous consequence to our country and the world and that maybe, just maybe, we don’t disagree on them.”
But if his attacks on corporate greed, inequality, and the excessive power of the 1 percent mostly fell on stony soil—afterward a young woman told me “those people had to work hard to make that money” and that poor people “were part of God’s plan”—Sanders did find some common ground with his audience. When he said that racism was part of America’s past, but that today racism, racial discrimination, and racist attacks on foreigners or immigrants were “completely unacceptable in America,” the audience cheered.
“He has been sold the wrong way on the racism issue,” Susan Mead, a Sanders supporter from Lexington, Virginia, said afterward. “He really connected on that here—and I didn’t expect that at all.”
Iowa State Fair attendees pick Sanders over Clinton | TheHill
Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is the favored Democrat among Iowa State Fair attendees, according to results of an informal poll posted on the Iowa secretary of State website.
The poll shows Sanders leading Hillary Clinton 49 percent to 45 percent. Clinton opted not to speak at the Des Moines Register soapbox during her appearance at the fair, while Sanders spoke to a large crowd on Saturday.
While the two Democratic candidates received a little more than 1,000 votes total, Republican Donald Trump himself received 677 votes, outpacing Ben Carson, who had 470 votes, and Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas), who had just170 votes.