Jason Horowitz - Setting Bernie Sanders Apart From the Field: A Palpable Sense of Conviction

[mhatrw]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/us/politics/setting-bernie-sanders-apart-from-the-field-a-palpable-sense-of-conviction.html

A review of Mr. Sanders’s campaign debates — from his early days as a no-shot radical; through his tenure as a crafty, independent small-city mayor; and as a congressman and then a junior senator from Vermont — shows that his economic inequality message has remained strikingly unchanged. And it reveals a compelling, highly confident debating style in which Mr. Sanders wields his accomplishments and command of policy, but mostly a palpable sense of conviction and outrage, to set him apart on stages where allotted speaking times and parsed positions are the norm.nHe has also improved over the decades. Mr. Sanders has learned to suppress his exasperated expressions and eye rolls, speak in sound bites and use humor to make his arguments more digestible. He has an unstilted conversational style, packed with matter-of-fact rhetorical questions asked and then immediately answered. (“Is that a woman’s issue? I think it is.”) He will jab at an opponent’s weaknesses, dodge when necessary and, perhaps most remarkably, given his cantankerous nature, compliment his questioners.

“He can be adept at using sarcasm and irony as an attack style, but his primary voice is declarative,” said Greg Guma, a Vermont reporter and author who knew Mr. Sanders so well he played him during debate preparation for Gov. Madeleine Kunin, a Democrat whom Mr. Sanders, an independent, unsuccessfully challenged in 1986. “He’s very good at spinning questions to make his points, sometimes without answering them, and is relentlessly on message.”

That changelessness blurs the decades together. In a 1998 debate, Mr. Sanders voiced his hopes to “do away with the huge tax breaks we’ve given millionaires,” “raise the minimum wage,” expand Social Security and “change our absolutely failing trade policy.”

The rest of the article is some sort of weird attempt to portray Sanders as an ineffectual, opportunistic political chameleon.

[magical thyme]

1. K&R good read

"The rest of the article is some sort of weird attempt to portray Sanders as an ineffectual, opportunistic political chameleon."

??? not sure where that is coming from.

At worst, his critics says he's been saying the same thing for decades and nothing has changed. Like a single rep then senator from a small state could convince hundreds of other reps and senators to vote against their own best interest and biggest donors.

For things to changed, it needs the majority of people to demand it. Not hope for it, not beg for it, but demand it. Things sometimes have to get really bad for a lot of people before they rise up.

Right now, Bernie is our best chance to take on the 1%.

[in_cog_ni_to]

2. He was saying the same things in 1998. Now that's what I call consistent.

No evolving for Bernie...he's already there and has been for 40 years.