The media is lying to you about Sanders and this is how he wins Red States

[pinebox]

I rephrased my title so it would fit.
Original Salon article is titled;
"The media’s lying to you about Bernie Sanders: This is why a socialist can win the Fox-loving red states.
I spent days with Sanders fans across red states. They watch Fox, live in the heartland, and are voting for Bernie"

Every now and then this comes up on DU but it's never really been explored too much in depth. You hear a lot from Dems who say "Bernie is unelectable! They'll scream socialist at him and nobody will vote for him!" yet when it comes to the facts, Republicans ARE supporting him and this is one article which goes in to explore the hows and whys of why they are.

Personally I find this very inspiring and very fascinating. It's a welcome relief to know that despite the tea party, there actually are some Ike Republicans left out there.

This article is incredibly long and very in depth so I am just going to post a few choice snippets from it. It's a damn good read though!

The media’s lying to you about Bernie Sanders: This is why a socialist can win the Fox-loving red states.
I spent days with Sanders fans across red states. They watch Fox, live in the heartland, and are voting for Bernie.
http://www.salon.com/2015/10/12/the_medias_lying_to_you_about_bernie_sanders_this_is_why_a_socialist_can_win_the_fox_loving_red_states/

It’s July 20, and my airplane seat mate asks what brought me to Texas. He is a construction company sales executive from Houston. He’s watching Fox News on his cell phone. He tells me he considers himself a conservative. I tell him I’m a political reporter covering the Bernie Sanders campaign. He perks up: “I like what I’ve heard from him. Kind of middle of the road.” Eleven days later, I’m at a Bernie Sanders house party in the depressed steel town of Griffith, Indiana, in a state that places in the bottom quartile on Silver’s chart. I approach a young man in his twenties wearing a thrift store T-shirt. I ask him what brings him here tonight. “I’m just helping out my friends because they asked me to help out,” he tells me. He adds that he’s a conservative: “But I approve of some of the stuff that Bernie stands for. Like appealing to more than just the one percent and just trying to give everybody a leg up who’s needing it these days.” Data-driven analysis is only as good as the categories by which you sift the information. If you’ve already decided that “liberals” are the people who prefer locally sourced arugula to eating at McDonald’s, or are the people who don’t watch Fox News, it is a reasonable conclusion that there aren’t enough “liberals” out there to elect Bernie Sanders. Yet political categories shift. One of the things the best politicians do is work to shift them.

Sanders has been extraordinarily clear about the kind of shift he’d like to effect: Republicans “divide people on gay marriage. They divide people on abortion. They divide people on immigration. And what my job is, and it’s not just in blue states. . . [is] to bring working people together around an economic agenda that works. People are sick and tired of establishment politics; they are sick and tired of a politics in which candidates continue to represent the rich and the powerful.” The theory that economic populism unites voters is hardly new. Lyndon Johnson, in New Orleans and about to lose the South to Barry Goldwater in 1964, expressed it in one of the most remarkable campaign speeches in history. A Southern Democratic politician was on his deathbed, Johnson said. “He was talking about the economy and what a great future we could have in the South, if we could just meet our economic problems. . . ‘I would like to go back down there and make them one more Democratic speech. I just feel like I have one in me. The poor old state, they haven’t heard a Democratic speech in 30 years. All they ever hear at election time is n****r! n****r! n****r!’”
The theory suggests that when upwards of 60 percent of voters consistently agree that rich people should have their taxes raised, a candidate who promises to do so might be identified as what he actually is: middle of the road. That if Democrats give Democratic speeches on economic issues, voters suckered into Republicanism by refrains like Jihad! Jihad! Jihad! just might try something else. And that new voters might be attracted into politics if they could just hear a candidate cut to the radical quick of the actual problems that are ruining their lives. My new Republican friends didn’t know they were not “supposed” to like a “liberal” like Bernie Sanders. Then they heard what he was saying, and liked what they heard. How many are there like them? That’s what I’ve been trying to begin to find out.

Before Sanders began speaking, I had spoken to two of those young people, a married couple, who represent a liberal holy grail: kids who had grown up conservative—Mormons!—and reasoned their way to the left. “Thanks to people like Bernie,” as one put it. They try to spread the gospel to professional circles saturated with Republicans and to their families back home.

The husband unspools a splendid version of the Sanders argument:

“I don’t think the values of those communities are really represented in their politics, family values, the ideology they profess to have. . . doesn’t match up with the words or things [the politicians they align themselves with] actually represent. I don’t think people realize that if they actually were for family values, and were for the working family, that Republican policies are not going to move you closer.”

On and on the article continues. It's quite a look inside of something which many of us have forgotten about; unity.

[onehandle]

1. You Too Can Create Your Own Time Machine! Here's How!...

Replace Sanders with Nader in this article.

Done.

[pinebox]

2. Nader

however didn't have Republicans helping him get elected to a Senate position, correct?
Nader also wasn't running as a Democrat, correct?

Why don't you go engage his Republican supporters and find out what it's about? Here you go, go and talk with them https://www.facebook.com/republicansforbernie I think you'll be pretty shocked at just how many are completely disenfranchised with their party. There are Ike Republicans left but they've become drowned out by the Tea Party.

While you're at it, have a read here too;

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/06/23/1395700/-Republicans-for-Bernie-Sanders
http://www.salon.com/2015/08/21/republicans_for_bernie_sanders_why_the_democratic_socialist_is_sweeping_his_home_state_partner/
http://samuel-warde.com/2015/07/republicans-for-bernie-sanders/

It's one reason why Bernie polls better in a general than Hillary against a Republican opponent.

[mythology]

5. He certainly had Republicans donating to his presidential run

http://m.sfgate.com/politics/article/GOP-donors-funding-Nader-Bush-supporters-give-2708705.php

Sanders polls well among republicans because he isn't being attacked by them at this point. Look how quickly they swung from screaming about Clinton to calling Obama a Muslim socialist from Kenya.

[kenn3d]

6. Nader, and Republicans

Hmmmm... yes poor Ralph, a lot of people wanted to give him a chance... alas it's not easy being Green.

But that was 2000 and the more powerful Democrats put forth Al Gore (of the Clinton administration) as their scion. Then after the ugliest attempts of both party dynasties to manipulate our corrupt system, we ended up with Bush and Cheney for 8 of the worst years in this country's history. Indeed the whole world has paid a heavy price for that outcome. In retrospect, some might now admit that Nader would have been a far better choice. Some of us still cling to hope that the nation won't keep making that same mistake over and over again. But the establishment has such a mighty grip on our feeble electorate mind.

There is only one viable candidate in the current race who does not represent corporate greed, MIC, endless war, empirialism and the elite political dynastie$ of the 1%... (all the things that truly make the US exceptional). Most of us do know this... But for some inexplicable reason we continue to line up behind the oligarchs and their $elected representatives.

Sen.Sanders could be the last chance we get to restore our democracy, ...and the Democratic party. If it takes a lot of Republican votes to elect him, we should welcome and encourage them to join us in the fight to save our country.

[Fred Sanders]

3. Several more trips to Liberty U will be required to get meanignful numbers of Fundies

to vote Democratic.

One or two personal experiences or stories is meaningless.

[pinebox]

4. See my links above

about those who elected him in VT