Bernie is for real

[99th_Monkey]

Bernie is for real
Daily Kos * Nov. 13, 2015

It's time to break out of the straight jacket of incremental progress or none at all. We are told that we must support the establishment democrat or get stuck with a crazy republican. Either way, the establishment wins. And the people lose.



What are we to do? Rise up and start fighting back, that's what. As Bernie says, he can’t do it alone. If all we do is elect him and then sit back and expect him to do it, we’re sunk. It’s the uprising, the grassroots movement to not only elect Sanders but to also fill the house and senate with politicians who will work with him and continue to be involved at the citizen activist level that’s important. This is what Bernie is exhorting us to do.

More than any other politician in recent memory, Bernie Sanders is focused on reality. It's the rest of us who are lost. ~Matt Taibbi in RollingStone

Yes, President Obama (not to take from him any of the credit he is due) said the same thing about building a permanent grassroots movement but then he turned his back on the grassroots on day one and took up the banner of the establishment 1%. We know Bernie won’t do this. In 40 years in politics, he has never turned his back on the people. Bernie and his grassroots movement are for real. Bernie is a legitimate anti-establishment candidate. The fact that he's a senator doesn't change that. He's anti-establishment because of the positions he takes, but more importantly, because he's refusing to take dirty money or corporate money. He will be the first president in my lifetime to belong to the people and the people only.

How many other presidential candidates in our times have ever explicitly rejected Big Money or corporate money? None, zip, zero – that's how many. It's unprecedented, never happened before. People laughed, people mocked, they said it was foolhardy and would doom his candidacy. But what really happened?

He has kept neck and neck with the Goldman Sachs candidate raising nearly as much as her from the American people as she has from Wall Street and the 1%. Bernie Sanders has now had more individual donations than any other candidate for president ever at this point in the race. His money is from us, the 99%. He is in no one's pocket. He will be modern history's first and only candidate to be beholden only to the American people. They keep saying it can't be done and he keeps doing it.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/11/13/1449506/-Bernie-is-for-real

[Cosmic Kitten]

1. Ready for a Political Revolution!

[LovingA2andMI]

2. LOVE SOME

Bernie! He rocks, period!

[MisterP]

3. the Obama situation is quite a contrast: Sanders' movement is about the issues first

and about the political system not working out, the old song-and-dance of promising the sky and then wagging their finger at us because we're their servants and failed to deliver enough votes

so many Obama leaders back in 2007-9 were basically "I'll support anything--ANYTHING--he does, because he's the one backing it; if you like it, he's for it, because he's him"

not exactly building a long-term movement, there

[Fuddnik]

4. Yeah, so is Santa Clause.

Everybody knows there ain't no Sanity Clause

[Admiral Loinpresser]

9. Good point.

I wish the DNC charter had a sanity clause. The Democratic Party might still be relevant.

[sabrina 1]

5. His campaign is an amazing phenomenon. The success he has achieved, now even closing the gap

among Dem base voters with Hillary, which isn't his main constituency, is way more than I think even he expected.

It shows the deep disillusionment of the American people and distrust of their government whose policies for decades have so harmed them.

He was in touch with the people, so as he said, 'These ideas, I knew in my heart they would resonate with the people, but not this soon'. Paraphrasing, but I think that's how most of us felt when he announced he was running.

[DianeK]

6. good read

[Skidmore]

7. Yep.

He's a real politician. He's been one for a long time too. Perfected it.

[avaistheone1]

8. It is one of his greatest strengths.

k&r