Poor Sanders

[question everything]

He is on the cover of TIME magazine and he is having problems with emotions. With "opening up" with telling about his childhood.

https://time.com/longform/bernie-sanders-2020/

In these days of Oprahization, when every public figure has to tell all, weep, hug, remember miserable childhood memories, he just does not have it. Not he, like Bill Clinton and Biden and others, to spontaneously cross a yard, or get out of a stage to hug a weeping constituent.

No, he prefers to be reserved. Dare I say keep stiff upper lip.

I really sympathize with him and, frankly, for people close to him to try to change him, he will just appear very disingenuous. Not sure, do we get similar "opening up" from female representatives?

Besides the senators from Iowa and Arizona who recently told about their assault in the military..

My sympathies, really.

[JI7]

1. huh ?

[question everything]

3. Learning to be personal

As one staffer explained, Sanders is “assigning an emotion” to the rigging. He is, in this and other ways, learning to be personal.

That new focus was evident this spring in a less familiar event format for Sanders: intimate, almost confessional town halls. A panel of three or four ordinary citizens would share stories of their hardships, and others in the audience would share their own tales, and Sanders would respond with a mix of awkward sympathy, synthesis of their situations and his stump speech.

As these stories and emotions poured in, they landed on the shoulders of a man who is, depending on whom you ask, a person of great empathy or a gruff curmudgeon. “I think everybody thinks I’m very somber and very angry and very, very serious,” Sanders told me in Ohio, “which is half true.” Faced with these testimonies of struggle, Sanders doesn’t usually do what other leaders do in our therapeutic culture: doesn’t hug people, tell them he feels their pain, ask follow-up questions about how the family is doing. What he does with their pain is analyze it; contextualize it; connect it to laws and agencies and instances of greed they may not know about; and offer it back to them as steaming, righteous, evidence-based anger. People tell him of the bill they can’t pay that keeps them awake, and he tells them that the chief executive of the local insurance company makes however-many million. Throwing percentages at them like little darts, he gives them the statistics that might explain their pain, gives them a thesis to connect the dots of their lives. He teaches them to look at themselves in a new way—systemically.

[LibFarmer]

2. I have no sympathy nt

[cwydro]

4. Agree.

It’s difficult to feel sympathy for those with no empathy.

[SkatmanRoth]

5. No publicity is bad if they spell your name right.

Senator Bernie Sanders is getting his name out there while some other potential nominees are floundering.

[BannonsLiver]

15. Bernie's done a pretty good job of floundering lately.

[betsuni]

6. ...

[Kahuna7]

7. The author of that piece called Bernie a civil rights "leader" on MSNBC yesterday.

That's what he said.

at 1:05
https://www.msnbc.com/david-gura/watch/can-bernie-turn-2016-momentum-into-a-2020-win-61559877660

[comradebillyboy]

11. Well he did endorse Jesse Jackson in 88.

[Kahuna7]

13. This is true. But that hardly qualifies him to be a "leader."

[comradebillyboy]

14. It's his signature civil rights accomplishment second only

to being in the audience for MLK's I Have A Dream speech.

[Hortensis]

8. :) I'm unclear: Are you being sarcastic, as I initially assumed,

or are you offering a surrogate emotional "opening" for him? If the latter, your sympathy is noted. If the former, .

I'll personally do without "oprahization" in any of my candidates for high office, but it's likely that engaging in it signals a campaign is not doing well. In any case, I think very poorly of Sanders, but not for being bad at this particular thing.

[question everything]

17. Not sarcastic. Only observing

and, like you, I can do without oprahization. There was a book written last year, don't remember the name, detailing the damage to our society by her.

[aikoaiko]

9. First Bernie was too "rich", now he's "poor".

At least he's still getting your attention.

What's Amy up to these days? Haven't seen her.

[question everything]

18. Oh, the good old whatabout it. It was observation but if you feel slighted, well..

At least I stand up to be counted. You are hiding behind the "undecided." Waiting for the nominee to be declared and to shout: I knew about it, was behind him/her from day one.

[aikoaiko]

21. You're really bad at determining motives. Please proceed.

[earthshine]

22. Some of us "undecideds" are waiting for the debates.

Some democrats need to fall in love, and they do so easily, and create a lot of drama in the process.



Bernie doesn't need your sympathies.

[jalan48]

10. Maybe if he started eating salads with his comb he'd be seen as more approachable.

Last edited Sun Jun 9, 2019, 02:31 PM - Edit history (1)

[question everything]

19. Read #18, above

[Politicub]

12. I thought the article was a good piece of writing

And doesn't reflect negatively on Sanders. Anyone who follows the primaries knows that Sanders sicks to his political message and only dips into personal stories if they support his message.

In this day and age, we want to know about the personalities of the people who will occupy the highest office in the country. I know I want to know as much as possible about folks. I felt like we got to know Obama and his family in the lead up to the primary.

When Klobuchar speaks about how her upbringing and alcoholic father informs her views, she becomes more human. It's like that with all of the candidates. Those small anecdotes say a lot about someone.

[question everything]

20. Agree it was positive. But being personally tired of all the "opening up"

I found it interesting that not opening up can cast a negative shadow.

[KayF]

16. he probably agrees that he would come off as phony

but his advisers must think otherwise.

[Gothmog]

23. The Time story was not favorable