2016 Postmortem
Showing Original Post only (View all)The real reason Bernie's supporters are being attacked is because they are very effective [View all]
Over the past few months there has been an aggressive effort to smear Bernie Sanders supporters. Many broadbrush attacks have been made, sometimes even going so far as to suggest that his supporters are white supremecists. The attacks are often not even consistent, sometimes his supporters are portrayed as the far left fringe, other times they are compared with right-wing Ron Paul or Donald Trump supporters.
Anyone who actually knows any Bernie supporters in real life however knows that these attacks against them are nothing more than smears. The vast majority of Bernie supporters are not white supremecists, they are people who are passionate about civil rights issues and want a candidate who has spent his career fighting for equality. The vast majority of Bernie supporters do not hold fringe political beliefs, they are people who believe in universal access to health care, better schools, environmental protection, ending wars, and raising the wages of workers. These are not "far left" fringe views, these are positions that are held by tens of millions of Americans.
Most of the smears that have been made against Sanders supporters have been absolutely false, yet there is a small group that continues to make broadbrush attacks. But why target Bernie's supporters and not the candidate?
The answer seems obvious to me. The Bernie campaign is about more than a candidate, it is about building a movement to shake up the status quo and bring about real change. Bernie did not achieve the level of success he has had in this campaign on his own, he achieved it because tens of thousands of people got involved in his campaign. Bernie has been clear from day one that this campaign is not about him, it is about starting a political revolution to challenge the billionaire class.
This terrifies those who want to maintain the status quo, they do not just need to stop Bernie but they also need to bring down his supporters as well because they don't want to see a political movement grow which challenges their power.
Already Bernie's supporters have shown how effective they are at organizing for change. Bernie's campaign has far more volunteers than any other, he has more small donors than any other candidate, his supporters turn up by the thousands and even tens of thousands for his events, no other candidate has a group of supporters that are as organized and motivated as Bernie's.
Bernie's supporters are just as much a threat to the status quo as Bernie himself is because they view this campaign as being about something much bigger than their candidate, they view it as a real opportunity to change the political system as we know it and eventually that is going to spill off into downticket races as well. I have no doubt that Bernie is going to inspire many new people to run for Congress, it will inspire them to run for local offices and judicial seats, it will inspire them to organize community groups to advocate for change, it will inspire a major change within the Democratic Party and across the political system.
Those who want to protect the status quo are desperately trying to stop this from happening so you can expect more attacks on Bernie supporters in the future. It is going to get nasty, but the people who are engaging in these smears will be shown to be on the wrong side of history and they are going to be the ones who end up looking very bad in the end.