Bernie Sanders Is Not Only Running for President. He is Building a Movement

JULY 2, 2015 BY EGBERTO WILLIES

I will be honest. I thought Bernie Sanders would be toast by now especially after a seemingly misogynistic essay had written several decades ago surfaced. In fact I wrote the piece "Is Bernie Sanders' candidacy toast by his old 'misogynistic' essay?" where I implied just that. In the piece I wrote:

Inasmuch as Bernie Sanders has not been registering as a substantial threat in the polls, as more Americans pay attention, his message was sure to resonate. Why? Because Americans are still hurting and he is best able to encapsulate that pain into policy he has been advocating for decades.

Unfortunately going forward his message will go unheard by those who need it most. Why? Because of an essay he wrote decades ago. " The article included an image of a rather misogynistic essay written by Bernie Sanders in 1972 for the alternative newspaper Vermont Freeman. The content of the essay was not mentioned in the article. This was clearly a hit job from the centrist (read corporatist) side of the Democratic Party.

It is not an overreaction to state that this essay pretty much makes the Bernie Sanders candidacy toast. It is a sad reality that it will overtake his message not for the faithful but for those who most need to hear his message. The Plutocracy's corporatist media cannot allow a Democratic Socialist message to take hold.

The corporate media puppet Chuck Todd attempted to do just that. Bernie Sanders summarily turned the table on Chuck Todd and effectively rebuffed the attempt to re-frame his candidacy by a 40+year old essay. Now Bernie Sanders is getting larger crowds than any candidate running irrespective of party. The media is covering him scantily, dismissing it as a fad. I heard a commentator on MSNBC say Americans would not elect someone that old. I heard another pundit say the a Democratic Socialist cannot win.

What is interesting is that when one polls Americans, their values are more in line with Democratic Socialism than with the trickle-down economics lite most Democrats think they need to be for to win. Could it be that the crowds Bernie Sanders is generating now will serve as the educators and ambassadors to the real definition of Democratic Socialism as opposed to the caricature that it receives from both the Right and the elitist Left?

Make no mistake. Bernie Sanders is building a movement. Ten thousand people attending a political speech in the summer for someone dismissed by the political elite is a big deal. There is something happening with Bernie. It is not Bernie per se. It is the fusion of the state of the middle-class with the message Bernie Sanders is articulating.

You can see the full Bernie Sanders speech here.

(Article changed on July 3, 2015 at 18:55)