For Bernie Sanders: hundreds of millions all over the world are so truly inspired and happy that you have announced for the White House. Millions who want to set things straight, to repair the government, and to undo the bad things done by the billionaire kleptocracy---we are all very, very glad!
What this short article is about is tactics and strategies about how to win the nomination and then the November election.
It was inspired by an excellent long conversation this afternoon with Don Mersel, the founder of the largest Facebook Bernie group, Bernie Sanders For President 2020, with its more than 104,000 members. He is also Communications Coordinator at The People For Bernie Sanders. I personally am the founder of another smaller group called Bernie Sanders: Advice and Strategies to Win in 2020, and I welcome the reader to join.
Mr. Mercel and I essentially concurred that so many members (and so many people throughout the electorate in general) are in a continuum ranging from merely enthusiastic to bordering on indifferent to completely skeptical, even hostile, about politics; the merely enthusiastic, the most important large core group, naively believe that enthusiasm will carry the day for you, and that posting Bernie 2020 or liking 65 things a day on Facebook are going to win it for Bernie Sanders. Nothing could be further from the truth.
If you as a supporter are going to step up to the bat in the big leagues to help get this accomplished for our candidate, you need a real bat, and if you are up in the cheering section in the stands, realize that that is where you are, and that is ok, for the moment, but as the campaign tightens up, it is going to take a lot more effort for all of us.
This is going to take millions of conversations, sincere and informed conversations, with your family, friend, neighbors, colleagues at work, and ESPECIALLY WITH THE FENCE-SITTERS AND UNDECIDED, and yes, even conversations with those recalcitrant Trump supporters down the street who will tell you that Socialism leads to Communism, and other idiotic drivel, that Democrats like Bernie want to open up the border to gangsters, drug dealers, rapists, and other "bad hombres," pitching fear and xenophobia.
You have to be able to politely but accurately counter those ignorant arguments. You should try to have a gentle persuasion attempt with the truly undecided, and even with those attracted for good or bad reasons to other Democratic candidates. Remember that the DNC has already been making efforts to put forth a few candidates and that "Secretary" Clinton has bandied out a favorite or two of her own.
A Democratic Socialist is nothing any reasonable person should be afraid of. Roosevelt himself and the New Deal were decried as Socialist and as Socialism, but we take for granted all kinds of things like Medicaid, Food Stamps, Unemployment, Social Security, etc., and think of them as "good government," and not as Socialism.
There are too many "Isms" in politics, anyway. They originated in the theories of Dialectical Materialism of the philosopher Hegel, and then got picked up and applied to economic theory by Karl Marx, the bastion of early communism. All of these "isms" together invariably cloud the vision and obscure the issues, especially when used as knee-jerk arguments like Socialism will inevitably lead to Communism, so you should therefore vote for the Kleptocrats and the Incumbent. This is precisely what the giant corporations want you to do.
And to Bernie personally, I say this, loud and clear! Your campaign and eventual nomination would be way ahead if you would PLEASE refrain from continuously saying you want to "break up the big banks." Why? Because they fight back and because they will (again) use their Wall Street connections in the media to continue to slant things against you. If the American public were sophisticated and observant enough to figure out what they were doing, there would be no need for this suggestion. Supporters should be quick to object to such slanted reporting on all the major networks and in all the major newspapers, without naming names at this point.
And this time, please ask all of your endorsers (political, governmental, international, entertainment celebrities, and academics) to put their endorsements in writing and get them published. This really didn't happen in 2016, and I know this because I asked every single one of the state level legislators to do exactly that, but unless it comes from you, they won't do it!
Other than that, you have been doing everything just right, and you will continue to do everything just right, I am sure. Do what we entrust you to do with your good judgment after your election, and also, please don't scare off the elderly with unspecified talk of Revolution. they hear that word and they envision someday being hauled of their homes and executed.
I, personally, above all, want to see Bernie Sanders overhaul the ghastly corporate strangulation of the legitimate regulatory powers of the FDA, which have been corrupted by mega-corporations, by Big Pharma, and by even more Big Junk Food companies that make neurotoxic and carcinogenic food additives, and to put an end to the many abuses at the EPA which allows carte blanche to deadly genocidal chemicals in all of our food like Bayer/Monsanto's Roundup/Glyphosate which are highly restricted and even prohibited in the leading nations of the world.
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