Basically to be chosen as our candidate, some criteria have to be met.
First what do we think of his party. On this score Bernie Sanders has a multiple advantages. He like Obama is envisioned by the young as an independent and therefore authentic, with a message that appeals to their populist and progressive natures although they do not like labels.
Older members of the democratic party, which are by the way those who provide the money, organizational skills including a lot of the reach out, are the activists that motivate the local democratic party. They are not the party of Obama. They are not members of any personality cult. I would call us the Franklin Roosevelt democrats. We are the ones who mentor the young, we are the ones who own the houses where house parties are help and money raised. We are the ones who know that we voted for Obama not in the mistaken belief that he would fix everything because he was closer to our views than Hillary was. Her attempts to overshadow the populist ideas with her money and paid organization, all very tech savvy paid staff. While many of us felt that Obama was cautious in taking progressive positions, and appropriated a bunch from John Edwards, during the debates, we did see him as a symbol that our party recognizes the discrimination, particularly the economic discrimination inflicted upon African Americans, and the poor. We were astonished and somewhat dismayed by Obama's very careful centrist answer to Joe the plumber when asked if he wanted to redistribute income. Of course Obama gave a soothing answer to the wealthy among us that he would not claw back those accumulations of wealth, they wanted to use to help their children get a gigantic leap on success and definitely would not support any significant change in that pursuit of wealth. This was to progressives an appeal to those who were socially liberal in their own minds but definitely not progressive in recognizing that the system was unfair economically to most of our citizenry. Hillary like Obama at that time parses her words to avoid naming her large donors as the group who benefit from the economic systems they instituted decisions based on their greed and purchase (contribution to campaigns etc, jobs, trips, and family favors etc., etc. .) of those in office.
So now, we Progressives , we who will never move from our values see a kindred spirit who while calling himself an independent, embodies the ideas of Franklin Roosevelt and unlike Obama goes big in the message we have worked for in the party and the activities we support in our communities and families. we see Obama as a step in the right direction, and thank him for Obamacare, increasing wages for many, and most recently and most importantly standing up to the profiteers of war, and the military industrial complex and the neo-con, and neo-liberals in both parties by his Iranian diplomacy initiatives he has supported and is now implementing. So whille we older activists continue to support the accomplishments of Obama as good steps towards more dramatic encompassing solutions to people's needs, we know he has never been one of us. But he is closer than Hillary whose husband implemented programs which today as then hurt the poor and weakened the economic power of our people.
But the reason, we like Bernie is that he is willing to call out the enemies of democracy unlike Obama's and Hillary's unwillingness. He is telling us what we already knew and have been waiting for. He is US.
So we stand committed to Bernies ideas and as a result to building the great movement we have been working for. Bernie Sanders time has come because the progressive views are ascendant and he is a perfect example of what most people believe we need,
While I rambled herein, I do want to say do not become technowits, Use the tools of technology but remember as Cesar Chavez explained organizing- one person talks to another. Tech savvy people are great but the real assets are the recruiters of volunteers who actually make the personal contacts. Tech savvy people are great but movements are not about tech savvy, they are about personal connections between and among people, Technology should be used to spread ideas to rthose predisposed to those ideas, but face to face or more personal communications such as phone calls are better suited to identifying those committed older people that wil recruit with unabashed enthusiasm and years of experience. So as Bernie says it ain't about him, and I would add it ain't computer skills or targetting. His message resounds with much more than the traditional democratic party, It resounds with independents -particularly the Green's and socialists who had little faith that democrats, particularly those neo-liberal third way democrats of the Clinton administration and earlier campaign would support any significant economic change shifting prosperity to the people rather than just feeding the greed of wealthy donors and big business. Bernie Sanders platform unites people of progressive views which are the views of the people, whether we call ourselves democrats, independents, green party, socialists, strong unionists, social activists, and many many dissatisfied with the hate of their former republican party which left them.
So the time for a movement of progressives and populists has now come. It is led by an individual whose consistent speaking up the views shared by the people rather than failure to challenge the status quo gives him credibility. Attempts to label his positions out of the main stream are easily refuted by polls already done by progressives, and this refutation causes others not to blindly accept the false labellling and to check out Bernie's ideas. Bernie is candidate who has America's back by standing uo to the billionaire class. People want a candidate who is on our side and who is bold enough to expose that the power of enemies of the people's progress must be weakened greatly by a people's movement. He is tellling us what we want to hear and that works. Fortunately his is an honest message.
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