a future to believe in

“What we are doing,” he says, “is really speaking to the working class of this country in a way I’m not quite sure any candidate has ever done before.”

Eventually, when asked, he comes to describe this as core to his strategy to win.

“Here’s the gamble,” Bernie says. The gamble is there are millions of working people who don’t vote or consider politics to be relevant to their lives. “And it is a gamble to see whether we can bring those people into the political process,” he says. “One way you do it is to say, ‘You see that guy? He’s YOU. You’re workin’ for $12 an hour, you can’t afford health insurance — so is he. Listen to what he has to say. It’s not Bernie Sanders talking, you know? It’s that guy. Join us.”

Everyone is sensitive about how to describe this. There’s been a lot of “experimentation” with this, one of his advisers will start to explain — before doubling back to say that, actually, “I think ‘experimentation’ is the wrong word.” There’s no precedent for it. Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren often invite you to consider your story through the lens of their own. Bill Clinton said “I feel your pain,” but he never asked people to reorient the way they feel about their own pain.

He is trying to change the way people interact with private hardship in this country, which is to say, silently and with self-loathing. He is trying, in as literal a sense as you could imagine, to excise “shame” and “guilt” from the American people. These are not words you hear often in politics, but in interviews this year with the candidate, his wife, and his top advisers, they are central to his strategy to win. He is imagining a presidential campaign that brings people out of alienation and into the political process simply by presenting stories where you might recognize some of your own struggle. He is imagining a voter, he says, who thinks, “I thought it was just me who was struggling to put food on the table. I thought I was the only person. I thought it was all my fault. You mean to say there are millions of people?”

Djamolidine Abdoujaparov wrote:dosta je bilo zezanja, vreme je za Sanders/Warren ticket

Djamolidine Abdoujaparov wrote:ne hvala

Joe Biden has 44 billionaire campaign contributors.

Pete Buttigieg only has 39.

This is why 3 people own more wealth than the bottom half of America.

This is why Amazon and other major corporations pay $0 in federal income tax.

We need to get money out of politics. #DemDebate pic.twitter.com/Fw3f9qCUqK

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) December 20, 2019

Thank you @BernieSanders. Every day since then I’ve been proud of my vote and I’m glad to see more and more people committed to stopping endless war for good. We must work together to overturn the AUMF.pic.twitter.com/Iaa7LVsrgV

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) December 20, 2019

Cornel West giving pregame remarks at #BernieInVenice to an audience including Werner Herzog, Tim Robbins, Anderson Paak, Kim Gordon and Danny Devito is the whole tweet pic.twitter.com/KGo7egZ7yP

— Medicare for All! (@WaywardWinifred) December 21, 2019

THREAD ON #BERNIESANDERS ANTI-SEMITISM

— Democrats Against Anti-Semitism (@DemAntisemitism) December 22, 2019

Please Democrats, do not make this mistake again. Nominate Bernie Sanders. Now is not the time for purity politics. https://t.co/ZIVC6SqwTs

— Matt Bruenig (@MattBruenig) December 27, 2019

“It doesn’t take much imagination to understand that Trump will be saying, ‘You see this guy? He voted for NAFTA,’” Sanders said of Biden, calling him vulnerable in the industrial Midwest. 

Gloves off in Iowa... https://t.co/jlpJuCTQ5Y

— Robert Costa (@costareports) 02. јануар 2020.