I write to ask you to support Bernie for President. I am a lifelong Vermonter and watcher of politics.I've supported Bernie since he spoke at my high school over twenty-five years ago.
In the fall of 1988, during his first run for Congress, Bernie talked to a packed cafeteria of students from Burr and Burton Academy, in Manchester, Vermont. He gave excellent advice to the young. Mostly he tried to inspire us to get off our tails and get involved. He talked to us as equals who should take up our appointed task of repairing the world. In a booming voice, he challenged us to join the movement already afoot to make the world a better place. He sounded like the Prophet Amos with rolled-up sleeves, calling for 'justice to roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." He challenged us to protect America's political system by renouncing apathy. He said Democracy was a precious historical advancement in human civilization over the rule of kings and queens. And there was a fight on because the system was being dismantled by the rich and powerful. Sound familiar? It should! As Dr. Cornell West says, "Bernie is a long-distance runner for justice."
Bernie is a disciplined, enduring contrarian against establishment party politics. Bernie rose up the political ladder, simply winning election after election fairly, owing little to the party power structures. This independent attitude helped him work with any useful allies in Congress, like with Senator John McCain to protect Veterans. Bernie knows real people will be helped if gov't work gets done and so he's a "getter-dun" kind of guy. My friend Claire Boughton is a Vermont homeowner facing an eminent domain land grab for a fracked gas pipeline that Bernie also opposes. About Bernie's time as Burlington's mayor, she said "He wasn't against people, he helped people do a lot of things, whatever would come up. I liked that he was natural-looking, didn't dress fancy, hair the way it is and he's not concerned. He wasn't doing what other people wanted him to do, he was doing what needed to be done." Amen to that.
As a lifelong Democratic voter, I think the Democratic Party will be healed by nominating Sanders because he will return the party to serving the general public again. Democrats can do better than being complacent losers who are Wall Street's second favorite party. Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Committee (DLC) turned the Democratic Party into the Republicans Party Lite, a pro-fracking, pro-NAFTA & TPP nightmare trade deals party. No wonder Hilary can get millions giving quick speeches to Goldman Sachs because Wall Street knows the Clintons remade the Democratic Party to serve them. And this election season, the Democratic National Committeee (DNC) behaved like the Clinton's Downtown Abbey butlers, hiding the debates and giving up the chance to build up the party during the primary towards a 50 state strategy.
Hilary Clinton's campaign symbol perfectly expresses the DLC's pro-corporate, rightward drift. The H, with the red arrow going to the right, reads as taking the party towards the right (Red=GOP, right=conservative). They spent a lot of time, thought and money on this symbol, and this is what they came up with: an right-wing headed, vaguely phallic red arrow in an H that's shaped like a squat elephant. It's a symbol with all the pushy ugliness of Picasso's Cubism but none of the Dreaminess.
But "enough is enough" on criticizing the Clintons. Correctly remembering the Clinton's place in recent Democratic Party history is completely fair, but piling on just is not how Sanders has asked his supporters to roll. Sanders is demanding a more civilized political culture, something Obama deserves credit for too. Meanwhile, Trump is showing all the class and restraint of an ill-tempered monkey hurling his feces thru the cage bars.
I agree completely with this subtle observation about Bernie's character, made by Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, who wrote in "The Case for Bernie Sanders" that "Sanders is a clear outlier in a generation that has forgotten what it means to be a public servant. The Times remarks on his "grumpy demeanor". But Bernie is grumpy because he's thinking about vets who need surgeries, guest workers who've had their wages ripped off, kids without access to dentists or some other godforsaken problem that most of us normal people can care about for maybe a few minutes on a good day, but Bernie worries about more or less all the time. I first met Bernie Sanders ten years ago, and I don't believe there's anything else he really thinks about. There's no other endgame for him. He's not looking for a book deal or a membership in a Martha's Vineyard golf club. This election isn't a game to him; it's not the awesome repulsive dark joke that it is to me and many others. And the only reason this attention-averse, sometimes socially uncomfortable person is subjecting himself to this asinine process is because he genuinely believes the system is not beyond repair. Not all of us can say that. But that doesn't make us right, and him "unrealistic." More than any other politician in recent memory, Bernie Sanders is focused on reality. It's the rest of us who are lost."
Vermonters are crossing our fingers! Let's do this America. Keep your eyes on the prize and have some faith that we can still repair the world.
