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Bernie Sanders is the leader America needs now. Just NOT by running for president in 2020
http://www.philly.com/opinion/commentary/bernie-sanders-presidential-run-trump-elizabeth-warren-20190113.html **snip**
But here’s the thing: Bernie Sanders absolutely should NOT run for president again.
While his 2016 run was electrifying, historic and changed the direction of American politics, I believe a 2020 bid would prove divisive and could tarnish his legacy. It would also ignore the reality that the senator clearly has a lot more to give his country -- but as the spiritual and intellectual leader of the movement that he’s built over a half-century, not as an Oval Office hopeful.
This is a very, very hard thing for me to write. After all, I’m the guy who (for 30 days, anyway) changed my longtime voter registration from independent to Democrat just so I could vote for Sanders in the Pennsylvania primary. Here’s what I wrote, specifically, in the spring of 2016: “On April 26, I am going to vote for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders as if my life depended on it. It’s just that important.” The previous fall, with the cadences of the late, great Hunter S. Thompson ringing in my ears, I’d followed Sanders around the country and talked to scores of his supporters to produce an e-book that tried to capture the revolutionary fervor of his movement.
In my piece urging a 2016 Sanders vote, I praised the fact that the senator had managed to form an idealistic vision of a better America during the 1960s and clung to that in the face of the kind of pressures that cause most politicians to sell out their principles. Three years later, Bernie still hasn’t changed. But something else important has changed: The times. The zeitgeist, if you will.
But here’s the thing: Bernie Sanders absolutely should NOT run for president again.
While his 2016 run was electrifying, historic and changed the direction of American politics, I believe a 2020 bid would prove divisive and could tarnish his legacy. It would also ignore the reality that the senator clearly has a lot more to give his country -- but as the spiritual and intellectual leader of the movement that he’s built over a half-century, not as an Oval Office hopeful.
This is a very, very hard thing for me to write. After all, I’m the guy who (for 30 days, anyway) changed my longtime voter registration from independent to Democrat just so I could vote for Sanders in the Pennsylvania primary. Here’s what I wrote, specifically, in the spring of 2016: “On April 26, I am going to vote for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders as if my life depended on it. It’s just that important.” The previous fall, with the cadences of the late, great Hunter S. Thompson ringing in my ears, I’d followed Sanders around the country and talked to scores of his supporters to produce an e-book that tried to capture the revolutionary fervor of his movement.
In my piece urging a 2016 Sanders vote, I praised the fact that the senator had managed to form an idealistic vision of a better America during the 1960s and clung to that in the face of the kind of pressures that cause most politicians to sell out their principles. Three years later, Bernie still hasn’t changed. But something else important has changed: The times. The zeitgeist, if you will.
Sid
12 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
