When we choose to ignore recent history repeating itself, it’s hard to fault anyone but ourselves. During these past four years, we have watched Donald Trump focus almost exclusively on playing to his base as a means to win victory. Trump remade the use of a political base by moving its power to meet his own needs with little regard for the rest of the country, let alone the greater good. That’s where Senator Bernie Sanders’s candidacy raises warning flags.
Are we really ready to have another President who will manipulate the use of his political base to pull the entire country to yet another extreme?
While at opposite ends of the political spectrum, Sanders is playing to his base of supporters in much the same way as Trump, and he’s using a few too many Trump-like techniques and behaviors to win the Democratic nomination. Sanders, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist, continually speaks about building a revolution and movement to keep his support intact. Trump created his own kind of movement with “Make American Great Again,” and would like to think it built a Trump revolution.
Bernie has perfected turning his own rallies into shows that are looking a lot like Trump rallies. The large crowds that gather for Sanders’s see a candidate filled with increasingly visible and vocal anger as he addresses them. His mood is directed at the so-called political establishment, and it appears to be rubbing off on his young supporters. It’s far from the positive role modeling that he’d like us to think it is.
Too many of Sanders’s followers have taken to lashing out at those who disagree with them by using Twitter and Facebook bullying, booing of speakers, and any other way they can think of to show us that anger against the status quo is driving their support of Sanders. It’s the same kind of anger that Trump loves to use to rev up his own troops.
We were able to see Sanders in action in front of an audience during a recent CNN Town Hall in Charleston, South Carolina. It was an unexpected glimpse at how he works with a crowd, even when being interviewed by a moderator. In the course of conversation, Sanders turned to the audience and encouraged them to respond to his statements in unison:
Sanders: “Is raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour a radical idea?” The rousing audience response: “No!”
Sanders: “Is guaranteeing healthcare to all people as a human right a radical idea"?” The rousing audience response: “No!”
After a few more refrains of a similar nature, I was taken aback. We’ve watched Trump use this technique many times. The similarities did not a comfort level bring. Nor did the use of this CNN Town Hall exchange in a Sanders’s Instagram ad that read:
“Bernie asked the crowd if our ideas are radical. Their answers were perfect…” (Sound comes up to the audience exchange noted above)
“join the movement.”
For a candidate who prides himself on being a man of the people, Sanders and his ad team appeared totally tone deaf using the word “perfect’ to describe a reaction to something Sanders did on stage. Perfect has become a loaded political word since Trump used it to describe his now infamous call with the President of Ukraine.
Sanders is playing the loyalty game with his supporters in a way no other Democratic candidate is doing. It’s the kind of loyalty based on inclusion that ominously reeks of exclusion if you don’t agree. Sanders steadfastly carries the banner of running as a democratic socialist. He doesn’t talk about pulling the country together under Democratic party principles, but he wants the Democratic nomination. And he wants it his way.
Four years ago Bernie Sanders needed to be pushed to finally throw his support behind Hillary Clinton. Many questioned how hard he actually pushed his supporters to work for the Democratic nominee. In August of 2017, the results of an enormous election survey of 500,000 people showed that 12% of people who voted for Sanders in the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries voted for Donald Trump in the general election.
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