Almost certainly not gonna happen, that, but Mark Jacobson at NYMag shares Sanders’ back story, which is interesting way beyond WINTHEMORNING:
… To know why we may soon be living in a however unlikely Bernie Sanders moment, it is useful to know Vermont, the state Sanders has represented in Congress for 24 years, the last eight as a senator. It is helpful to understand that long before Sam Houston and the loutish Lone Star State, before the “patriot” secessionists of Arizona, there was the Republic of Vermont, a sovereign nation with its own constitution. Signed in a tavern during a raging thunderstorm in 1777, the Vermont constitution forbade slavery and guaranteed suffrage to male non-landowners. In other words, it offered more freedom than the famous document promulgated by the vaunted U.S. Founding Fathers and ratified in 1789…
When Sanders arrived in Vermont at age 27, it was among the whitest and most rural states in the country, as it still is today. He was one of thousands of “flatlanders” (what the “woodchuck” locals call out-of-staters) fleeing the “hassle” of New York and Boston. Sanders fell in love. This wasn’t Brooklyn. “In all the years I’ve been here, I’ve never once heard anyone loudly cursing in the grocery store.”
He did odd jobs and began to raise a family. In 1971, a friend invited him to a meeting of the then-fledgling leftist Liberty Union Party. Sanders remembers: “I stood up, said a few words. I can’t remember what. Two hours later, I was a candidate for the United States Senate.” He got in his $200 car and went out to campaign. “Here I was, running on this tiny party, with no money, but I was allowed to participate in the debates, I was on the radio, interviewed in the newspapers, actually taken seriously. Could you imagine that happening today?”
Sanders ran as an “unabashed socialist,” got 2 percent, kept at it, got 4. He did considerably better in the blue-collar areas of Burlington. Switching from the socialist Liberty Union Party to become an Independent, he ran for mayor and, in what became a nasty standoff between liberal flatlanders and old-line woodchucks, managed to beat the five-term incumbent Gordon Paquette by a count of 4,030 to 4,020…
Although he was admittedly no more than “a foot soldier” in the great movement battles of the ’60s, Sanders is the last pure man standing of his most political generation. The highly compromised examples of Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Jerry Brown, and even Jesse Jackson notwithstanding, he alone has been able to keep the outsider faith. Even though he votes with the Democratic Party more often than many actual Democrats, he is the longest-serving Independent member of Congress in the history of the country…
***********
Soon we are discussing a major question in the would-be Bernie campaign: Would he run on a third-party ticket or as a Democrat? The choice seems obvious. Not even Ross Perot could afford to launch a meaningful third-party national campaign these days. Beyond that, you risk what Sanders calls “the Ralph Nader dilemma.”If there’s one thing that really bugs Bernie, it is the specter of Nader, who earlier this year sent a bizarre “open letter” to the Burlington Free Press whining about how Sanders won’t return his calls. Discounting the argument that the two-party system might be a big part of the status quo he so deplores, Sanders slaps down his soup spoon.
“Do you remember Florida?” Sanders half-shouts. “I won’t play the spoiler.”
Besides, being a Democrat gets you onto the primary stage with Hillary Clinton, a prospect that figures to keep political analysts palavering long into the night. The issue is how much Bernie can tap into what he calls “the profound anger” that has pervaded the nation from the tea party to Occupy, and how much that anger will play into the campaign narrative. Bernie could push Clinton to move left. Who knows, he could get hot. If Herman Cain could get hot, even for a moment, why not Sanders? He is already beginning to connect the mass protests following the Eric Garner and Michael Brown killings with his core economic-fairness issues….
goblue72
He stands a snowballs chance in Hades, but I’d love to see him run against Hilz just to keep her honest. But I got a big soft spot for Bernie.
lamh36
Excellent links:
5hrs ago:
Explosion outside NAACP in Colorado deliberate, FBI says
Shalimar
I’m glad the author asked Sanders about the strangest issue arising from his candidacy: He has never actually been a member of the party whose nomination he would seek. I don’t disagree with the answer though, and I would vote for him if he’s still around when Florida gets a vote.
Omnes Omnibus
@lamh36: God damn it. A post about this matters.
ETA please post about this. It does matter.
Violet
@lamh36: Repliled to you on this subject in thread below.
lamh36
Good night BJ.
I’ll leave ya’ll with a bit of breaking news…the tail of Air Asia plane found….
Now for still NOT-BREAKING NEWS…IED detonated near NAACP office in Colorado Springs.
Hmmm, is this 1965 or 2015…but whatever.
Little Boots
the debates would be worth it.
lamh36
@Violet: Saw it and replied…
No one reads online newspaper headlines.
People still watch national news programming.
It happened at 1pm this afternoon.
So far all the people I know have learned of it via twitter or social media, there has been no other broadcast reporting on it.
People still tend to turn to national broadcast news for breaking news…and I don’t see anything about any of them reporting anything.
Violet
@lamh36: Repliled in other thread. If it happened at 1 p.m., which time zone was that? When did FBI declare it deliberate? Did anyone get injured or killed? If it happened later in the day and the FBI needed time to investigate it may not have made the nightly news shows.
If people weren’t injured or killed then it’s not going to make much news at all, especially since it didn’t happen in NYC or some other east coast place.
Check the morning shows (Today, GMA, morning cable shows) and see if it’s covered.
I don’t think it’s a conspiracy. I think it’s yet another example of our horrible media. This is news. It’s important. And they want to cover the Air Asia flight and Cameron Diaz’s wedding. They’re not news organizations–they’re infotainment organizations searching for ratings.
Violet
@lamh36:
Also, I must be really weird, then, since I rarely watch TV news, except for local news to check the weather. I almost never see cable news unless I’m some place where it’s on–airport, gym. I’m on the go a lot and check news headlines on my phone. Online news, usually via Google News, but also BBC News and other sources.
lamh36
@Violet:
So will this be classified as domestic terrorism? Notice the “no one was injured” line…cause it’s only called “terrorism” if people are killed, unless it’s committed by a non-white person?
BTW, LA Times reported it at 1pm, updated the story at 3pm with the FBI statement that it was a deliberate detonation. More than enough time for national broadcast and definitely time for LIVE breaking news chyron on some 24hr news channel.
Funny enough, CNN lets me know when Kim Kardashian’s naked ass covers some french magazine faster than the story of a detonation of a bomb near an office of the NAACP right after the news today that NAACP Legal Fund sent a letter to STL seeking new GJ in Micheal Brown case.
I don’t believe it’s a conspiracy, but it is a fuckin’ travesty that it wasn’t reported earlier.
ETA: hmph…no mention on CNN of suspect being white male..
Anne Laurie
@lamh36: The bombing is important, and I am keeping a (web) eye on it. But I’m hoping for more information by tomorrow — this blog isn’t actually a news organization, and I don’t want to accidentally contribute to the spread of misinformation by feeling “we” need to be the first to front-page the first possibly misleading reports.
Balloon Juice ain’t the Drudge Report. Or, goddess forbid, Twitchy. This will still be news tomorrow morning, and quite possibly for a number of mornings afterwards.
lamh36
@Anne Laurie: actually, I never said anything about their needing to be a post on this.
The tags for the long read said “Execellent links” that’s why I used that header in my comment.
I was contributing comments not trying to get a post
KG
This is why third party nominees and independent candidates have no chance of winning. If you start off thinking the best you can do is be a spoiler, you shouldn’t be in the general election. (And stop blaming Nader for Gore running a shitty campaign.)
I’d like to see more voices in the primaries. Particularly ones that aren’t just ridiculous, no chance, voices like Kucinich on the left and Bauer on the right. Just anything to avoid Clinton/Bush again.
Violet
@lamh36: Bombings by white people are never classified as domestic terrorism. It’s as wrong as wrong can be but that’s how our terrible media rolls. They’ll call it an act by one disgruntled man, no conspiracy seen, move along, look forward not back. Etc. White men could be meeting in basements and hatching plots to bomb places mostly populated by non-white people, carrying out those bombings all across the country, and it still wouldn’t be “domestic terrorism” because they were white.
Fucking idiot media.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
God bless him. That’s hilarious.
danielx
Confession: OT, this is not an open thread and apologies up front, but this is just too good…
The totally awesome awesomeness of the intertubes has been demonstrated to me like never before.
I learned about from another source about one Kirby Delauter, 5th District Councilman for Frederick County, Maryland. Kirby’s grasp upon this whole 1st Amendment deal and for that matter the democratic process in general appears to be a mite tenuous, as he, Kirby Delauter – an elected official, mind – appears to believe that newspaper reporters need his permission to use his name in articles. Which party he belongs to is unmentioned, but given his reference to “the liberal agenda at the FNP”, the Frederick News-Post being the newspaper in question, I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest he is – wait for it – a Republican. Hard to imagine, I know.
The editorial staff at the News-Post wrote an opinion piece to disabuse Kirby Delauter of this notion, mentioning Kirby Delauter’s name no less than twenty-eight times. Piece includes a very nice Easter egg; check the first letter of each paragraph in the article.
So to get to the magical intertubes good part, I read the Huffington Post piece on this Kirby Delauter asshole and my first thought was “wow, what an asshole”. My second one was (hey, Huffington Post and WaPo both!) “hey, this asshole is rapidly becoming famous and not in a good way”. Then my mind leaped to the golden days of 2012, and “what was the name of that douchebag from Greenville, South Carolina who got famous for obscenely insulting Sandra Fluke for expressing her political views on Twitter?”
Couldn’t remember the name to save my life, but remembered where he was from and punched “Greenville South Carolina douchebag” into der Google machine. With bated breath I waited for all of .02 seconds, and was it the same guy? Aye, the very same! The very first thing that pops up is the deathless prose of TBogg in “Internet Man Does Not Want To Be On The Google Anymore”. It includes a discussion of the travails and (many) character flaws of GEORGE TIERNEY OF GREENVILLE SOUTH CAROLINA, who I would imagine has trouble getting dates to this very day.
I was, and remain, totally awestruck. Not to mention getting a nice heartwarming feeling about the effect Kirby Delauter’s loose grip on First Amendment issues is about to have on Kirby Delauter’s political career. Probably not as warm as Kirby Delauter is feeling right now…but warm.
So here’s to you, Kirby Delauter! Look upon your newfound fame as a learning opportunity – I’d get right on reading the Bill of Rights and the Federalist Papers, between those carpet-chewing fits and blaming everything on the liberal media. And maybe pay a little attention to that old business about learning from others’ complete communications fuckups, too…
Violet
@lamh36: It was Omnes Omnibus who was asking for a post on it.
danielx
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
He should return Ralph’s calls, at midnight, in a nice Boris-Karloff-as-Jacob-Marley voice.
Raaaaalph…..I am the ghost of the 2000 presidential election, Raaaaalph….you egotistical shithead.
Anne Laurie
@lamh36: Thanks. Should’ve responded to Omnes, but I didn’t want to look like I was ignoring you!
Mnemosyne
CNN now (as of 10:48 pm Pacific time) has a headline on their front page about the NAACP bombing that was posted 30 minutes ago.
Also, in happier news, Stephen Fry is engaged. Don’t worry, his fiance is 30 years younger, but he’s not quite as young as he looks. I swear he looks about 16 in that picture and I got a little weirded out, but he’s actually 27.
Villago Delenda Est
@KG: I will NEVER stop blaming the vile shitstain Nader for 2000. There would have been no war in Iraq if Nader hadn’t actively campaigned in “tossup” states deliberately in the vain hope of a “Nach Bush, Uns” result.
Fuck Nader from here to Alpha Centauri. He is dead to me…he’s shit upon his own legacy.
Mike in NC
@Villago Delenda Est: I wish Ralphie to shoot his eye out.
magurakurin
@Anne Laurie:
but it would be totally awesome if it was. John C. could have a weekly 5-minute hate type rant segment…sort of like Olbermann but way more entertaining. You could play a clip of something that dumbshit Palin said or did and then right in the middle cut it short and just flash to Raven saying “FIDO.” Omnes could give in-depth philosophical slants on the news right before he gets into a downey brook with McLaren…..hilarity would ensue. It would be double plus good for sure. Make it so, number 2.
ruemara
There doesn’t have to be a conspiracy for the media to actively not cover a domestic terrorist attack on American soil. It just demonstrates a culture where attacks against minorities are not considered real crimes. #alllivesmatterbutnotatequalvalue if this had been to a tricking McDonald’s, it would have been national news.
JoyfulA
@Violet: The news was on my local newspaper’s website this afternoon.
wasabi gasp
@magurakurin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecWp_f1kGsY
eric
How is John Lewis impure? I realize that calling Sanders ‘the last pure man of his generation’ makes good copy. Doesn’t make it true, though.
C.V. Danes
More power to Bernie Sanders if he chooses to run. The worst thing possible for the Democrats would be for Hillary Clinton to run unchallenged.
C.V. Danes
@KG:
This. Exactly.
Gore ran a shitty campaign, ran from the guy who knew how to win (Clinton), and didn’t have the stones to see the Florida recount to the end. That is why he lost.
That being said, I would be quite happy if Nader would just STFU and go into retirement. All he’s doing now is destroying what little remains of his legacy.
satby
@C.V. Danes:
That ship sailed so long ago it’s been around the world four times.
blueskies
@eric: You make an excellent point. And Lewis has a much more diverse and arguably fractious electorate to deal with.
Les Nessman
@lamh36: I know is will sound crass, but it was just a can of gasoline, with some rinky-dink homemade detonator.
Everything that blows up is now called an IED, but this is not a sophisticated explosive, made by a highly trained vigilante group.
From what I saw it didn’t even burn the siding on the building.
It’s Colorado Springs.
A lone religious nut got upset about the police protests.
This is a deep red city, in a deep red county.
Huge military and MIC presence.