So Bernie Wrote an Essay

My Facebook friends include ardent Bernie Sanders supporters as well as those who think his time has come and gone and he needs to sit down and shut up. One in particular – a local politician who constantly pronounces and pontificates and will fight you if your opinion differs – recently slammed Sanders by bringing up the yucky essay that the U.S. Senator from Vermont wrote back in 1972.

I guess it doesn’t matter that Sanders, the 2016 and 2020 presidential candidate who some think was shafted by Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the Democratic National Committee if not Hillary Clinton herself the last time around, supports the Green New Deal, Medicare for All and a living wage.

Or that he wants to expand social security, legalize marijuana and end the resource-wasting “War on Drugs.” Or that he supports Roe v. Wade, wants to repeal the Patriot Act and supports same sex marriage.

Supports net neutrality? Who cares?

Believes climate change is real and we must address it? So what?

Wants to reform student debt and provide free or affordable college to all? Whatever.

What apparently matters is that the guy wrote a one-page essay almost 50 years ago – when a new house cost $28,000, a gallon of gas was 55 cents and five guys were arrested for burglarizing the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. – for an alternative publication that’s disconcerting. Even nauseating. This and the fact that he’s not really a Democrat (even though he’s caucused with the Democrats for years) are seemingly enough to disqualify him from the office that’s currently being defiled by an orange oaf with zero intellect who’s on tape and on record degrading women and encouraging disrespect and molestation.

Given the anti-Sanders sentiment out there on the left as well as the right, I’m not sure he’s the Trump-annihilating candidate we need right now. What we don’t need, though, are lazy swipes and tabloid-level attacks at politicians who don’t strike our fancy. We don’t need more slime, more mud, more spurious accusations and prurient implications. If you’re going to oppose Bernie Sanders, let it be because you don’t care about campaign finance reform or disagree with the idea that we should only use the American military as a last resort.

Let it be because you think he’s wrong to want to break up the big banks or because you resent that he organized and protested against segregated housing or was at the March on Washington back in 1963. Let it be because you don’t want to tax the rich and close corporate tax loopholes or you don’t support unions or you’re against affordable housing or lowering drug prices.

Don’t base your case on 14 paragraphs of crap that he wrote the same year that Richard Nixon visited China and Mark Spitz won seven gold medals in swimming, for Pete’s sake. You can do better than that.

Sources: Kaiser Family Foundation, The People History, pro-Sanders Facebook groups.