Amid Clinton’s Historic Run, It’s Sanders’ Message That’s Resonating With LI Women

Exactly one week after Hillary Clinton’s drubbing in the New Hampshire primary, a group of about 15 women gathered in the Pace Landing section of West Islip for yet another examination of the tumultuous campaign for the Democratic presidential ticket.

However, those who assembled on this Tuesday night aren’t the type of people you might expect to find in the living room of such a tony neighborhood, considering the generation gap among some of them. It’s not age, economic status or familial ties that brought this group together. Instead it’s their political ideology that united them in common belief and action. And though the majority of them were left-leaning women, they were not there to discuss the virtues of the female democratic presidential contender who could make history as the first woman elected to the White House. These were Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) supporters.


Their gathering came a week to the day that Sanders, a self-proclaimed “Democratic socialist,” routed Clinton in New Hampshire and after the rivals battled to a near-tie in Iowa. With Sanders rising in the polls nationally and in states like Nevada where no one ever imagined Clinton would be in a nail-biter, the potential that Sanders could actually walk away with the nomination has emboldened his already rambunctious supporters.

“Bernie talks about everything that has either happened to me in my life or has come out of my mouth at some point,” 34-year-old Melissa Peters, an active member of the Facebook group “Long Islanders for Bernie Sanders,” told the circle. “From being poor, which I’ve been, from education–student loans have killed me, just wanting the best for my children, watching the opiate problem in our neighborhood and having it personally affect me in my life–literally, everything he says hits me or somebody in my life.”

https://www.longislandpress.com/2016/02/20/amid-clintons-historic-run-its-sanders-message-thats-resonating-with-li-women/