With Bernie’s People in Vermont
Note the underscore--Sanders is motivating the 63%
http://www.thenation.com/article/with-bernies-people-in-vermont/
A large man in overalls, who looked pretty familiar with pitchforks, said, “At least Bernie knows how many teats are on a cow’s udder.”
A social worker from Greenfield, Massachusetts, stood up and said she’d recently moved east from Chicago, and the differences in mental health provision among the states made her realize how much we needed a genuine national healthcare system. Another recent transplant from the Midwest talked about Scott Walker, and how proud she was to now have Bernie for a senator. Pedro, who was born in Venezuela, told them that if they lasted through two winters here, they could consider themselves Vermonters.
“If we can elect a black guy from Hawaii, then we can elect a Jewish guy from Brooklyn and Vermont,” said Jim DeBor, from Wilmington, Vermont. “I believe we can win. But at the very least he can make Hillary go a little bit left.”
It was that note of modest realism that kept coming up, from the young woman who said, “I’ll vote for Hillary in November if I have to, but I’d much rather vote for Bernie,” to the retired IT consultant who told me he’d never thought there was any point in voting until he heard Ross Perot warning about the “sucking sound” of American jobs leaving the country with the North American Free Trade Agreement. “I saw it happen in my own field,” he said. “Perot didn’t get anywhere, and the jobs disappeared just like he said. But he stood up to the system and told the truth, and I see Bernie the same way. Of course Perot was a billionaire, and Bernie isn’t. So he needs people to make up for the lack of money.”
= new reply since forum marked as read
how many were signing up. Duluth had a lot of meetings and most were full. And then I looked at the meetings being held in Two Harbors, Vermillion, etc. I got a bit scared because there were only a couple with 3-8 people signed up to go. This is in heavy Democratic areas. My own community did not even have a meeting.
So I am scared - what is going on?
Then I started thinking - my community did not have an office for Al Franken but we supported him. Those of us who wanted to volunteer went to Duluth. So the fact that some of the smaller communities were not represented on July 29 is not so surprising. I think it is the wrong approach but that is the way it is.
But what happened to the Union workers? Well maybe some of the volunteers in Duluth were Union members working on their own. Talked with my daughter, the Union member, and she reminded me that very few members do anything until their Union decides who to support. I have to tell you that does not make me feel any better.
That works when all candidates in a primary are well known but how does that work when one candidate is well known and all the rest are relatively unknown? It seems to me that means that even if my daughter is a Bernie supporter she cannot exercise her right to be involved in his campaign from the beginning. Which once again favors the leader.
