Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Unions, and Liberal Groups – Oh, What a Tangled Web

There was a time when I respected and supported Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Unions. I joined groups that professed to be for Democrats only, supportive of Democrats, liberals, or progressives, as well as groups that marketed themselves as non-partisan groups that fight for liberal causes. For many years, I supported liberal groups because in doing so, I had an opportunity to address specific issues head-on, and to spend time and work with like-minded people. The idea of a Sanders/Warren or Warren/Sanders, or Sanders/anybody, or Warren/anybody ticket was attractive. I supported them because they agreed with and supported ideals that the Democratic Party and I had long fought for and supported.

I never worked a union job but appreciated the role that unions played in providing the salaries, benefits, and holidays that I enjoyed in my non-union jobs. I verbalized my appreciation to union leaders and members when I had the chance, stood with them and for them when the opportunity arose and even created that opportunity when it didn’t arise without my help, and I offered my full support when they were under attack.

The groups were first to disappoint me. As groups like MoveOn and CREDO became more about being biggest and best, and first to shoot out email and petitions before anyone else, I lost interest. It seemed they were more about themselves, building mailing lists, and getting media attention than they were about issues, which they were often ready to drop as soon as something else was the big news item.

Over the past couple of years, as Warren and Sanders let their fame go to their heads, the writer in me paid close attention to the audience they targeted, as well as how purposefully and systematically they manipulated that audience. What I saw was not attractive nor was it anything I could continue to support. Sadly, today, I liken it to the tactics the people who called themselves tea party used, which was also the tactics Hitler used (repeat the same lies until people are so beat down they actually believe them). I criticized the Republican Party for allowing that group to destroy what was left of their party. I would be a hypocrite if I remained silent now when I see people trying to do the same to my party. I don’t like hypocrites or want to be one.

For a while, I excused Senator Sanders and assumed his groupies were the meme machine pumping out deceptive information so fast I’m surprised it didn’t shut down the internet, and he wasn’t attached to them. Time showed me, though, that he was not innocent. He did not denounce their actions and many of those memes came out under his name and on his Facebook page. That’s when my respect and trust in him waned.

Then came TPP. Senators Sanders and Warren both pumped out lies (I tried to call them deceptions but they quickly rose to the level of lies when they were debunked repeatedly and both doubled down on their misinformation). They both lost me there.

And the unions joined them. I understood, to some degree, and was patient with union posturing. Unlike politicians, I thought they deserved wiggle-room for championing very specific causes for a specific group of people, where politicians are responsible for looking out for what is best for everyone concerned. As time went on, though, and more information came out, I wasn’t able to excuse them, either. Walmart. That sums it up in a word, but I’ll explain.

Walmart and their cheap Chinese products have done serious damage to this country - to workers, to wages, to tax-payers, to small business owners, to manufacturing jobs – to everyone that these people profess to care so much about. Yet, they say little – if anything – about Walmart and they want to let China lead in trade? That’s what shooting down TPP would do, along with a host of other non-progressive disappointments.

So, in my view, today – I cannot trust anything that is coming from Sanders, Warren, or the unions that support them.

Like demented, delusional, disgusting, dishonest, extremely dangerous Rand Paul, Bernie Sanders is against the gun legislation we need in this country, thinks rules don’t apply to him, and thinks it is okay to crash a party primary. That is not okay with me. Nor is it okay for groups with titles like Democrats Only, Democrats 2014 – 2016, Democrats anything to instruct members not to say anything negative about  Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat; he is a spoiled spoiler.

And, it is absolutely not okay for anyone to lecture me about dividing the party since I am sticking with my party and its Democratic candidates (many of the people trying to lecture me and others are not even Democrats). I will continue to talk about the reasons that I dislike Bernie Sanders: he is not a Democrat, he is not honest, he is feeble, he likes guns, he thinks rules don’t apply to him, he lied about President Obama and TPP, and he jumped in where he doesn’t belong because he wants to split the party. That is the only reason anyone joins a primary race. Seriously, for those who don’t understand the process, the only reason for joining a primary race is to split the party. It’s natural when a candidate jumps into her/his own party primary but ugly when people jump into the primary of a party they don’t even belong to.

And I don’t like ugly.