Henry Scanlon above-titled article at The Federalist has this as its subtitle intro: “Yes, Bernie supporters, we’ve been there, where you are. We’ve been there for a long time.”
Here are his opening paragraphs:
Bernie Sanders supporters may share some common ground with constitutional conservatives beyond just our history of being callously, cavalierly, and constantly screwed by the entrenched political establishment, and being rendered incapable of doing anything about it due to their Praetorian Guard of ink-stained political operatives who pretend to be journalists. (Did anyone get a load of Scott Pelley’s smooch-fest with Hillary on “60 Minutes” the other night?)
Maybe we aren’t as far apart as those same ink-stained self-designated warriors for truth would have us think. If that’s the case, maybe we have something to talk about, and this might just be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Of course the key is the word “some” before the words “common ground.”
Bernie’s treatment by the Democratic Party led by Debbie Wasserman Schultz is now confirmed through WikiLeaks. Scanlon writes:
This is no isolated incident. It is exactly the kind of “thumb on the scale” cheating, aided and abetted by a complicit, complacent media, that folks on the Right have been victimized by over and over for decades.
Under the subheading “Now You Get Why We Complain,” Scanlon writes:
Sanders and his supporters knew all along the DNC was in the tank for Hillary, that Wasserman Schultz and others were working diligently and effectively, like practiced second-story men, to make certain they got the outcome they wanted. Sanders and his supporters knew it, and the fact that hard proof of it was both elusive and necessary made it all the more exasperating.
They might find it enlightening, and maybe even helpful, to acknowledge for a moment that the feeling they are currently enduring is exactly the feeling that arises in their political opposites by such things as Fast and Furious, the IRS scandal, the Benghazi debacle, the utterly preposterous notion of calling the outrageous and probably criminal personal enrichment scheme known as The Clinton Foundation a (wait for it) charity. You know, all those things and so many more that conservatives have been howling about for, like, ever.
Scanlon writes: “So, yes, Bernie supporters, we’ve been there, where you are. We’ve been there for a long time.”
That’s what got me to thinking: For a while now I’ve realized that some of my oldest and dearest friends are Bernie supporters. None is particularly politically minded. They live their lives, go about their business, and are nice. Just that: they’re nice people; friendly, compassionate, charitable. They pretty much just treat people the way they like to be treated themselves, and that includes with dignity and respect.
They have come to know in their hearts and souls that something is very wrong in this country. They sense it in the way Thomas Jefferson said they would, that they could be relied upon to do.
…
Talk to them a little more and, if you are a constitutional conservative, you will find that you and they are concerned about the same things. Sure, you consider them hopelessly naïve. You want to ask them, “What part of Venezuela is unclear?” They consider you wicked because they are conflating your beliefs with those of mainline Republicans, and, worse, Wall Street.
The entire article is worth reading — but here is one more key sentence to share from it: “The question is not what’s desired: It’s how to get there.”
Read the entire article at The Federalist.
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