Fighter for me or not fighter for me?
While grocery shopping the other day, a friend asked how we were doing (in Trump 2.0). A lot of stress-eating, I said. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is hearing the same sort of thing as he travels the country.
There are a couple of reasons for my stress just this week, but even people who don’t immerse themselves in politics (and blog politics every day) are feeling it. People on Donald Trump’s target list are feeling it.
Sanders asks his audiences how living in this America makes them feel. He asks about their stress level, and it connects more than a discussion about policy. It is a big change from the Sanders who campaigned for president in 2016 on income and wealth inequality in a rigged economy. In 2020, he ran on people’s pain. Anand Giridharadas writes at The Ink:
It was something of a departure for a man who is not necessarily the most touchy-feely guy you’ve ever met. I tried to dig in to what Sanders was doing, and why. I spoke to many of his advisers and his wife and him. What I learned is excerpted below.
It was, in short, that he was trying to help citizens better connect their individual pain to the larger forces misgoverning the country.
And it appears now that he is doing it again. While many are banging the drum about fascism and a coup and all the rest, Sanders is reminding us that connecting those issues to the emotional life of voters is vital.
Oligarchy and autocracy and the like are not textbook concepts. They make life suck.
@bernie In America today, working class people live, on average, 7 years shorter lives than the wealthy. Stress kills. In Altoona, Wisconsin this weekend I asked people how economic stress impacted their lives. The responses I got were painful, but not surprising.
Democrats need to learn from Sanders, Giridharadas explained this week on “Morning Joe.” Because the key decision point for politically less-engaged people (unlike blog writers and readers) may not be left/right, Democrat/Republican, but “fighter for me or not fighter for me?”
Or as I use again and again, How many Rocky movies did Stallone make?
Voters want leaders — even phony ones — willing to fight for them and to risk themselves in the effort. Wimps need not apply. Stern words to not count.
Democrats have a lot of work to do on that.
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