Bernie Sanders Is Too Nice For His Own Good

We recently wrote about many of the reasons Bernie Sanders lost the 2020 Democratic Primary and one of the most prominent reasons for his defeat was his reluctance to be much tougher on his rivals, which they were with him.

Sanders sustained a slew of attacks from his competitors in the Democratic field, most of the attacks were based on fear-mongering about the high price for his policies. Virtually every candidate attacked Sanders on the cost of Medicare for All, using the 'huge cost' of such a policy to scare voters into being against the policy, consistently screaming "it costs $30 trillion!" The price tag is actually somewhere around $17 trillion, also conveniently left out are the facts that this is the cost over ten years and that Medicare for All actually costs substantially less than the current American healthcare system. Medicare for All is estimated to save anywhere from $303 billion to $2 trillion over the course of the next ten years, if implemented.

In terms of the Democratic Primary as a whole, Sanders was much nicer to his competitors than they were to him, with Sanders being much more policy focused while absorbing personal attacks.

Sanders was accused by Elizabeth Warren of being sexist and telling her that a woman couldn't win the presidency in a meeting the two shared, which Sanders denied immediately. Sanders was backed up by the fact that he had told Warren to run in 2016 against Hillary Clinton so that there was a progressive in the race, after all the only reason Sanders entered the 2016 race was because Warren declined to. This didn't stop the CNN debate moderators from immediately taking Warren's side when asking, "how did you feel when Mr. Sanders told you a woman couldn't be president?"

Later on in the race Michael Bloomberg entered, was destroyed in two debates and wasted a billion dollars of his own money. Bloomberg attacked Sanders for believing in communism and wanting to enact communist policies, something which was laughed at by progressives, as Sanders fits somewhere in between a nordic-style social democrat and a democratic socialist. Others also echoed Bloomberg's attack on Sanders, including recently retired MSNBC host Chris Matthews who asked whether Sanders wanted to turn America into something like Denmark or Venezuela. Matthews also compared Sanders win in the Nevada caucus to the fall of France to the Nazis in 1940. Matthews also weirdly claimed that Sanders wouldn't stop and help after a car accident, but Joe Biden would.

Sanders was facing attacks from prominent Democratic supporters on news shows and social media. One of those was long time anti-Sanders pundit Jason Johnson, who claimed Sanders would drop out of the race before the first contest in Iowa, compared Sanders' black campaign staff to "residue" and was forced to apologise after he again targeted Sanders black staffers, stating "I don't care how many people from the island of misfit black girls you throw out there to defend you." Johnson was subsequently benched by MSNBC and fired from The Root.

A long standing criticism of Sanders has been that only white young men support him, this was extremely prevalent after the 2016 election and spurned the nickname "Bernie Bros". In actuality, Sanders had the most diverse base of support in the whole Democratic Primary, and after this news came to light, the Bernie Bro smear either changed into "mean people online" or completely vanished.

The idea of Sanders supporters being mean online has also been extremely prevalent over the last four years, which has essentially turned into anti-Sanders people online complaining whenever a Sanders supporter disagrees with them. It usually goes something like this:

• Anti-Sanders person: Bernie is too old racist and sexist! He cannot win and his supporters are all young racist white men living in their parents basement!
• Bernie supporter: You're an idiot
• Anti-Sanders person: The Bernie Bros are attacking me again!

Of course, there are also studies showing that Sanders supporters act just like anyone else online - but accepting that doesn't allow you to create a narrative and whine about it for four years in order to attack your political opponents.

Throughout all of these attacks Sanders has endured, he was extremely reluctant to fight back, much to the anger of his supporters. However, when Sanders did fight back, people loved it. For example, Sanders was asked a question about Bernie Bros and his online supporters during a CNN town hall while he was leading the primary, his response was to respond with why people don't concentrate on the abuse he himself received or his supporters receive, Sanders also stated that people should consider the abuse his wife receives, which especially after the 2016 primary race was extremely vitriolic, with attacks about her weight and looks occurring often.

When Sanders actually pushed back and asserted things that we all know to be true is when he actually received the most praise and looked like a force to be reckoned with in the Democratic primary, when he let his opponents dictate the terms of the argument, he was forced to answer ridiculous questions and his supporters wanted him to be more assertive.

Ultimately, Sanders reluctance to fight back ending up costing him the Democratic nomination and any hope of being president.