Seventy-year old cash-poor female weighing-in here, (for what it’s worth):

Please don’t perpetuate the myth that Bernie Sanders supporters are mostly young, male and angry. For all we know, you may be guilty of disseminating Russian misinformation .  

Sanders supporters are representative of voters across the age and gender spectrum.  Their loyalty to the candidate is a reflection of Bernie’s own consistency throughout forty years of public service.  Smart voters have learned to distinguish authenticity from pandering, and trust Bernie to be true to his principles.  

He does not claim that he can deliver Medicare For All on his own, but charges American voters with holding Congress’ feet to the fire until they find a way to make it happen here, just as similar programs have been adopted across the advanced world. That’s good enough for me.  The presidency was never intended to be a platform from which to arbitrarily impose a single person’s will, nor should it be the special instrument of any lobby or industry.   

A  president should provide vision and leadership, but bend to the will of the voters who have the absolute power to replace underperforming congresspersons.  If, as polling suggests, we truly want Medicare For All, or any other form of universal healthcare, we must insist that our representatives make that their priority. 

As a long-time Sanders supporter, I am getting pretty tired of hearing non-supporters characterize our thoughts and inclinations.  

“Mr. Sanders followers have no affinity for anyone other than him.” (Emerson Lynn, St. Albans Messenger)

Not true.  Most supporters whom I know have had to struggle with the choice between Bernie and Elizabeth Warren.  I certainly did and will be more than glad of either candidate as the nominee.

I would have added Kamala Harris to that roster had she stayed in the race.  

Those are just my top choices, beyond which I can readily get behind Amy Klobuchar for her level-headed people skills and Pete Buttigieg for his Obama-like statesmanship.

I can, in fact, willingly support any of the viable Democratic candidates.  They all have different ideas as to how we can achieve it, but share the conviction that we must find a way to provide universal healthcare.

We will have a single very strong ticket coming out of the convention, no matter which two people are chosen to run, and this is not just because any alternative to Donald Trump would represent a vast improvement.  They would each, individually, bring a different and valuable set of talents to the office while restoring some of the ethics and gravitas that have been stripped from government in the Trump administration.

I suspect that tales of the so-called “Bernie Bros” may be largely the product of disinformation campaigns generated from the right (or Russian cyber sneaks?) to divide voters on the left.   From my experience of decades of Vermont campaigns, the abusive behaviors attributed to these supporters simply do not ring true.  I have no doubt that there are individuals of every stripe who behave badly, but I simply can’t give credence to the idea that this is at all common among Bernie’s supporters.  

Quite the contrary, in fact.  I have attended numerous local “town halls” over the years, where Bernie shared pizza with all and sundry and fielded questions from constituents, friend and foe. ‘No sign of those “Bernie Bros,” leaving me to wonder from whence they materialized in national politics.

His authenticity may be one of the reasons why, throughout the decades, he has enjoyed consistent support even in Franklin County, still a Republican stronghold.

Now that Bernie appears to be the “front-runner” (whatever that means), there seems to be a drive toward hysteria in the center-left political class over what they are certain is his “unelectability.”  Rather than attempting to draw Bernie and his supporters out with informed discussions of the true meaning of Democratic Socialism, the media seems to be joining the panic parade.  That Bernie refuses to lie to voters with a comfortingly pat narrative about how we get to Medicare for all, should reassure anyone with common sense, but we have become so accustomed to political lies that we are suspicious when a candidate doesn’t play that game.

As harsh as it is, I’ve pretty much abandoned hope for the long-term future of American democracy as a whole. The founding fathers made a few huge miscalculations in not better limiting presidential powers and screwing around with “representative” government rather than direct democracy.  Those failures just became exacerbated over the duration by unprincipled gerrymandering and money flooding into the electoral process.  With Citizens United we unlocked the candy store and threw away the key.

There’s little chance Congress will ever plug the giant holes in the democratic dike so we will probably become little more than a cautionary tale for future societies toying with competing models for fair governance.  

We’ve had our shot…and we blew it…bigly.