The Attacks on Bernie Sanders Supporters Are Going From the Ridiculous to the Deranged
Rival campaigns and hostile journalists are scraping the bottom of the barrel with their latest attacks on Bernie Sanders supporters. Now, apparently, getting owned on Twitter is “harassment,” and when a nurses’ union donates to Bernie, it’s “dark money.”
Democratic presidential candidate and US senator Bernie Sanders speaks to the crowd at a campaign rally on July 26, 2019 in Santa Monica, California. Mario Tama / Getty
Elizabeth Warren and Mayor Pete Buttigieg, two unelectable candidates apparently trying their best to outdo each other in alienating progressive voters, have recently tarred activists trying to make America a better place as “dark money” or super PACs. Meanwhile, an anti–Bernie Sanders PAC is giving the most absurd possible justification for its founders’ anonymity: people will be mean to them on the internet!
Last month, Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel tweeted a donor appeal in which Mayor Pete’s campaign referred to the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led group pushing for action on climate change, and the Center for Popular Democracy, which works on economic justice issues, as “dark money groups.”
The Sunrise Movement is one of the most impressive of many vigorous climate action groups to emerge over the last couple years, bearing significant responsibility for the prominence of the Green New Deal in our discourse and even as a Democratic talking point.
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