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The Reagan of The Left
washingtonpost.com ^ | March 3, 2020 | Sam Tanenhouse

Posted on 03/07/2020 6:58:43 PM PST by ransomnote

Bernie Sanders remade his party with a youth movement he built from the outside. Just like the Gipper did.

Democratic Party elders are bewildered. Don’t voters understand how unpopular Sen. Bernie Sanders is in Washington? “Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done,” Hillary Clinton, still smarting from the wound he inflicted on her 2016 presidential campaign, said in January. “It’s all just baloney, and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.” The consequences, the party establishment fears, could be dire: Sanders will be George McGovern all over again — roundly thrashed in the general election by a sinister incumbent, just like the unexpected lefty winner of the 1972 primaries.

Sanders does have a historical forerunner, but it isn’t McGovern. It’s Ronald Reagan.

The comparison looks implausible. The genial, soothing, archconservative Reagan, with his Hollywood polish, script-reading skills and two terms as governor of California, seems a long way from the cantankerous socialist senator, with his accent scraped off the Brooklyn sidewalks and his following formed in tiny, remote, hippie Vermont.

But Reagan was also labeled a fringe figure — of the right, not the left. Mainstream Republicans viewed him with alarm and ridiculed his proposals as simple and kooky. Like Sanders, Reagan shrugged off his detractors. Like Sanders, he bore little allegiance to the party. Like Sanders, he was said to appeal to only a narrow slice of voters. The two have something else in common. Both waged a hard-fought battle in a previous presidential primary contest, seeding their insurgent movements and building bases of young voters undeterred by the candidates’ advanced ages. Reagan was a spoiler turned tribune to a new Republican Party.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: berniesanders
The photo at the link is meant to dress Sanders in Reagan's Cowboy hat???!!!
1 posted on 03/07/2020 6:58:43 PM PST by ransomnote
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To: ransomnote

Bernie = Reagan...

Ok.


2 posted on 03/07/2020 7:10:02 PM PST by 2banana (My common ground with islamic terrorists - they want to die for allah and we want to kill them.)
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To: 2banana

Bernie=Castro


3 posted on 03/07/2020 7:12:11 PM PST by HighSierra5
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To: ransomnote

Wow. I’m continually astonished over the past several years at how the liberal media USES the memory of the man they once despised when it suits their purposes. Beyond shameful.


4 posted on 03/07/2020 7:12:45 PM PST by JennysCool
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To: ransomnote

The author thinks one reason Bernie is like Reagan is because both attract the young adult vote. He writes that 60% of the 18-35 cohort voted for Reagan.

The younger voters are not coming out for Bernie in the numbers he needs to win the primaries. They may like his free concerts and cheap beer. To some, he may be the real deal; to others he may be just cheap entertainment, kind of like the anti Jackie Mason.

Young adults realized that their economic prospects were negatively impacted by Carter. I suspect that more young adults than we realize understand that Trump is a safer bet where their personal finances are concerned. Trump may not get 60% of their vote, but I think he will get close to 50%.


5 posted on 03/07/2020 7:28:46 PM PST by CheshireTheCat ("Forgetting pain is convenient.Remembering it agonizing.But recovering truth is worth the suffering")
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To: CheshireTheCat

Doesn’t matter Obongo stopped him last weekend it’s over for him.


6 posted on 03/07/2020 7:34:34 PM PST by gibsonguy
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To: ransomnote

The Lamestream media may be beginning to realize that Slow Joe’s declining issues wrt to cognition is escalating to the point of ludicrousness.
And, Bernie’s Communism is very much in line with theirs. The primary issue the left has with Bernie is his IN YOUR FACE Communism. The left for years has held Bernie’s beliefs they just never outright admitted to those beliefs. Obfuscation was the name of the game.+
So, now they are faced with a dilemma, Lose with Demented Old Joe or, take a chance with Bernie the In Your Face Communist.
The DNC has made its choice. But, some in the media appear to be having some doubt.


7 posted on 03/07/2020 7:34:52 PM PST by ocrp1982 (ll)
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To: ransomnote
Stinking Attempted Filthy Political Smear Alert!
8 posted on 03/07/2020 8:43:47 PM PST by SuperLuminal (Where is Sam Adams now that we desperately need him)
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To: ransomnote

I call Bernie the “Unfrozen Caveman 60’s Radical.”


9 posted on 03/07/2020 9:02:16 PM PST by Wilhelm Tell (True or False? This is not a tag line.)
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To: JennysCool

Yes. Some of us have been alive and cognizant long enough to remember the vitriol directed at Ronald Reagan and see the dichotomy in how they reference him now, without even missing a beat.

Their use of him as a cudgel to make Trump look bad in comparison borders on the ridiculous.


10 posted on 03/07/2020 10:04:59 PM PST by rlmorel (Finding middle ground with tyranny or evil makes you either a tyrant or evil. Often both.)
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To: ransomnote

Oxymoron


11 posted on 03/07/2020 10:40:53 PM PST by Truthoverpower (The guv mint you get is the Trump winning express !)
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To: ransomnote

Tanenhouse published a biography of Senator Joseph McCarthy some years ago. Not a hagiography but not as much of a hit job as one might expect.


12 posted on 03/08/2020 2:42:26 PM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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