Lest you think this kind of behavior has no real world effect, go look at Warren’s speech after the New Hampshire primary. You see them regularly making fun of the other candidates or their supporters, bragging about bullying candidates and their supporters, comparing other candidates to snakes or rats, and generally engaging in toxic behavior. Yet another part of it is the fact that Sanders simply has a lot more supporters online than other candidates, so when they lash out their numbers amplify their perceived nastiness.īut just look at the self-described “dirtbag left”, Chapo-following Sanders supporters - which if you look at the number of people who listen to that podcast isn’t exactly small - and you’ll quickly see there’s just a level of cruelty you don’t generally see from other supporters in any significant manner. But so far as I’m aware, the Flight Attendants’ Union wasn’t flooded with nasty, insulting messages, voicemails, and tweets from Buttigieg supporters.Ī part of this phenomenon is due to the sheer passion of Sanders’ supporters, which is admirable in many ways but, as passion is wont to do, can often get out of hand. Just as a comparison, the day after the New Hampshire primary the President of the Association of Flight Attendants unleashed a pretty harsh attack on Pete Buttigieg’s health care plan and decrying Buttigieg’s attacks on Medicare for All as “offensive and dangerous”. Of course there was the recent episode in which Nevada’s Culinary Union 226 unleashed a coordinated barrage of negative mailers and ads against Sanders in the immediate wake of his New Hampshire victory, alleging that Medicare for All would take away the health care the union had negotiated, to which Sanders supporters predictably responded with a torrent of abusive messages, voicemails, and tweets. But it’s all too predictable behavior from a certain segment of Sanders supporters. Again, you simply don’t see other candidates’ supporters doing this on more than a fringe level. However, when for example, the Working Families Party pretty innocuously endorsed Elizabeth Warren last fall, Sanders supporters inundated WFP with angry and insulting messages, accusing them of rigging the endorsement process, and many spending days and weeks obsessing over a conspiracy to steal the endorsement from Sanders. Just recently a liberal podcaster and previous Warren supporter with a large following, Ryan Knight, declared that he was switching to Sanders because of his view that after finishing 4th in New Hampshire Warren was no longer viable, and Knight was brutally ratioed with angry and insulting missives from Warren supporters.īut when some union or progressive organization endorses Sanders, you simply don’t see supporters of other candidates swarming the endorsers with angry comments, at least not in any noticeable way. As a Warren supporter, I’ve seen bile spewed at her from every kind of supporter out there, I think I even saw a Delaney supporter trolling her once (well, Delaney was probably paying him lol). Now to be clear, every candidate has assholish, toxic supporters. Many Sanders people have tried to downplay or outright deny the existence of this phenomenon, but there have been far too many verifiable examples of it and I’ve personally seen and experienced it too often to think it is just a made-up thing. The same can be said for the notoriously boorish behavior of a certain segment of Sanders supporters.
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