{"id":13603,"date":"2019-12-25T18:21:27","date_gmt":"2019-12-26T02:21:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=13603"},"modified":"2019-12-25T18:21:31","modified_gmt":"2019-12-26T02:21:31","slug":"you-dont-know-bernie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2019\/12\/25\/you-dont-know-bernie\/","title":{"rendered":"You Don\u2019t Know Bernie."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Bernie Sanders \u2014 the guy who admits he can be grumpy and \u201cnasty\u201d and a \u201creal son of a bitch,\u201d the guy who\u2019s known for giving the same speech over and over again \u2014\u00a0that<\/em>\u00a0guy is trying to win this campaign, maybe his last, by making people feel less alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Picture<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ruby Cramer<\/strong>BuzzFeed News Reporter<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Posted on December 16, 2019 (buzzfeednews.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He doesn\u2019t bother<\/strong> explaining why he\u2019s here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is early on, late May, a few months into the race, but he is already of the belief that he is doing something extraordinary with his presidential campaign \u2014 something that\u2019s never been done before. The trouble is describing it. There\u2019s no word for this in modern politics. It is, he believes, \u201ca new way to communicate with the American people\u201d \u2014 though he won\u2019t say this until later, and only when asked. Even now, long after he\u2019s put this work at the center of his campaign \u2014 at his events, in ads, on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube \u2014 he won\u2019t talk about it much. He isn\u2019t sure it\u2019ll work, or if people are \u201cpicking up on what we\u2019re trying to do here.\u201d The media, he believes, has always believed, can\u2019t fathom what\u2019s at the heart of this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So when he arrives at the house, a small mobile home 40 miles outside Montgomery, Alabama, over the Lowndes County line, in one of the poorest places in the country, with five reporters and his own camera crew, he steps through the front door, greets his host, and begins with no clear mention of what he hopes to accomplish here or how it will help him become president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pamela Rush, a 49-year-old mother of two, is showing him the problems with her home: the floor tilting visibly to one side, the sheets of plaster peeling off the wall, the broken pipes, the broken cabinetry. He stops in the room where her daughter sleeps. \u201cDo you guys wanna\u2026?\u201d He motions for everyone to come closer. His videographer shuffles forward. On the bedside table, there\u2019s a ventilation machine, the kind used for sleep apnea. A tube of ribbed plastic connects the device to a mask resting on the bedspread, which is patterned cheerily with tiny elephants. Because of mold in the house, Pamela\u2019s daughter needs the device to breathe in her sleep. \u201cHow old is she?\u201d the candidate asks. She\u2019s 10. Pamela holds up the mask so he can see up close.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShow them, not me,\u201d he says, gesturing toward the camera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She shows the camera the mask.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The visit continues like this. \u201cShow them<\/em>,\u201d he keeps saying. \u201cShow them<\/em>.\u201d He speaks only to ask questions, prompting Pamela to \u201cexplain\u201d this or that, pointing her to an unseen audience on the other end of his camera lens. It\u2019s like he\u2019s directing his own video \u2014 except the video isn\u2019t about him or his campaign or his policy agenda. He is, it seems, somewhere offscreen, an omniscient narrator, felt maybe, but not seen or heard. This is not a public event. There is no crowd. There is no podium, no speech. Mostly, there is silence. The leader of the political revolution \u2014 a man who has spent 50 years of his life trying to talk about his ideas \u2014 is not saying much at all.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no crowd. There is no podium, no speech. Mostly, there is silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his first campaign, a third-party bid for US Senate in 1972, he lugged around a 2,000-page, two-volume study by the House Banking and Currency Committee, liberally quoting its findings to the people of Vermont. He spent that year telling anyone who would listen about the fact that a mere 49 banks were trustees of $135 billion and held 768 \u201cinterlocking directorships\u201d with 286 of the country\u2019s largest 500 industrial corporations. To him, the phenomenon of interlocking directorships was not arcane or irrelevant to daily life in Vermont. It was an urgent outrage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Congress, he developed \u201cthe oligarchy speech,\u201d a bleak overview of income inequality in America. The speech became the basis of his public events, his lengthy posts on Facebook, of an entire book \u2014 title: The Speech<\/em> \u2014 consisting solely of the transcript of an eight-hour speech he delivered on the floor of the Senate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And in 2016 \u2014 the rallies? The arenas? He had 2,600 in Iowa\u2019s hulking Mid-America Center \u2014 largest crowd of the caucus season. He hit every city he could: 5,000 people in Houston, 8,000 in Dallas, 10,000 in Madison, 11,000 in Phoenix, 15,000 in Seattle, 27,500 in Los Angeles, 28,000 in Portland \u2014 plus overflow! All those people showing up to hear an hourlong speech they already knew by heart: wages down, median income stalled, one family with more wealth than the bottom 130 million\u2026 As he spoke, they\u2019d mouth along to their favorite lines: \u201cCongress does not regulate Wall Street\u2014\u201d \u201cWALL STREET REGULATES CONGRESS<\/em>,\u201d the crowd would shout back. \u201cEnough is\u2014\u201d \u201cENOUGH!<\/em>\u201d they roared. The succession of grim facts \u2014 \u201cbut let me tell you what is even worse!\u201d he\u2019d say \u2014 became a ritual. When a small bird, later identified as a common house finch, once landed on his lectern, an entire stadium full of people cheered wildly, mouths open, their arms raised to the sky, eyes turned upward \u2014 not to God, but to the image of the bird and their candidate on the Jumbotron. There was power in the speech. He believed, aides have said, that he was literally changing a generation, person by person, line by line, with every rally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was the whole thing \u2014 Bernie Sanders, talking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is something different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPamela,\u201d he says gently, \u201cwhy don\u2019t you explain it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd be loud so everyone can hear you\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bernie Sanders is sorry<\/strong> for your troubles, but that\u2019s not the reason he\u2019s asking you to talk about them \u2014 which he is, everywhere he goes. He wants you to talk about your medical bill \u2014 the one you can\u2019t pay. He wants you to talk about losing your house because you got sick. He wants you to talk about the payday loans you took out to keep your kid in school. About the six-figure student debt that\u2019s always on your mind. About living off credit cards, or losing your pension, or working multiple jobs for wages that won\u2019t be enough to support your family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He would like you to talk about this publicly, in detail, and on camera. He will ask you to do this in front of reporters, or in a room full of strangers at one of his town halls. Of course, the Bernie Digital Team will be there \u2014 they are always there \u2014 taping your story on camera, or streaming it in real-time to his own mass broadcast system on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. On any given day, he is capable of reaching millions of people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWho wants to share their story?\u201d he\u2019ll say. \u201cDon\u2019t be embarrassed. Millions of people are in your boat<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He has, it turns out, built an entire presidential campaign around an open invitation to speak \u2014 to talk plainly about the \u201creality of life\u201d in this country \u2014 to be \u201cloud so everyone can hear.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He believes his presidential campaign can, he says, help people \u201cfeel less alone.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

His suggestion, by asking you to speak up about your private anxieties, many of them financial, is that you and the millions of people in the proverbial audience will begin to see your struggles not as personal failings, but systemic ones. He is less interested in explicitly presenting solutions than naming the problem \u2014 that \u201cwe have millions of people in the richest country in the history of the world who are struggling every single day,\u201d which is a phrase he repeats daily, almost like an exhortation, as if to grab the American working class by its shoulders. He doesn\u2019t deal in pity or reassurance. Yes, he\u2019ll give hugs \u2014 one arm, from the side, other hand still clutching the mic. But mostly he\u2019ll just listen and nod, gaze lowered. Or he\u2019ll shake his head at the crowd, like can you believe this?<\/em> And then, from the gut, a clipped scoff, like of course you can believe it.<\/em> That\u2019s the point. He has heard your story before, because it\u2019s all part of the same story: a broken system, driven by profit and greed, built to reinforce the notion that if you\u2019re bright enough, if you work hard enough, then you can travel the path to the middle class. And if you don\u2019t make it there\u2026well, maybe you\u2019re the problem. And who wants to talk about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He believes his presidential campaign can, he says, help people \u201cfeel less alone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is trying to change the way people interact with private hardship in this country, which is to say, silently and with self-loathing. He is trying, in as literal a sense as you could imagine, to excise \u201cshame\u201d and \u201cguilt\u201d from the American people. These are not words you hear often in politics, but in interviews this year with the candidate, his wife, and his top advisers, they are central to his strategy to win. He is imagining a presidential campaign that brings people out of alienation and into the political process simply by presenting stories where you might recognize some of your own struggles. He is imagining a voter, he says, who thinks, \u201c<\/em>I thought it was just me who was struggling to put food on the table. I thought<\/em> I was the only person. I thought it was all my fault. You mean to say there are millions of people?<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He still has his rallies, but \u201cit\u2019s a different campaign, and we do things differently,\u201d he says. \u201cI can give the greatest speech in the history of the world, but it will not have the significance and the impact that the real-life experience of ordinary Americans will have.\u201d At many of his events, the antiseptic macro focus of the \u201coligarchy speech\u201d \u2014 the anonymous actors on Wall Street, the greed of the American corporation, the rigged system \u2014 has been replaced by the most intimate details of someone\u2019s life. The outrage in his voice, a booming rasp amplified across three tiers of an NBA-size venue, is softer now. The arena itself has morphed into a digital platform for one voter\u2019s story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Show them,<\/em> he says. Show them, not me.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We understand presidential campaigns, in their most basic form, as a conversation between a candidate and the American people. The conversation is happening all the time, in person and online, directly, indirectly, at every possible scale: It\u2019s a handshake, a speech, a television ad, a sponsored post on Facebook. It\u2019s a policy rollout. It\u2019s the signage at a rally, the way an American flag is steamed and hung just so on a stage. Every dollar of every campaign is spent on shaping or beautifying or amplifying some message from the candidate. Bernie\u2019s first presidential bid, in a sense, was the unprocessed, stripped-down version of that conversation: It was the speech. In terms of the mechanics of the thing, as he put it in late 2016, he wasn\u2019t \u201creinventing the wheel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Four years later, he is attempting to run a presidential campaign that facilitates an entirely different conversation \u2014 one between people like Pamela and the American people. The stories he collects and broadcasts across the internet aren\u2019t just voter testimonials produced to validate the campaign or its policies \u2014 they\u2019re aimed, in Bernie\u2019s mind, at people validating one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After 50 years, this is an unlikely place for the political revolution to land. It\u2019s more human. More empathetic. More personal than what you\u2019d expect from a man who\u2019s willingly played along with his persona as a perma-\u201coutsider\u201d and, as he put it in 2015, \u201cgrumpy old guy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s this idea that Bernie Sanders is \u201ca man of the people who doesn\u2019t like people\u201d \u2014 just issues. That\u2019s not exactly right, though the precise balance between the two can be difficult to pin down. \u201cPolicy, policy, policy<\/em>,\u201d says his wife, Jane, who is a strategic partner on her husband\u2019s campaign. \u201cFight, fight, fight<\/em> \u2014 which is true, but he\u2019s also about people.\u201d
“They say I can be nasty, I don’t know how to get along with people. Well, maybe there’s some truth to it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He arrived in Vermont in 1968, full of ideas about movement politics, and began his career by raising his hand at a local third-party meeting. He settled in Stannard, a remote town with no paved roads, populated by fewer than 2o0 people, where he learned to live in isolation. But in politics, he also discovered that he liked talking to strangers about the issues of the day. In the \u201980s, he hosted his own public broadcast show as mayor of Burlington. In the footage, unearthed<\/a> by Politico earlier this year, he can be warm and dryly funny. On the campaign trail in Vermont, he liked to take impromptu walks and kept a pair of trunks in the car in case he passed a swimming hole. In Washington, he kept more to himself. Interviewed in 1991, fellow members of Congress described<\/a> him as a \u201chomeless waif\u201d with a \u201cholier-than-thou\u201d attitude who \u201calienates\u201d his potential allies, who \u201cscreams and hollers,\u201d one said, \u201cbut he is all alone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of the problem, of course, is that Bernie Sanders is not an open book. He will snap at reporters when they ask him to talk about himself or, god forbid, how he\u2019s changed as a person, because what does that have to do with Medicare for All? \u201cYou\u2019re asking about me, and I\u2019M not important,\u201d he once said in an interview. \u201cWhat\u2019s important are the kinds of policies we need to transform this country. OK?\u201d The conversation was over after six minutes. His interior life, to the extent that it is acknowledged among his campaign staff, is a subject only a few people can address with any authority. A simple question on the subject \u2014 have you ever seen him cry?<\/em> \u2014 recently reduced senior aides to various forms of lawyer-speak. \u201cI\u2019ve seen him emotionally affected<\/em>,\u201d one said after a long pause. Another, as if the question had been unclear and possibly even sinister, said only: \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d With Jane, he\u2019ll call from the road to talk about his day, but questions like \u201cHow did that make you feel?\u201d are not a part of the discussion. \u201cOooh, no,\u201d she laughs at the suggestion. \u201cOh no, no. Yeah, no. He doesn\u2019t do that. No. No. Neeevver.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He can be harsh with staff \u2014 short-tempered and demanding and sometimes rude. \u201cSome people say I am very hard to work with. They say I can be a real son of a bitch. They say I can be nasty, I don’t know how to get along with people,\u201d Bernie told his press secretary in 1990, according to a memoir by the former staffer. \u201cWell, maybe there’s some truth to it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

His mood is under careful observation. Aides are always noting things like \u201cHe\u2019s in a good mood today.\u201d When he is happy, everyone is happy. When he\u2019s not, everyone is quiet, especially in the SUV, where he will ride shotgun with his iPad, a red Vitaminwater at his side, scrolling through tweets from @BernieSanders, maybe only speaking up to dispassionately observe that people must really care about education in this country because a tweet about education is getting a lot of engagement today. Everyone knows which staffers make him feel most at ease \u2014 a special currency on the campaign. Small signs of interpersonal comfort \u2014 watching an aide make him laugh, watching another gently brush dandruff from his navy blue blazer \u2014 can feel like extraordinary acts of intimacy. In 2016, when discussing the campaign at a bar, some staffers got in the habit of referring to him as \u201cEarl\u201d or \u201cthe old man,\u201d because at the end of the day, he is 78 years old. And who would have expected this \u2014 the most emotionally driven, intimate, borderline touchy-feely<\/em> campaign of the 2020 election \u2014 from \u201ca real son of a bitch\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Correction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t like the word \u2018touchy-feely,\u2019\u201d Bernie Sanders says curtly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone is sensitive about how to describe this. There\u2019s been a lot of \u201cexperimentation\u201d with this, one of his advisers will start to explain \u2014 before doubling back to say that, actually, \u201cI think \u2018experimentation\u2019 is the wrong word.\u201d There\u2019s no precedent for it. Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren often invite you to consider your story through the lens of their own. Bill Clinton said \u201cI feel your pain,\u201d but he never asked people to reorient the way they feel about their own pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernie says he is trying to \u201credefine our value system.\u201d Jane talks about breaking down decades of societal muscle memory: \u201cIt seems to be the American way,\u201d she says. \u201cThat we all think it\u2019s our fault \u2014 instead of recognizing there is a system that is making it unfair for them.\u201d They are, as they see it, trying to dismantle the ideal of \u201crugged individualism,\u201d an entire era of political thought. Ari Rabin-Havt, a top adviser who travels with the candidate every day, puts it more tangibly: The campaign is a \u201cmegaphone\u201d for working people, he says. Briahna Joy Gray, his national press secretary, has likened the effect to \u201ccatharsis\u201d from nationwide \u201cgaslighting.\u201d On the podcast she hosts for the campaign, she compares her boss to Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting<\/em>: the therapist who tells Matt Damon, a young man who was abused by his foster parent, \u201cIt\u2019s not your fault. Look at me, son. It\u2019s not your fault\u2026 no, no, no, it\u2019s not your fault.\u201d
\u201cDon\u2019t be nervous,\u201d he\u2019d tell the crowd. \u201cYou really are among friends.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It really started late this spring, around the time he went to Alabama. The campaign YouTube page started pushing out stories like Pamela\u2019s: a family living without clean drinking water in South Carolina; a family with inadequate low-income housing in San Francisco; workers at Walmart. On Twitter, he asked people to reply with stories of \u201ctheir most absurd\u201d medical bill. He got 50,000 responses in a week. By the fall, he was holding more town halls than rallies. In rooms from Iowa to Nevada, one person would raise their hand to speak, then another, and another, and another. \u201cDon\u2019t be nervous,\u201d he\u2019d tell the crowd. \u201cYou really are among friends.\u201d Not every event has been as affecting as the next. On one trip, he visited a woman\u2019s home in Des Moines to document her problems with contaminated well water. His host happened to be a fan and prepared two trays of homemade brownies for the occasion. Bernie, already late for his next event, declined to eat a brownie and left after 15 minutes. But more often than not, he is an attentive and genuine listener. At one event last month, a woman stood to say that people are \u201cembarrassed if they don\u2019t think they make enough money.\u201d Bernie told her this had been \u201cinstilled\u201d by \u201cthe system.\u201d The campaign posted footage of the exchange on Instagram. As you watch the video<\/a>, bold capital lettering runs across the top and bottom of the screen like an emergency weather alert: \u201cTHE SYSTEM WANTS YOU TO BE ASHAMED.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat we are doing,\u201d he says, \u201cis really speaking to the working class of this country in a way I\u2019m not quite sure any candidate has ever done before.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, when asked, he comes to describe this as core to his strategy to win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHere\u2019s the gamble,\u201d Bernie says. The gamble is there are millions of working people who don\u2019t vote or consider politics to be relevant to their lives. \u201cAnd it is<\/em> a gamble to see whether we can bring those people into the political process,\u201d he says. \u201cOne way you do it is to say, \u2018You see that guy? He\u2019s YOU. You\u2019re workin\u2019 for $12 an hour, you can\u2019t afford health insurance \u2014 so is he<\/em>. Listen to what he has to say. It\u2019s not Bernie Sanders talking, you know? It\u2019s that guy<\/em>. Join us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet, on a Tuesday night, in one moment, the full force of the political revolution, all 50 years of it, came grinding so unquestioningly to a halt by one blocked artery. He will spend two and a half days in the hospital \u2014 and he will lie there hooked up to their beeping machines, and he will yell at the doctors when they try to ask him stupid questions, and he will quiz them about health care policy and obsess over what all this would cost without insurance \u2014 and there will be a crisis over what to say in the press release and when to say it and if it can wait until Jane is able to deliver the news in person to the seven grandkids before they see it on CNN, and there will be reporters stalking him outside the building, and all sorts of people will want to visit \u2014 and for days, he will say over and over again, \u201cI can\u2019t believe I had a heart attack\u2026 I can\u2019t imagine<\/em> how I had a heart attack\u2026 I can\u2019t imagine\u2026<\/em>\u201d like this is a fact he simply cannot accept, because he feels fine as soon as they finish the procedure and because he\u2019s always had terrific \u201cendurance\u201d… Never thought it\u2019d be his heart to cause him problems\u2026 Ran a 4:37 mile in high school…!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But not once, in all that chaos and frustration, will he consider dropping out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Here is what<\/strong> Pamela explains to Bernie Sanders: that her family bought this mobile home in the \u201990s for a trumped-up price of $114,000; that she lives on $1,000 a month; that she still owes $15,000 on the house; the house she fears will harm her daughter\u2019s health; the house where her mother caught pneumonia and died; the house where, \u201cwhen a storm comes,\u201d she says, \u201cwe have to stay in the mobile home and just pray.\u201d He learns that Pamela\u2019s sister was arrested because she couldn\u2019t afford to pay for the county garbage service. Another sister was arrested because she couldn\u2019t afford to buy into the sanitation system. He turns to a reporter in the Alabama heat. \u201cReally something, isn\u2019t it?\u201d he says. He is frowning, jowls gathered slightly at the neck, but there is no shock or judgment in his face. It will become a familiar expression over the summer and fall. He is not always an obviously comforting presence, but there is never judgment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo this is where the waste goes?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone is outside now, around back. Sanders wants to see where the waste goes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He learns that Pamela, like many residents in Lowndes County, is also \u201cstraight-piping\u201d her untreated sewage from the bathroom to her yard. She is here with Catherine Flowers, an activist who has worked with Congress on the pernicious tangle of issues facing Lowndes County: criminalized poverty, environmental degradation, inadequate infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He peers down at a line of dark, matted grass where, a few paces from his feet, inches from the base of the trailer, sewage flows via exposed PVC pipes into a shallow open-air trench. \u201cIs this uncommon in this part of the world?\u201d he asks, steering the conversation for his unseen audience, and the cameras swing back to Pamela and Catherine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sun is beating down. Bernie rolls up his sleeves and starts talking gravely about how this is the richest country in the history of the world… \u201cToday we\u2019re in Lowndes County, Alabama, in an African-American community,\u201d he is saying. \u201cTomorrow we\u2019ll be in California in a Latino community, or in West Virginia in a white community, and the stories will be the same.\u201d You can see his bald head turning shades of pink and red. Everyone is sweating. Pamela is talking about her mother\u2019s death. It is not an easy conversation. \u201cThis is America,\u201d he is saying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in his Washington headquarters, the digital team is waiting for the footage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the supercharged<\/strong> world Bernie inhabits, the decision to stay in the race was considered not only reasonable, but obvious. Here, there is no confusion about \u201cwhat we\u2019re trying to do here.\u201d The candidate moves amid a swirl of people you would classify uncynically as \u201ctrue believers.\u201d It\u2019s a lot of passion in one place. The stakes always feel high. But the hard and fast question of whether they can win the nomination is, to a certain extent, supplanted by the general sense that the movement is a just and right cause and, therefore, in the end, the cause will prevail, likely in a shocking fashion when no one anticipates it or believes it can be done, \u00e0 la Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And so they are always on guard against outside forces \u2014 people who will doubt them, or underestimate them, or try to actively destroy them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is how things go in \u201ca politics of struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201ca politics of struggle,\u201d as Sanders explains it in a 2015 foreword to his first memoir, setbacks are expected. There will be defeats before there can be the \u201cbreakthroughs\u201d few people imagine possible. In a politics of struggle, the goals are \u201ctransforming a city, a state, a nation, and maybe the world.\u201d It is already understood that this is \u201cabout more than winning an election.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s in this environment that the advent of the heart attack became another motivational \u201csetback.\u201d Ocasio-Cortez decided to endorse. Supporters only hung on tighter. Campaign staffers spoke in grave tones about the \u201csheer terror<\/a>\u201d of a world without Bernie. \u201cWhat is happening right now,\u201d Briahna Joy Gray told her subscribers on the campaign podcast, \u201cis that an old man is carrying the most colossal imaginable weight on his shoulders.\u201d By the time he is back on the trail, the mission of the campaign takes on newly urgent, almost philosophical importance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s in Iowa \u2014 a town called Toledo, Tama County, population 2,341 \u2014 coaxing people to talk to him about how they feel. \u201cWhat about health care?\u201d he says at a local civic center, roaming out from behind the podium. \u201cDon\u2019t tell me what I wanna hear! \u2014 I want YOU to think about it. Should health care be a human right?\u201d The crowd, not quite warmed up yet, signals a yes. \u201cWHY?\u201d he replies, voice booming. \u201cWho wants to tell me why? Don\u2019t be shy\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is his first campaign swing since the heart attack. Five events in 24 hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He has to address the age question, of course, so he does. \u201cI’ve been criticized for being old. I plead guilty. I am old!\u201d he says at his first stop of the trip. Reporters ask him about it. Pundits analyze why it matters<\/em>. Dr. Oz, the heart surgeon and television host, provides his unsolicited opinion that Bernie\u2019s \u201cprotoplasm is strong,\u201d a you-know-it-when-you-see-it term in the medical community for physiological sturdiness. Voters also weigh in, as if to offer reassurance. \u201cSeniors rock!\u201d a woman says at a town hall in Marshalltown, Iowa. Moments later, a middle-aged man raises his hand to tell the candidate that, by age 39, he\u2019d had three heart attacks, a stroke, and a triple-bypass surgery \u2014 \u201cand it doesn\u2019t have to get in the way of living, all right?\u201d Bernie takes these remarks in stride, smiling back gamely. He is in a good mood. Though you get the distinct impression that he would rather not be discussing the state of his protoplasm, or himself, at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the town hall in Toledo, Jane and a few staffers can hear Bernie speaking through the walls of an adjacent hold room. She and Ari Rabin-Havt, the deputy who was with Bernie in the hospital through the whole ordeal, are sitting at a small table talking about the heart attack like family members who, maybe years later, are finally able to look back at the whole thing and laugh. Except here, it\u2019s been days, not years. Jane is going into her own Bernie impression: \u201cHe\u2019s like, \u2018I feel fine. I don\u2019t understand<\/em>\u2026 You\u2019ah tellin\u2019 me I had a heart attack?? I don\u2019t \u2014 I, I don\u2019t understand.\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thing that bothered him so much about it was the relative smallness of it \u2014 like this was needlessly, stupidly about him,<\/em> \u201cand I\u2019M not important,\u201d remember? What did his aging body, in his mind a vessel of little consequence, have anything to do with the reality that \u201cmillions of people in the richest country in the history of the world are struggling every single day\u201d? The answer, of course, is everything: This, like any endeavor in electoral politics, hinges on the will and presence and personality of its leader. The political revolution is no less human or fallible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there he was, having to ask for a chair during an event in Las Vegas \u2014 he rarely sits on stage \u2014 because of chest pains. \u201cAri, can you do me a favor?\u201d he looked around the room for Rabin-Havt. \u201cWhere\u2019s Ari? Get me a chair up here for a moment. I\u2019m going to sit down here.\u201d Staffers found their jobs suddenly transformed. They were dealing with the questions of a health crisis: Should they take him to the hospital? And which hospital? The closer one, or the one with the better cardiology center? But this was Bernie. Everyone knows Bernie. There would be a scene. People would ask for selfies in the waiting room. Reporters would hear about it. They did not want that. It was Rabin-Havt, in the end, who approached the front desk at the urgent care center behind the MGM Grand and discretely flashed his boss\u2019s driver\u2019s license \u2014 09\/08\/1941, SANDERS, BERNARD \u2014 so the nurses would usher him into the back quietly and without delay.
Then they asked for his glasses. And that\u2019s where he drew the line. \u201cJESUS CHRIST! I’m not gonna do that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey’re like, \u2018Look, we’re gonna have to put him in the cath lab,\u2019\u201d Rabin-Havt says. Jane, seated to his right, hasn\u2019t even heard this part of the story yet. So they got him in the cath lab. The doctor asked, how much pain are you in on a scale of 1 to 10, which Bernie rebuffed as a useless question. Then they asked him to please remove his wedding ring. \u201cReally<\/em>?\u201d he growled, removing the ring. Then they asked for his glasses. And that\u2019s where he drew the line. \u201cJESUS CHRIST! I’m not gonna do that,\u201d he said. That night, Rabin-Havt and another staffer took turns wearing the wedding ring so they wouldn\u2019t lose it. \u201cOh my god,\u201d Rabin-Havt says. \u201cIt was the scariest part.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next morning, when Jane arrived from Vermont, she found her husband unchanged. He was talking about how someone without insurance maybe wouldn\u2019t have gone to urgent care at all because of how much it would cost. \u201cThat\u2019s his brain,\u201d Jane says. She turns to Rabin-Havt. \u201cDid he say anything to you?\u201d \u201cNot during,\u201d Rabin-Havt says. \u201cThe next day when he woke up, he was like, \u2018What do you think this is going to cost?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His room became the center of activity in the hospital. He held policy discussions with the nurses. He asked the doctors about the hospital’s finances. That was a relief, Jane says \u2014 to see \u201cthe same old Bernie.\u201d Back in Washington, the press team kept obsessive watch over the news coverage, demanding corrections from reporters who described the stent procedure as a \u201csurgery.\u201d There was no surgery, they said breathlessly. It was a procedure!<\/em> \u201cI\u2019m talking to the doctors,\u201d Jane recalls, \u201cand they\u2019re saying \u2018procedure,\u2019 not surgery. It was not<\/em> a surgery.\u201d Rabin-Havt nods: Not a surgery. Once they finally got the diagnosis \u2014 \u201cheart attack\u201d \u2014 they needed a statement. So they hunkered down in a hospital break room. The doctors (multiple) started dictating to Rabin-Havt, who tapped out notes on his iPhone. Their first draft was a bit medical \u2014 too much jargon. One of the physicians, an English major in college, cut in: \u201cNo, no, no \u2014 we can do this so the press understands.\u201d So then that doctor tinkered. Once they had their finished product, Rabin-Havt emailed it to the doctors and asked for a formal reply affirming the statement as their own. Proof in writing, presumably, in case of conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYeah, it was fun,\u201d Jane says, laughing. \u201cWell, it was \u2014 it was not fun.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You might wonder, reasonably so, why a 78-year-old man would rather be here, back in Iowa, still doing this, likely at some<\/em> risk to his health, when he could also just drop out, endorse Elizabeth Warren, and spend his days at the family home on Lake Champlain. Maybe this is especially true if you also believe that Bernie Sanders stands no real shot at winning the Democratic nomination and probably knows it \u2014 but will take his diehard supporters, his loyal 15%, a big enough chunk to influence the debate and stay relevant, as far as they can carry him. But then, of course, you would be ruining his good mood and missing the point entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHonestly,\u201d his wife says, seated at the small table, \u201cI think things are getting worse. Things are getting worse.\u201d By which she means wages, costs, bills, just not knowing if you can keep a roof over your head. \u201cAnd this is an opportunity. I don’t know that the opportunity was there in 2016, where it was so widespread in the same way, the feeling among people of, \u2018Wait a minute. We deserve better. This is not OK. The system is completely broken.\u2019 There were some people who saw it in 2016, but it has gotten so much worse over the last two or three years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re losing ground as a people. And that angers him,\u201d she laughs dryly, and from the other room, you can hear that he does sound angry \u2014 angry about how people go bankrupt for getting \u201cCANC-AH,\u201d angry about our crumbling \u201cIN-FER-STRUCHRR,\u201d angry about his colleagues in Congress who say everyone \u201cLOOOOVES\u201d their private health insurance. \u201cTHAT TRUE?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is yelling, yes, but Bernie Sanders is \u201chappiest and most comfortable in rooms like this,\u201d Rabin-Havt says, gesturing to the event across the hall. \u201cWhen you put him in a room full of political hacks \u2014 like, phonies \u2014 that\u2019s not his room. He\u2019s not going to like it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jane nods. \u201cAnd he\u2019s going to be gruff.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe\u2019s going to be gruff,\u201d Rabin-Havt says, \u201cand he\u2019s not going to know how to deal with it. You put him in a room with real people telling their real stories and\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd he\u2019s a different person,\u201d Jane says. \u201cIf you have politicians and, uh, media personalities just trying to play gotcha politics or talk about the polls or other candidates \u2014 and never asking the real questions about what’s affecting the people, he has no time. He has no time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jane, like most everyone around her husband, is a true believer. The two grew up in the same area of Brooklyn \u2014 10 blocks apart, where her father worked as a taxi driver \u2014 but they wouldn\u2019t meet until 1980 in Burlington. She was a community organizer. He was running for mayor. She had never heard the name \u201cBernie Sanders\u201d when she helped organize a debate for the candidates at a Unitarian church in town. \u201cNobody liked the incumbent mayor in the community groups. Being a good Catholic girl, I greeted him and made sure he was all set up. I didn’t even talk to Bernie! But everybody was interested in Bernie. And then I sat in the second row, and I listened to him, and so did the entire Unitarian Church,\u201d she pauses, then continues slowly, \u201cand I felt that he embodied everything I believed in. The first time I heard him speak. And I knew I would be working with him from that moment on.\u201d”When people heard that he had a heart attack, it was like, \u2018Oh my god.\u2019 And envisioning, OK, without Bernie’s voice, oh my god…”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a stunning intensity in the belief \u2014 one made very real by the heart attack, one held firmly by his staff, his wife, by the candidate himself \u2014 that if Bernie Sanders isn\u2019t going to be telling the American people these stories, then no other candidate will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was a gut check for a lot of people,\u201d Jane says. \u201cEverybody was thinking cerebrally, \u2018well, you know, we’ll see how it plays out. The polls don\u2019t seem to be doing that well right now. Who knows whether it’s gonna be Biden or Elizabeth or Bernie\u2026\u2019\u201d She waves her hand in the air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd then when people \u2014 I mean, I felt it very strongly from so many people \u2014 when people heard that he had a heart attack, it was like, \u2018Oh my god.\u2019 And envisioning, OK, without Bernie’s voice, oh my god, this would be a totally different race. It would be a totally\u2026\u201d her voice trails off. \u201cPeople understand that he’s the one that can affect real change\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is not a, uh, an intellectual discussion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At some point, the sound of Bernie\u2019s voice from the other room drops out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jane goes silent. The staffers go silent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everything is abruptly quiet, and there is an instant, a half of a split second, when the mind imagines that maybe something\u2019s happened \u2014 and then there\u2019s the sound of Bernie Sanders speaking again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSomebody was just asking a question,\u201d Jane explains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh, OK,\u201d Rabin-Havt says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOK.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The video team<\/strong> is still rolling outside Pamela\u2019s house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After about 25 minutes, the visit is over. They are all standing in the front yard \u2014 Bernie, Pamela, and Catherine. Two campaign vans are idling silently in the driveway. Both women have dealt with politicians before: Catherine has worked on legislation with US senators, including another presidential candidate, Cory Booker, to address rural wastewater problems. Pamela has testified before a congressional forum on poverty convened by Elizabeth Warren.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThank you,\u201d Pamela tells her guest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI want to thank YOU,\u201d he replies. And suddenly, there are tears. Catherine is hugging him, and then Pamela is hugging him too and crying into his blue button-down shirt \u2014 and then they are all hugging together. \u201cWe won\u2019t forget you,\u201d he says. \u201cThis is just the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After they leave the house, he turns to one of the political reporters with him. \u201cLearning something?\u201d he asks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The visit is still heavy on his mind. There is some light conversation about the trip \u2014 and then you see his face turn to a grimace. The reporter asks about Joe Biden. At this particular juncture in the horserace, there is a thirst for conflict between the two candidates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne day at a time\u2026\u201d he responds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reporter tries again: \u201cDo you think Biden\u2019s message is resonating in the South?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll take it one day at a time, I have no idea. Nor does anyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is, of course, annoyed. \u201cYou have all heard me rant and rave,\u201d he starts telling the group. \u201cI don\u2019t think that the media is the enemy of the people, that it\u2019s fake news. God knows I don\u2019t think that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut I do think we have to do a better job in looking at issues that impact ordinary people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are millions of people in this country\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later in the day, he relays Pamela\u2019s story to the crowd at his town hall. The following month, his campaign releases a two-and-a-half-minute video about the trip, titled \u201cTrapped.\u201d Eventually, it hits 750,000 views.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the middle<\/strong> of an interview, he bats back a question to ask one of his own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDo you know what it\u2019s like to live \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is about to say \u201cpaycheck to paycheck,\u201d but he stops himself. As he sees it, the media doesn\u2019t know anything about that. Reporters, even the well-meaning ones, he thinks, don\u2019t have a clue. \u201cI mean, I<\/em> do,\u201d he says. \u201cI grew up in that family.\u201d His father, a paint salesman, worked hard but never made much money. The family lived in a three-and-a-half-room, rent-controlled apartment in Brooklyn. Both parents died young. As a young politician in Vermont, Sanders had to borrow gas money to campaign. The windshield wipers on his Volkswagen bug didn\u2019t work. He struggled to pay bills. After his swearing-in as mayor of Burlington, he bought his first suit at age 40. He was, in those days, the same voter he\u2019s trying to reach now. His old notebooks, legal pads fished from the archives<\/a> by a Mother Jones reporter earlier this year, include rambling notes on his inability to do better for himself and his young son. The internal commentary is scathing and unkind. \u201cNot only do I not pay bills every month \u2014 \u2018What, every month?\u2019 \u2014 I am better now than I used to be,\u201d he wrote, \u201cbut pretty poor\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The secret, it turns out, is that in addition to taking this work very seriously, Bernie Sanders also takes it very personally. The secret is that a mostly solitary man \u2014 a man who has spent most of his political career on the outskirts, who\u2019s never really fit into someone\u2019s idea of a politician, who\u2019s \u201ccast some lonely votes, fought some lonely fights, mounted some lonely campaigns\u201d \u2014 is now trying to win a presidential campaign, maybe his last, by making people feel less alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is his campaign, his theory of change, though he\u2019s done very little to explain it to a wider audience. \u201cI care less about the coverage, in one sense,\u201d he says. \u201cWhat I care about is that someone turns on the TV, and there\u2019s someone who works at Walmart, or someone from Disney, or McDonald’s. And they say, you know, \u2018that\u2019s me.\u2019\u201d He wants those people to do the talking: the people who worry about their electric bill. The people who wonder if they can afford to have another kid. People for whom \u201cthe idea of taking vacation\u201d \u2014 he scoffs as he says the word \u2014 \u201cis not even in their imagination even though they work all the time.\u201d In his mind, he was<\/em> those people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is not among the politicians \u201cwhose mommies and daddies told them at the country club that they were born to be president,\u201d as he put it last year. He suspects his parents were Democrats, but he isn\u2019t sure \u2014 it\u2019s not something they discussed. So he is not drawn to Washington in the usual ways. Which is not to say that he doesn\u2019t have ego. In 2016, staffers watched him adjust with unexpected ease to his new power and popularity: The guy in the middle seat, coach class, was suddenly flying private and showing up to watch the Golden State Warriors play the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 7. But he does not have what one former president called \u201cthat wretched mania, an itching for the White House.\u201d He is driven by a different compulsion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You get the sense, without exaggeration, that he will keep doing this for the rest of his life. That he would die before he stops. There are some signs, after the heart attack, that this is playing on his mind. \u201cAt the end of the day,\u201d he told his supporters in a seven-minute video he recorded after his release from the hospital, \u201cif you\u2019re gonna look at yourself in the mirror, you\u2019re gonna say, \u2018Look, I go around once, I have one life to live. What role do I wanna play?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But for the most part, his mood is notably light. His return to the campaign trail, ever since the heart attack, aka \u201cheart incident,\u201d as senior aides refer to it in the press, has been a happy, bordering-on-joyous affair. He starts cracking jokes during his speech. He plays basketball. He hosts his staff at his house in Burlington, demonstrating the best way to build a fire in a tiny stove. He announces plans for his own New Year\u2019s Eve party in Iowa with food, drinks, and live music: \u201cBernie\u2019s Big New Year\u2019s Bash.\u201d Inexplicably, he ends up dancing at a labor solidarity dinner in New Hampshire. \u201cOur revolution includes dancing!\u201d he declares. And then, to the sound of ABBA\u2019s \u201cDancing Queen\u201d and The Temptations\u2019 \u201cThe Way You Do the Things You Do,\u201d he sways his hips from side to side, grinning, and twirls woman after woman across the banquet hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The major papers describe this period as a \u201crenaissance<\/a>\u201d and \u201cresurgence<\/a>.\u201d In polls conducted since the heart attack, he has either maintained his position or become even more competitive. He has a shot at Iowa. He looks good in Nevada and California. He remains the only candidate with more donations than Donald Trump. And he has some $1.67 million coming in each month from people who have signed up for automatic recurring donations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On one afternoon in late October, he travels to Brooklyn to do a few interviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plan is to walk up Henry Street to the Brooklyn Promenade, a pedestrian area overlooking the East River and downtown Manhattan, but he makes a turn onto Kane Street instead \u2014 spontaneous! \u2014 another indication of his good mood, which an aide quickly notes aloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He walks a few blocks, greeting passersby, before ducking into Francesco’s Pizzeria & Trattoria, where he orders a slice of pepperoni. His staffers also order pepperoni. \u201cSee!\u201d Bernie says. \u201cCan\u2019t think for themselves!\u201d Jane shrugs. \u201cWell, I got cheese,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The guys behind the counter open the oven and pull out a slice of pepperoni, wet and shimmering in its own hot oil. No one is concerned, apparently, about whether pizza is a wise choice three weeks after a stent procedure. Jane doesn\u2019t blink. His staff doesn\u2019t blink. No one blinks. Bernie takes his plate to a corner table, where he sits for a brief interview, giving polite but clipped answers about his decision to stay in the presidential race after the incident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In one swift hand motion, as if to dispense with this line of inquiry entirely, he lifts the slice from its white paper plate, folds the crust lengthwise, takes a large bite, and swallows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is my life,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The statement is, for Bernie, as straightforward and uncomplicated as it sounds. Everyone seems to understand this. Of course he should eat pizza. Of course he is still running for president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell,\u201d Jane says a few days later, \u201cI mean, it would be kind of ridiculous if it didn’t affect him in some way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think the way it affected him was, \u2018OK, this\u2026 This is<\/em> my mission in life. This is<\/em> my purpose. I’m here for a reason.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On that long flight from Vermont to Las Vegas, she thought about what she should do when she saw him in the hospital. \u201cIf he wasn\u2019t doing well,\u201d she thought, she would put her foot down. She would tell him no. \u201cIf he was in danger, I would absolutely say, \u2018I\u2019m sorry. You can\u2019t.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jane pauses. \u201cBut honestly, I don\u2019t know that he would have listened to me.\u201d \u25cf<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bernie Sanders \u2014 the guy who admits he can be grumpy and \u201cnasty\u201d and a \u201creal son of a bitch,\u201d the guy who\u2019s known for giving the same speech over and over again \u2014\u00a0that\u00a0guy is trying to win this campaign, maybe his last, by making people feel less alone. Ruby… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13603"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13604,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13603\/revisions\/13604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}