Bernie Sanders Apologizes Following #MeToo Allegations
Bernie Sanders Apologizes Following #MeToo Allegations after several women came forward with complaints about his 2016 campaign. Feminist activists and organizers were quick to condemn "bernie bros" as they were called for rampant discrimination in Bernie's 2016 campaign.This shows us the pitfalls facing Democrat men coming into 2020, a hungry media looking for anything salacious to go after people with.Donald Trump's supporters don't care for or trust the media so this issue is likely going to present a massive advantage for Trump and Republicans in the 2020 presidential raceWe still have yet to see who the democratic 2020 presidential candidates will actually be so for now we can only speculate.
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Bernie Sanders has issued an apology after several women came forward with accusations against his 2016 campaign.
They say they faced general discrimination in the workplace, some women were paid lower than their male counterparts, and some women even faced sexual harassment.
Now, I don't think it's fair to blame Bernie for the actions of those individuals, but as the person running the campaign, he did have some responsibility in who was hired and how things went.
But this shows us the bigger problem for Democrats coming into 2020.
The media is hungry, and they want a salacious story.
And even though Bernie Sanders himself was not accused of anything, this story is going to run far and wide because it's going to generate clicks.
Naturally, activists on the left who like Bernie are rather upset that this is being used to smear Bernie Sanders.
But it's not just Bernie, because the media has run stories about Joe Biden and even Beto O'Rourke.
Now, Donald Trump supporters don't really care when Trump gets accused of similar things.
In fact, many of them don't even trust a lot of the allegations.
But the left is different.
The left champions MeToo, feminism, and diversity.
And thus, these men running for the Democratic ticket are going to face a hostile media and smears against them.
So today, let's take a look at what's going on with Bernie Sanders and some of the other Democrats who are running in 2020 who are going to face similar problems.
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From Time Magazine, Bernie Sanders 2016 staffers face sexual harassment allegations.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and his chief lieutenants are offering contrition as some of his 2016 campaign staffers face allegations of sexual harassment that threaten to derail a second White House bid before it begins.
Hours after a New York Times report detailed allegations of unwanted sexual advances and pay inequity on his first campaign, Sanders apologized late Wednesday to any woman who felt that she was not treated appropriately.
Of course, if I run again, we will do better next time, Sanders told CNN.
Yet there were immediate signs that the allegations, which did not directly involve Sanders, could hurt the self-described Democratic Socialist 2020 ambitions in the midst of the MeToo era.
In the wake of the report, some Democratic activists and operatives complained about the aggressive culture during the first campaign.
When male staffers and supporters were sometimes labeled Bernie bros.
The president of the National Organization for Women, Tony van Pelt, said,
I'm not the least bit surprised. To me, it was really clear this was the way they were running
the campaign. She blamed Hillary Clinton's loss to Donald Trump, at least in part,
on Sanders and his supporters, saying, It wasn't just Trump.
It wasn't just the Russians.
It was also the sexist people that ran his campaign.
In the original story for the New York Times, it's labeled, Two delegates who supported Mr. Sanders two years ago recently told his staff that he can't run for president again without addressing the sexism they believe surfaced in his last campaign.
There was an entire wave of rotten sexual harassment that seemingly was never dealt with, one of the delegates wrote in a December email, obtained by the New York Times to a Sanders political strategist.
Jeff Weaver, Mr. Sanders' 2016 campaign manager and currently a top advisor, said in an email that anybody who committed harassment on the campaign would not be asked back, and expressed regret for the operation's shortcomings.
Was it too male?
Yes.
Was it too white?
Yes, he said.
Would this be a priority to remedy on any future campaign?
Definitely.
And we share deeply in the urgency for all of us to make change.
In 2016, as the size of our campaign exploded, we made efforts to make it a positive experience for people.
The problems brought up in the New York Times story are actually kind of interesting.
For one, pay inequity.
Was that the result of the Sanders campaign staffers specifically targeting women saying they're going to pay women less?
Or is it like most circumstances we've seen where women are just less likely to negotiate?
You also have the issue of co-ed housing.
Many women were upset that short-term housing that was set up was co-ed and that women would have to share rooms with men they didn't know.
And then obviously the most extreme is the sexual harassment.
There's a story of a man stroking a female staffer's hair and increasingly pushing her boundaries as the campaign went on.
All of that is inappropriate, and yes, Bernie Sanders should speak out about it.
But this shows exactly what's going to happen in 2020.
All of these men are subject to media scrutiny, and you see how much they love to go after Trump.
However, as many people on the left note, even though Donald Trump has had many accusations against him, Trump supporters just don't care.
They either don't trust the accusations, or they literally just don't care.
You look at what happened with Bill Clinton in the 90s, and I think a lot of conservatives are going to say, you know, we don't care because it's a double standard.
If you're going to support Bill Clinton, why should anyone bother criticizing Donald Trump?
But the media, they want that salacious story.
So this isn't the first allegation brought up against one of the Democratic contenders.
One of the most notable stories of the past several years has been creepy uncle Joe Biden.
And this story gets kind of weird.
We've got one instance of Paul Joseph Watson putting up this video where you can see several instances of Joe stroking little girls and whispering in their ears or kissing them on the head.
And last year there was the story from Cassandra Fairbanks.
Exclusive.
Former Joe Biden secret service agent.
We had to protect women from him.
Weinstein level stuff.
And again, you may be thinking, of course the right is targeting Joe Biden.
He's the former vice president.
He's a contender for 2020.
But the reality is, it is not just right-wingers calling him out.
The left is doing it too.
In fact, the Daily Beast ran a story said, Say no, Joe.
Dear Lord, would Joe Biden be a terrible candidate for these times?
The case against the former vice president mounting a presidential bid is pretty darn simple.
They even link to a video in the article called compilation of Joe Biden being creepy.
And you have all of these images of Joe being creepy.
They say Joe Biden's off-putting caresses and whispers are by no means the same thing as what Bill Clinton allegedly did to Anita Broderick or what the Clinton camp did to Monica Lewinsky.
But the Me Too moment, the post-Weinstein moment, whatever you want to call it, isn't about only sexual assault.
It's about women standing up and saying that when men do things to them non-consensually, women don't like it.
It hurts us.
It should stop.
As long as Democrats want to be taken seriously when they take a stand against Republicans who commit sexual misconduct, they have to demonstrate they are equally uncomfortable or outraged when Democrats do it.
Biden keeps stoking presidential speculation.
He has a lengthy and accomplished political resume.
He genuinely seems to be bothered by the salient economic issues of our time.
And he can muster a compelling electoral case against Trump.
I worry, however, that he will undercut this important moment in American politics in the name of selling books.
Please, Joe, sit this one out.
For years now, for several years, people have been producing compilations of creepy Joe Biden.
Left-wing activists are saying this is bad.
And right-wing activists are absolutely taking the opportunity to point out that Joe Biden is creepy.
In this era of the MeToo allegation, with even Bernie Sanders staffers being accused, Joe Biden, as the actual person in the video groping and touching these children, yeah, it's not going to fare well for him come 2020, and it will be a direct line of attack.
You know how Donald Trump likes to label his opponents?
He says, disgusting John Kasich, lying Ted Cruz, little Marco, low energy.
What do you think he's going to call Joe Biden?
Creepy Uncle Joe.
The name already exists.
This is a poll that was published by USA Today, and it shows Joe Biden is the top named candidate, saying people are excited for him to run.
Now, admittedly, I've brought this up in the past few videos, Democrats overwhelmingly want someone entirely new.
But Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders and Beto O'Rourke are the top three.
Joe Biden has been called Creepy Uncle Joe by the left and the right.
The Bernie Sanders campaign has been accused of being sexist, and women were sexually harassed in his campaign.
And yes, even Beto O'Rourke is not immune to these problems.
Just last October, Salon ran this story.
I am ashamed.
Beto O'Rourke apologizes for his demeaning comments about women.
Senator Ted Cruz, Democratic opponent, wrote about an actress's phenomenally large breasts in 1991.
And while this story is old and, in my opinion, makes no difference to something that's happening 17 years later, the media wants to run with it.
Beto had to apologize.
This is a line of attack against the left.
If Donald Trump can actually say things about, you know, grabbing a woman because she'll let you do it, and Trump supporters laugh it off, or Trump supporter women actually wear shirts saying, grab me Trump, then the media can come out all day and night smearing Trump and it's not going to matter, especially when you realize Trump supporters don't trust the media anyway.
But the left is much more sensitive.
constantly looking for outrage, constantly taking offense at many things.
So yes, even though Beto O'Rourke said these things in 1991, he still had to apologize for it.
Has Donald Trump apologized for these things?
No, he defended himself.
He said it was locker room talk, chill out.
And even though Michael Avenatti is no longer a real contender, he is not immune to these allegations.
On November 20th, we saw this story.
Michael Avenatti dragged girlfriend out of LA home, she alleges.
A lot of people thought Avenatti was going to stand up to Trump.
In fact, there's a video where they call him Donald Trump's worst nightmare.
And he faced allegations from women that he abused them.
You have activists using the point that Donald Trump has been accused but was still elected to show the problems of the patriarchy and how the problems persist.
But Democrats are the ones who have to keep apologizing for it because it is their camp.
And Conservatives, Republicans, they're not going to throw Trump under the bus basically no matter what happens.
Some of them will, don't get me wrong.
But for the most part, they're going to say, we don't care, it's tribalism, and they're going to defend Trump till the end.
Democrats won't.
There's constant infighting, the party has spread too far to the left, and now you have people who are just looking for a line of attack.
Left-wing activists looking for a line of attack, but a hungry media that wants that story so they can get those clicks and make that money.
And that means the Republicans have a massive advantage over the next several years, so long as the left keeps embracing this identitarianism.
And these issues, they will lose because they are creating problems for themselves that their opponents will not face.
No one on the right is going to care that a feminist comes out and complains about Trump.
In fact, they'll make YouTube videos laughing about it.
And they'll get tons, if not millions of views, where people in the comments laugh and say, you reap what you sow to the left.
This is what you get.
From the poll on USA Today, following Beto O'Rourke, you have Kamala Harris, who is very unlikely to face any kinds of accusations.
And thus, maybe she will end up being the best bet for Democrats.
Because unfortunately, as much as people are excited for Biden, Bernie, and Beto, they actually face this pitfall.
Now, Beto, don't get me wrong, he faces it much less than Sanders or Biden does.
But I think Joe Biden and Sanders are going to get knocked out of the race specifically because of these accusations and the meme about Biden.
Beto O'Rourke might actually do well, but ultimately, when you see that for the most part Democrats just want someone new, maybe none of these people will actually be good enough.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently complained about the media publishing a story that she felt was unfair.
And it was kind of ironic to see people on the left now complaining about the fake news.
And yes, because the left is more susceptible to these activist strategies, I believe coming into 2020, they will start embracing the rhetoric of Trump saying the media is lying and smearing us.
But I guess we'll see what happens.
You can let me know what you think, however.
How do you feel about Creepy Uncle Joe?
And how do you feel about the accusations against Bernie Sanders?
Do you think this will be a bump in the road, or do you think it's a brick wall stopping them from advancing in 2020?
Comment below.
We'll keep the conversation going.
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