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writing for godot

THE ENERGY OF THE DISENFRANCHISED MAJORITY

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Written by James and Jean Anton   
Thursday, 09 July 2015 03:41
On Monday, July 6, Bernie Sanders was to speak at 7 P.M. Jean and I arrived three hours ahead of time to beat the crowd. Turned out that there was no way to beat the crowd. Sanders supporters were everywhere. There were the young, the middle aged, and the old in equal numbers. There were the well dressed and the nonconformists; the bearded and the shaved; the horn-rimmed and the tattooed. There were an equal number of men and women.

When the doors finally opened, a diverse group of an estimated 8,000 people filled the Cross Insurance Arena in Portland Maine. It was immediately clear that something special was happening. It was something that the gaggle of other presidential wannabes from Hillary to Jeb, from Donald to Bobbie could only fake.
This was the real thing.

A recent interview between Bernie and Bill Maher went something like this:
“You’re a rock star,” said Maher.
“We had 10,000 people in Wisconsin, I was surprised,” Bernie replied.
“How do you account for this?”
“Well,” said Bernie, “we do what no other candidate in the history of politics has ever done.”
“What’s that?”
“Tell the truth.”
The TV audience laughed at Bernie’s sense of humor. He smiled. Turns out that he wasn’t joking.

The energy at the arena in Portland was tangible. You could feel it. You could almost taste it. It was Walt Whitman’s body electric coming alive:

I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.

“Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!” chanted the crowd.

Then Bernie appeared.
“I don’t know if you noticed,” he began, “but there are a lot of people here.” He proceeded to give one of the most electrifying speeches we had ever heard. He called for change. Real change.

“Don't tell me that the United States cannot raise its minimum wage…
“Don't tell me that the richest country in the history of the entire world cannot offer Medicare to all its citizens…
“Don't’ tell me that the richest country in the history of the world cannot expand social security…
He had come not to praise the American political machine, but to transform it.
“Don't tell me that the most powerful country on earth cannot undo the evil of Citizens United… ”

He revealed that the consummately evil Koch Brothers planned to spend a billion dollars on the next election – more campaign spending than the ENTIRE Republican and the ENTIRE Democratic Party put together.
“Let me be blunt – you know I am rarely blunt,” he joked.
Laughter.
Then he said: “The President of the United States, as well as most members of congress, and the Supreme Court have been purchased by the Koch brothers and by a few other billionaires… They own the government… They want to own everything...
There’s a name for this kind of government. It’s not democracy. It’s oligarchy.”

His speech lasted an hour, but could have gone on all day – no one was leaving. At the end, instead of being whisked off by secret service agents, he waded unprotected into the body electric. He is a brave man. Brave to wade into a crowd of strangers. Brave to be so blunt about the American politic, which is no stranger to violence.

He is much more than a rock star. He is someone his opponents are worried about. The NY Times and Fox News have already done several hit pieces on him. Martin O’Malley’s PAC attacked him instead of the frontrunner, Hillary Clinton. They are worried. Their billionaire supporters are worried. The NY Times reported that Bernie is in a virtual dead heat with Hillary in New Hampshire, and gaining in Iowa, where he drew an unprecedented crowd of 2,000 supporters… in Iowa, where she met with small groups in back rooms and refused to answer questions. Where she lost to Obama in 2008.

Why? How can a candidate without the support of the billionaires go so far in just eight weeks? Maybe it’s because his message is so clear: America is being hoodwinked by big money – betrayed by a handful of billionaire fanatics.
“This is not about me. It is about us,” he said at the end of his speech.

Outside the arena, the feeling on the street was one of complete exhilaration. We smiled, shook hands, made eye contact, and even hugged the stranger next to us like we were best friends. Strangers exiting the arena shook hands with Police officers there, who were startled if not pleased.

We didn’t drive back to Boston, we floated back.
Bernie had tapped the energy of the disenfranchised majority.
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