Apologies if someone already covered this, but I wanted to point folks to Bernie’s appearance last night on the Late Show with Colbert. Bernie was deadly serious. Colbert gave Bernie a few opportunities crack a joke here and there, including questioning whether Bernie might want to change the title of his book. Bernie to neither the opportunity to get a laugh, nor even to hawk the book. Rather, he spoke of what he called “the beautiful people” whom he met during the campaign who needed help.
He had no interest in rehashing the primaries, nor the election. He did, however, say that a problem with the Democratic Party is that it is run by a “liberal elite". When Colbert sought a laugh by asking whether Bernie was, himself, a liberal elite, Bernie just said, "no". And with his eyes and his expression, he said, I'm not joking here. This is serious business.
Significantly, Colbert asked what’s the worst that could happen now that Trump has been elected, and also asked Bernie to “keep it light.” Bernie again demurred, and said, “I wish I could”. He then described a frightening though plausible scenario where the two towers of political evil in this country — Citizens United and voter suppression — are used by Trump’s “people” to change the game so that they “never lose power”.
By the time Bernie was done, Colbert had long stopped looking for laugh opportunities, and seemed to recognize that the man was deadly serious. Bernie’s message was that there are scores of millions of vulnerable people who live in our country, and who need help. And the man who is in power not only doesn’t care about them, but has an active animus against him. Worse, he has an opportunity to hold on to that power for the foreseeable future.
Scary times, indeed.