First off. The group is Bernie Supporters. Not BernieBros or Alt-Left. As a marketing guy, hate cheap labels! So, no insults to folks i disagree with. Just a regular inside the family disagreement.
So, here is my list of 4 disagreements with Sen Bernie Sanders and his supporters:
1. Leadership without Membership: The Democratic Party should be a large tent party. Anyone & Everyone should be invited us to join the objective. Work the grassroots, advance your agenda, find people with similar ideology — take the party & country forward. However, to be the leader of the party, you have to be a member. Else, you are a critic and we don't have a shortage of them.
2. Disagree without labels: A corrupt party can only give you a corrupt government. Explain how the Obama administration is not corrupt but the party he leads is corrupt. Don’t label inefficiency, mistakes, shortcomings as corrupt. Don’t label rules that you disagree as corrupt. Don’t label history as corrupt. Don’t label your fellow traveller as corrupt. Think the party is meek on climate change? Demand action. Don’t agree with any party leader? Change them, meet them & demand accountability. Labeling Dem Party as corrupt allows media to take the lazy route out & promote ‘both parties do it’ storyline. It gives GOP a wedge to confuse the voters on the actual positions.
3. Purity deter us, not enable us: We mock the GOP/Conservative party for being a slave of the extreme right wing ideology. Why should we import that bad practice? Purity tests are abhorrent. No one democrat has a perfect record. Sen Sanders didn’t even release his tax returns. Secretary Clinton — do we even want to go there? Sen Warren supports repealing medical devices taxes in ACA (because of the companies HQed in her state). The list is endless. Rather than beat down on purity measures, let us enable each other to get to progressive goals faster & together.
4. Corporates are not evil. Corporate media, Corporate this, Corporate that — Railing against Corporate interest seems to be the in-thing for Sen Sanders & his supporters. I have seen the inside of financial services companies, media companies — not just the ‘front office’ — news desk & talking heads or the heads of banks. The workers behind the scenes & more often than not, they are your brothers & sisters. Some of them might prowl these sites as well. Corporations have interests & we need to align them with ours (not the other way around!). Does that mean stifling voices that dissent against corporate excesses? Nope.
Hillary lost because of her mistakes, her campaign’s mistakes but also because she was labeled as corrupt & her credibility sunk from attacks on both sides. She might have lost the Presidency but the country & her citizens are bigger losers with the policy changes that Trump’s team is cooking up. We shouldn’t want to be in the opposition to generate REVOLUTION. We should want to be in POWER to help our fellow citizens.