Concern about the behavior of so-called “Bernie Bros” supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders blossomed into a campaign issue in 2020. But the problem surfaced in 2016 with the ferocity of online attacks in 2016 on then Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton and those who supported her. When Sen. Elizabeth Warren pulled out of the race for the Democratic Presidential nomination the big question became: will she throw her support to Sanders or to former Vice President Joe Biden?
All signs point to her doing neither…for now. But she is now making it clear of her disgust for the tactics of “Bernie Bros.” The Washington Post:
“Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called out Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for not taking steps to control the “organized nastiness” of some of his supporters during the presidential campaign.
‘It’s not just about me,’ Warren said in an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Thursday following her decision to suspend her campaign for the Democratic nomination. ‘I think that’s a real problem with this online bullying and sort of organized nastiness. … I’m talking about some really ugly stuff that went on.’
While politics has become riddled with such behavior, she said it was a particular problem with Sanders’s supporters. ‘It is. It just is,’ she told Maddow.
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She made specific reference to what she described as online harassment of union leaders in Nevada ahead of last month’s caucuses because they took issue with Sanders’s Medicare-for-all proposal.
‘They didn’t just disagree,’ she said. ‘They actually published the phone numbers and home addresses of the two women, immigrant women, and really put them in fear for their families. … These are tough women who run labor organizing campaigns … and yet said for the first time because of this onslaught of online threats that they felt really under attack, and that wasn’t the first time it happened.'”
Although Sanders has verbally distanced himself himself from these kinds of supporters, and his campaign notes they don’t reflect all Sanders supporters, the Boston Globe notes that questions about what this will mean to his continuing campaign remain:
“On the eve of the South Carolina Democratic debate, a reporter named Scott Bixby exposed the private Twitter account of a Bernie Sanders staffer that was littered with sexist and homophobic attacks on politicians, journalists, and celebrities. The Sanders campaign promptly fired the staffer, issued a condemnation of his behavior, and turned its attention to Charleston. All the while, Bixby, a writer from The Daily Beast, watched as hundreds of messages, seemingly from incensed Bernie supporters, flooded his phone.
When reached by e-mail two days later, Bixby declined an interview.
“I’ve gotten some pretty specific threats to my safety and that of my husband (also, my freaking dog) so I’m just trying not to give the horde any more oxygen for the time being,” he wrote.
That horde may be better known as the Bernie Bros. When it was first coined, in a humor piece by the Atlantic’s Robinson Meyer in October 2015, the term “Berniebro” was meant to satirize a particular Sanders-supporting demographic: young white males who passionately defended and supported the presidential candidate online. Five years later, polls show that the Sanders coalition has broadened significantly. In Nevada, he led the Democratic primary field across a variety of voter categories: men and women, white and Latino, union and non-union, college and non-college. But the combustible mentality that “Berniebro” was meant to caricature still burns among a subset of his supporters.
For people like Bixby, on the receiving end of their ire, the attacks can feel like a swarm of locusts. Masses of social media users post angry messages, flood inboxes, rattle off personal attacks, make vague threats, and then move on to their next victim. On occasion, the wrath trickles outside the online world, inciting late-night bullhorn protests outside public officials’ homes on the eve of the Nevada caucuses last month and “Lock her up” chants outside the Democratic National Convention in 2016. Some justify their behavior as the battle cry of warriors for the Bernie cause: They’re fighting online and in real life, they say, on behalf of those most hurt by rising income inequality, lack of access to health care, and crushing debt.”
Sanders is now struggling to expand his base but it seems there are a few things you can say at this point:
(1) If Warren had not had this experience with these Sanders supporters perhaps she’d if not endorse Sanders do a blanket “I’m not yet ready to endorse” and not couple her withdrawal with a swipe at Sanders’ self-damaging supporters.
(2) Based on this interview it’s an easy bet that at no time will she endorse Sanders.
I had a wonderful mentor, friend and political science professor at Colgate University, the late Dr. Marcus Franda. He always stressed that politics was about “aggregating interests.”
In 21st century America if often seems that many politicians work to aggravate interests that aren’t already in their coalition.
Biden seems to be trying to aggregate interests. Warren, despite some criticisms aimed at her, always seemed to be trying to at least expand her tent. Sanders (like Donald Trump) often seemed to be limiting his tent. For instance, his proclamation that he’d reject any funding from Michael Bloomberg had to give many Democrats, particularly those up for election on the down-ballot, shivers.
Right now, if you had to place money in Vegas on anything but the coronavirus it’s a safe bet that Warren will not endorse Sanders.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.