Bernie's rallies are so big because people hate corrupt corporate power
Bernie Sanders' populist message about powerful corporate corruption hasn't changed. That's what West Virginia liked about him.
2016. An exciting year —a banger if there was one. I was settling in to Nashville, had just left a shitty job for a good one, adopted Big Dog, and was consuming so much political media that even a junkie would have told me to lighten up a bit.
Myself and every mid-20s person I knew was excited at the prospect of a 70-something old white guy from Vermont potentially upending the Democratic establishment and becoming the party’s nominee. He was a candidate that embodied the beliefs we felt deep within our hearts — that nobody should go broke because of a medical emergency, that big corporations had too much power, and so on.
Well, we all know how that story ended, unfortunately. But the democratic primary yielded an interesting result in my quirky, and often politically misunderstood, home state of West BY GOD Virginia. I’ll get to that in a moment.
Why am I re-litigating the past?
Well, I’m not re-litigating anything per se.1 But if you haven’t seen the news lately, Bernie Sanders and AOC have been barnstorming the country on a “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, drawing what Sanders has claimed are his biggest crowds ever.
This has drawn a lot of interest from people who like to chirp about politics — especially neoliberal “Dems must move to the center” Bernie detractors like Matt Yglesias, who bemoan the rallies but try to do so in a “well, actually” tone. They believe they are being attended by Bernie’s original supporters who are there to have a good time and hear him “play the hits” so to speak.
In other words, they’re there because it’s Bernie, not because they feel strongly about the message.
For the record, I strongly disagree.
I think it’s pretty obvious that the tone of what he and AOC are saying is, and has been, very clear for a long time. Although Bernie has held many beliefs over the course of his time campaigning, he has been echoing three pretty clear things on his oligarchy tour that have also been themes he hit on during his two presidential campaigns:
The rich, especially billionaires, have too much power
Corporations have too much power
Together, they are corrupting our political system, preventing it from working for normal people
That’s the whole ball game, folks.
Which brings me to West Virginia. A state often misunderstood politically, but one that has certainly undergone a huge political shift.
West Virginia saw something in Bernie that people are seeing still today
The 2016 Democratic primary was a dogfight til the bitter end. West Virginia was one of the last states to hold its primary, and Bernie Sanders won a very decisive victory against Hillary Clinton — winning all 55 counties with a margin of 51.4 to Clinton’s 36.0 total.2
Okay, but why?
To be clear…
This was almost 10 years ago, and a lot has changed since then. I know.
Clinton was very unpopular in the state, perhaps by being associated with the Obama administration, which was made way worse by a “gaffe” she made when she said she was going to “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”
Bernie’s voters were not your rank-and-file democrats in West Virginia
Exit polling conducted after the 2016 Democratic primary showed that almost half of Bernie Sanders voters (44 percent) planned on voting for Donald Trump in the general election that year. This was, in part, because he drew independent voters to vote for him in the primary. Drawing from disaffected voters who felt they weren’t represented by either party is critical to the appeal of Bernie Sanders, and should never be underestimated.
Working class voters saw an authentic voice and latched on to it.
The power of Bernie Sanders’ message is that it is authentic. He is an old curmudgeon, yes, but you never doubt that its honest. That is exceedingly rare from a politician. Contrast that with Hillary Clinton — who would come off as quite literally the opposite of that, and the difference was night and day.
Too often, people want to throw politics into the left—center—right ideological buckets as a default. In this example, they would say “Bernie is all the way to the left, whereas Hillary Clinton is in the center.” In fairness, sometimes it is helpful and fair to use these descriptors. But as you’ll continue to see, they are starting to become increasingly more outdated as our politics continues to evolve into a more authoritarian and oligarchical type of political system.
Money and power is at the root of everything
I genuinely don’t understand how the “pundit class” still doesn’t get it at this point.
Corporate consolidation has continued to eliminate the ability of choice in our economy and drive up prices for decades.
Corporations have price gouged people continuously — whether it be at the grocery store, on your car, for your healthcare, or anything else — it’s plain as day. All of this is happening while C-suites continue to pay themselves handsomely and the worker-to-CEO pay ratio continues to become more imbalanced.
People want to feel like their government is working FOR THEM, not for the billionaire class.
People want their social security checks (or their parent’s SSI checks) to deposit on time
People want to be able to afford shit, and they know that the rich and powerful are the things standing in the way of that.
People don’t want their government run by a bunch of corrupt bastards
They see Bernie Sanders and AOC speaking to these concerns. Other politicians would be wise to be listening, as would the pundits, who would rather criticize and extol the virtues of their glorified centrism.
(I created a Spotify playlist for this Substack where I’ll add weekly listen music each week. Follow it if you use Spotify)
This week, I’m listening to The Doohickeys — a band who I can’t believe I’m just now discovering because I think I’ll never stop listening to them.
I broke my own rule again this week by not featuring an Appalachian/strictly Southern band, but I promise you that once you listen to their music, you will understand why.
I came across the Doohickeys because of a viral IG reel skit they made parodying how country music artists come up with their Southern accents. It’s fucking brilliant.
They are very clever with their music — using creative lyricism to critique more serious things like music industry,3 or the more whimsical, like big trucks.4
They’re also genuinely hilarious, and the ways they market their new music is magical — like when they took what appeared to be a Power Wheels kids ride-on toy truck to a body shop and got it lifted.
They are creative geniuses. Please listen to their music. You will not be disappointed.
A quick note about No Elegy Needed
I wanted to drop a quick note here to say thank you.
Thank you to everyone who has been subscribing to this substack
Thank you to everyone who has been reading my sometimes serious, sometimes snarky bullshit on here
and a huge thank you to those of you willing to part with a few bucks a month to fund my work — eternally grateful.
I started writing my opinions down way back in 2010, at the height of the blog era, to an audience of like seven people. I’m really proud of how far things have come in the 15 years (Jesus H. Christ that makes me want to puke) since then.
I plan on punching out things in here at least once a week, but hope to do so more frequently in the future. If you have it in your budget to become a paid subscriber, it is never expected, but always appreciated.
Until next time: watch for deer, y’all.
I never took the bar exam, so I can’t technically file the requisite lawsuit to litigate the past to begin with!
There was some superdelegate controversy that I won’t get in to
And the reason I still couch them in the category of Outlaw Country.
Colloquially referred to around my parts as “bubby trucks”
Not enough to vote against it apparently. He belongs to a party which stans corporate corruption. Are we still pretending the Dems are ANY different? Are we still not hip to the pattern? Get it together people.
https://thequillandmusket.substack.com/p/gospel-of-bernie-false-prophet-of?r=4xypjp