Dear African Americans
Preface:
I am a middle-aged white guy. I can’t help that — time and lineage have taken care of that. I have a wife, three girls, two dogs, a cat and two jobs so I can support my family and medical bills.
In any event, I want you to know that I am not telling you what to do, rather, I am sharing what I like about Bernie Sanders in hope that you will see why he is the best candidate for the Democratic nomination. The movement, as it stands, is pretty pale. When we are too pale, we look a little sickly — we need to add a lot of color to this movement to make us well and whole..
In addition, this is not a Hillary Clinton hit piece (though I will make some comparisons). In any event, I am not trying to cast aspersions on any of you, my black and brown brothers and sisters. In fact, more and more black and brown people are beginning to “Feel The Bern” — I just don’t know if it’s happening fast enough. That is why it is imperative that you learn about Bernie Sanders now . If you learn about him after your local primary or caucus, you may experience buyer’s remorse — and I don’t want you to go through that.
I believe(and hope) that the more you learn about Bernie, the more you will like him.
Morality:
Bernie, in my estimation, is the most moral candidate we have. Listening to his speeches, it seems obvious that morality informs his political ideology. I am not going to share any of Bernie’s stump speeches — you can find those easily enough. But, if it isn’t as apparent to you, I suggest viewing Bernie’s speech at Liberty University ( a private, non-profit Christian university located in Lynchburg, Virginia founded by Jerry Falwell — obviously fundamentalist and very Republican). In this speech, Bernie explains the moral underpinnings of his philosophy. I actually think this speech is better and more informative than his speech explaining his views on socialism. The speech is roughly 1/2 hour in length with the balance being a Q & A with the audience. Enjoy.
Universal Healthcare:
Under Bernie’s Medicare for All plan, employees, would pay 2.2% of their income in the form of a tax for healthcare. The employers would pay 6.2% towards the plan. And you’re insured.
I’m going to share my family’s experience with Obamacare. It isn’t exactly a positive story but let me make this clear: I voted for Barack Obama, I like Obama a great deal and I am happy that Obamacare has increased access to health insurance for millions of people. I was ready for Obama to run for President after seeing his speech at the Democratic Convention in 2004. Frankly, I wished he’d been running instead of John Kerry in 2004.
After the economy died under George W. Bush in September 2008, my income went down precipitously much like it did for many Americans. I married my wife in 2012. She brought three young girls with her (it was a package deal). Both of us were poor. I thought I’d been poor when I was younger, but I was just broke — not poor. I was self-employed doing construction/remodeling work — so my income was decent for a chunk of the year and nothing, literally nothing, other parts of the year. My wife worked in food service at a hospital where she and her co-workers were/are severely underpaid. But at least she had health insurance which covered both of us (not great or inexpensive insurance, incidentally).
The hospital then decided to use an outside vendor for food-service which meant that my wife would be making the same shitty hourly wage but she would no longer get health insurance. So, we decided to go through healthcare.gov. Basically, Obamacare told us that we could get a tax waiver for not having health insurance, but we were too poor to be subsidized on health insurance. Too poor to be subsidized?! Our premiums, if we went through healthcare.gov would have been approximately $1,200+ a month. So our choice was paying for an insurance premium rather than our bills, or paying our bills and having no health insurance. I have a bad case of psoriasis which requires me to use a drug called Remicade. I go in for infusions every 7–8 weeks. Remicade costs about $4,000+ every time I go in. In other words, we were damned if we did have health insurance and damned if we didn’t. Obamacare was really no help to us.
The good news is that the hospital did allow us to purchase health insurance through another health carrier (we didn’t know this at the time we contacted healthcare.gov) so we were able to pay affordable ($400+/mo) insurance for me (not my wife) for a few months until I finished schooling to become a machinist where we are now both covered through my employer. So, we got lucky (not without effort, but good luck was part of the equation).
Under Bernie’s Medicare for All plan, this would never have been a concern. And, frankly, I think Bernie’s plan is really what President Obama would have preferred.
How does Medicare for All benefit you? For one thing, it gives all of us more freedom. When I started my new job, I had to work for them for 90+ days before I was eligible for the company health plan. As it is now, I don’t really have job mobility because if I go through a waiting period with another employer I would either have to buy very expensive (unaffordable) health insurance to cover me in the interim or pay very high medical costs. And, because there is generally an out-of-pocket deductible of $2,500 or more, I would have to time any job change to the beginning of a year so I wouldn’t have to pay this twice.
We (you and me) have very little job mobility under the current system if we have any healthcare issues. Think of job mobility as free agency: we can move to another company for higher pay if we are not tied to a specific company and its health plan. Move to another state? No problem. Medicare for all not only gives us lower healthcare premiums, it gives us freedom of movement.
We are also paying for higher overhead with private insurance than we would on a government plan — and we pay for the profits. And, we are more restricted on which doctors we can see under the current system. Different insurance companies have different approved doctors. Every time we change insurance, for whatever reason, may entail a search for new doctors. Medicare for All is equivalent to Doctors for All.
Hillary Clinton says that she doesn’t “want us to start all over with a contentious debate” about healthcare. My feeling is that I’d rather have a contentious debate about Medicare for All rather than endless debates about her e-mail server, for instance. I’m not saying that the e-mail scandal is fair to Hillary Clinton. I’m saying that her e-mail scandal doesn’t matter to you or me. Healthcare does.
Hillary has been calling Bernie a one-issue candidate (which is untrue). Bernie is a one-track mind candidate. He cares about us and works for us, the people. Bernie is about us and what’s good for us and he’s not going to be bothered with bullshit distractions. The biggest bullshit distraction Bernie has now is that he’s a “socialist.” Bernie says, “Yes, I am a socialist. Now let’s talk about healthcare, income inequality, the corrupt money establishment that’s funding the people who keep us howling at the moon about issues that don’t affect us.”
I’m not saying Hillary isn’t tough — I’m saying she has a lot of baggage. A lot of distracting baggage.
Electability:
Hillary claims that she is more electable than Bernie because he’s a so-called “fringe” candidate. Well, she squeaked by him in Iowa, got trounced in New Hampshire and won with a good margin in Nevada (5.5%) in a state where Bernie was supposed to have no chance. Bernie also won 53% of the Latino vote (a vote that Hillary was supposed to have a lock on). And he did squeak out a win in Michigan when he was generally thought to be 20% behind. But, she did win 76% of the African American vote — that’s why I’m talking to you, specifically. More and more African Americans are joining the “political revolution” and you have no idea how good it does my heart to see you with us.
You may be surprised to find that Bernie is very electable. In fact, his toughest opponent appears to be Hillary Clinton — not the Republicans.
As you can see, Hillary’s toughest opponent is Bernie Sanders … and virtually the entire Republican field.
One thing you can say about Bernie Sanders is that he is very authentic. He is the real deal. He is saying what he believes (and he’s been saying it for years). Meanwhile, Hillary has moved to or towards many of Bernie’s positions. I call this game “Follow the Real Leader.”
Rap:
I’m sure few of you are aware that Bernie is a rapper.
Okay — he isn’t really a rapper. But after all of this serious stuff, I thought it would be nice to take a break and watch something fun (and it happens to spell out a lot of Bernie’s positions).
Campaign Finance Reform:
Bernie believes that the corrupting influence of money in politics has made our Congress legislate in favor of big business rather than us — the people who keep this country running. If we can’t afford to buy, business can’t make any money. To that end, he wants to eliminate the Citizens United Supreme Court decision in order to remove the corrupting influence of unlimited cash going to Super PACs to fund candidates.
As usual, Bernie doesn’t just talk the talk, he walks the walk. He has no Super PAC and he does not want one. He has raised all of his campaign funds “through small donations from people like you and me ($27 average donation, he likes to brag). Hillary, in the meantime has received six figures in speaking fees from Wall Street banks and her campaign has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Wall Street.
Bernie also wants to re-institute the Glass-Steagall Act and break up the big banks (“too big to fail, then they are too big to exist”). Hillary, frankly, has no interest in that. She would rather make incremental change. Incidentally, those same banks that caused our major recession in 2008 are now bigger than they were before 2008.
I guess the big question is this: who are you more likely to trust about regulation of Wall Street? The candidate who has received millions in speaking fees and campaign contributions from Wall Street? Or someone who receives campaign contributions from the people?
I’ll just say this — Bernie is beholden only to us — that is very clear.
She’s a hawk. She’s a hawk.:
This is where I’ll go a little negative on Hillary Clinton. There were two things that were very decisive about my vote for Barack Obama in 2008. One was, that I thought Obama (with all of us backing him) would be ballsier about defending liberal values. The other was that Hillary Clinton was too hawkish for my tastes.
I guess when you apologize to the LGBT community for something you said, it’s okay in a sense because we’re just talking about words (often followed by deeds though). But it’s another thing altogether to apologize and say you were wrong when lives are at stake.
No apologies needed.
I trust Bernie’s judgment about using our troops. I think he looks at possible outcomes rather than just goals about how we can re-shape the Middle East. The outcomes in Iraq have been disastrous, just as he predicted (and just as I thought as well). He obviously is not afraid to speak truth to power.
Speaking of Truth to Power:
Again, we see Bernie fighting for us, not for them (the few, the proud, the billionaires). I won’t show you all of the videos about this, but what you will find is that Bernie has been consistently fighting this battle (largely alone) for his entire life. Bernie has made it abundantly clear what his views are. He’s been highly evolved for his entire life (unlike Hillary, who “evolves” on issues as they become more popular i.e. as Bernie’s voice is heard across our nation).
One Bernie Sanders supporter I adore:
Michael Render a.k.a. Killer Mike, hip hop artist and political activist. Honestly, I didn’t know anything about Killer Mike until he endorsed Bernie Sanders. I looked him up and saw a clip of him on Bill Maher’s show, Real Time. I took an instant liking to him. I think it would be fun to chat with Killer Mike — he’s engaging, interesting and bright.
Bernie Sanders took some time out to talk to Killer Mike and they had a great conversation. That sealed the deal for me. He is my favorite big-time Bernie supporter. I mean, Killer Mike even put up with Bernie’s awkward old white guy fist bumps. What’s not to like?
Modern wage slavery:
Bernie believes that the minimum wage should be raised to $15/hour by 2020. Hillary believes it should be $12/hour. This ties in to why I believe we (everyone) should be part of the political revolution, now. We are going to reach a tipping point where there very well could be a real and bloody revolution (in fact, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already). In fact, Donald Trump’s campaign may be heralding a bloody revolution complete with jack-booted thugs who blame everyone but their own voting records for the state of things in our country. And with Trump, they wish to dive deeper into the abyss of hatred. Bernie wants us to be more politically active. In fact, he’s counting on us. Without us, Bernie may get nothing done. With us, we can make these changes happen.
This video illustrates modern wage slavery (WARNING: It’s a tearjerker):
Here’s what I like about this video. It isn’t about the old white guy swooping in to save the day. This woman, along with others, takes action against their wage oppressors. Bernie comes in and highlights the working conditions, and things change. It tells us our votes matter. As much as anything, I feel like this video tells us how important it is to elect decent people (and honestly, that can happen under almost any political stripe).
Racial Justice:
You can find Bernie Sanders racial justice platform here: https://berniesanders.com/issues/racial-justice/
Bernie has been an activist on issues of race since his days as a student at the University of Chicago.
This is Killer Mike illustrating his view on the difference between Hillary and Bernie on race.
An endorsement that I’m conflicted about:
This is Asher Edelman who the character Gordon Gekko (“Greed is good.”) in the movie Wall Street is based on.
My mixed feelings are based on the fact that he was essentially a corporate raider and, hence, a job killer. But his logic is sound. If we put more money in the hands of the masses, it’s good for business. Another billionaire, Nick Hanauer point out the same thing Edelman does. When you are super rich, you still only need so many pairs of jeans, only so many cars, etc.. So a lot of the money they make does nothing to keep the economy moving whereas when it’s put in the hands of the masses, we actually spend most or all of it on goods and services. Both understand that we (the masses) are the job creators — not the billionaire class.
Another Bernie supporter I really like:
Nina Turner, a former Ohio state Senator. Nina is like a revival preacher preaching the gospel of Bernie:
Gotta love Nina Turner.
Other well-known and celeb types who have endorsed Bernie:
Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, Dr. Cornel West, Danny DeVito, Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota, Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii (and recent and former DNC Vice Chair), Bill Maher, Spike Lee, Michael Moore, Comedian Lewis Black, Actor and Activist Danny Glover, Seth MacFarlane, Susan Sarandon, Sarah Silverman, Harry Belafonte and many, many more.
Here’s what I hope:
I hope you like Bernie and you vote for him.
Conclusion:
With Hillary, I feel like she wants to be “The first Female President of the United States of America.” She wants to be that person in the history books. That is an admirable goal. And it isn’t that I don’t think she wants to do some good — but it doesn’t feel like that’s the driving force behind her campaign. She doesn’t have a consistent message because she just wants the message that will make her President. That is the end game.
You can tell that Bernie has a strong moral compass. His goal is to make all of us better. That is his end game. He is thinking about you, me, your neighbor, rural, urban, suburban, everyone, everywhere — the whole kit and caboodle of us. This is a worthy dream. It’s a dream informed by FDR, MLK and others with three initials. It’s about all of us — and that’s why I feel okay as a white guy talking to you African Americans about Bernie Sanders.
If Bernie is elected President, then we are all President.
For Bernie Sanders, this race isn’t about becoming President per se. This is a vision quest. And his vision has always been a better America for all people. How can we not vote for that?
May I ask one small favor?:
If you like Bernie as much as I think you will, will you please call one friend or relative and talk about Bernie Sanders with them? And if they like him, ask them to do the same. If you do this, I have every faith that all of us, together, will make this a better country for all of us.
Thank you for your time.
