Bernie Sanders announced his candidacy for the 2020 Democratic nomination early Tuesday morning. The Vermont senator was a formidable contender in 2016, winning 23 states and 46 percent of elected delegates. In fact, several people thought he would have stood a better chance against Trump than Hillary Clinton, due to the polarized nature of the race and the significance of the white working class vote.
Given his track record, you might reasonably suspect that people would be excited about Sanders entering the ring. But you would be wrong: the Bernie backlash is already upon us. As soon as he had he finished his announcement on Vermont public radio, the complaints started rolling in. Here is everything wrong with a Bernie bid for president, according to the calm, good-natured denizens of Twitter.
He’s old
He’s white
He’s a man
He’s…rich?
His supporters are unbearable
https://twitter.com/paulludwig/status/1097870929076592641
https://twitter.com/ashermaj/status/1097864312239112197
https://twitter.com/SashaMichelle89/status/1097847036777582592
He’s too left-wing
https://twitter.com/ALovari9/status/1097859179505770496
He’ll make Trump win
https://twitter.com/Well_its_evan/status/1097866707119587329
He said he thinks people shouldn’t decide who to vote for based on their race, age, gender or sexual orientation
He voted for FOSTA-SESTA
https://twitter.com/multiplebears/status/1097849831056388097
He’s weak on guns
https://twitter.com/athenahollow/status/1097869336780464128
He doesn’t do enough for Palestinians
He’s never revealed his tax returns
https://twitter.com/MrDane1982/status/1097864761511956482
Just no
https://twitter.com/SahraAhmad3/status/1097870350887473152
https://twitter.com/716_Homo/status/1097867426790805505
https://twitter.com/mikasa22/status/1097861208177340416
https://twitter.com/JoJo_Son/status/1097871555223261185
https://twitter.com/MaxxAtom/status/1097846743557906438
We’ve also already been blessed with the first Bernie-is-being-screwed-over conspiracy theory of the campaign. Sanders launched his bid with a Twitter video and a link to an email-gathering website:
https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1097828878310096901
The site wasn’t loading properly on Twitter at first. Cockburn has a couple of ideas why this might be: it could have been crashing due to high demand, or perhaps because the domain is new, Twitter’s algorithm didn’t recognize it. But no, leave it to Wikileaks, every American election’s best friend, to pitch in:
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1097858074780545024
Is Big Tech conspiring against Sen. Sanders? Judging by this alone, it seems unlikely. And it seems even less likely that any new presidential candidate would desire Wikileaks, the site that then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo referred to as ‘a non-state hostile intelligence service, often abetted by state actors like Russia’, in their corner.
