Democratic Party: Embrace Your Base!

I'm trying to figure out why the political party I've been a member of my entire life (since age 17--I think I somehow registered at 17, so in 1979, but if it wasn't at 17, it was 18, 1980, okay--suffice it to say, dinosaurs still roamed the earth), and that I have been a consistently loyal, voting member of, ta boot, is treating the only presidential candidate in my entire life's history who actually represents me as a mortal threat to the party and our country.

The only other presidential candidate I have ever been this excited about, this passionately FOR, was my beloved Al Gore. But even Al, who is, obviously, great on climate change, and a great human being and leader, did not represent ME--my exact platform and exact world view in virtually every single way, on every single issue, and as a WHOLE--like Bernie Sanders does. His platform is my platform (except he's for open primaries and I'm not, but there had to be SOMETHING--some small issue--we disagree on). He's a democratic socialist, I'm a democratic socialist. His heart is in Vermont and my heart is in Vermont. He's for all the things I've been fighting for my entire, entire, ENTIRE life: peace, protecting the environment, single payer health care/universal health care, federally mandated maternity and paternity leave for workers, federally funded child care, everyone paying their fair share of taxes. I mean, I could go on, but the man is MY candidate. His platform represents me. Me, a lifelong Democrat. Me, whose lifelong party is now acting like, if this truly great candidate wins our nomination due to the will of the Democratic voters, it would be the end of the world.

I am stunned, shocked and disgusted with my party's centrist spokespeeps right about now. You've got James Carville, for example, running around saying he's "terrified" and that Bernie's platform is a ...wait for it...this was last night on MSNBC..."utopian fantasy". You've got basically the entire party running around talking about: how do we STOP SANDERS?!!!

My question to my party, after I have spent a LIFETIME shouting into the intense wind that the party needs to stop trying to be "Right Lite" and to woo Republicans and Independents, and instead needs to  EMBRACE THE BASE, stand for progressive/liberal issues and be a true ALTERNATIVE to the Right, show some backbone, and GROW THE BASE, is:  why, when someone (Bernie!!! 💜) comes along and does that, inspires entire new generations (Millennials, Gen Z and beyond) of young people, brings them, enthusiastically into the party, fired up, and with a substantive, LIBERAL/progressive platform to get behind, WHY, WHY, WHY are you trying to "stop" him?!!!

Isn't this what we WANT? Don't we want to bring massive numbers of young people into our base, our party? Don't we want to have a fired up, impassioned grassroots base, people who VOTE, people who go out in the deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep snow and knock on doors, a candidate who casts off corporate lobbyists and is funded solely by said grassroots? Isn't this all amazing, inspiring, breathtaking, heartening, and, in a word, GOOD?

What is your ever-lovin' problem, James Carville et al.? Quit your disparaging and realize that YOU are what the party should be terrified of: pundits and party spokespeeps who show shocking levels of overt disdain and outright, inexplicable anger over a beautiful grassroots influx of young people, your beautiful long-suffering grassroots of not-as-young-as-we-used-to-be liberal Democrats who have been putting up with YOUR ruining of our party since 1984, to be precise, when you decided we needed to be Reagan Lite and, face it, you've never gotten over that misguided decision. And now you are finally being forced to HEAR US: your ACTUAL base. You know: LIBERALS. PROGRESSIVES. We are who you should embrace, not be terrified of!

EMBRACE YOUR BASE!

BERNIE 2020! It's a GOOD thing!