{"id":33873,"date":"2015-12-09T04:00:41","date_gmt":"2015-12-09T09:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=33873"},"modified":"2015-12-08T11:45:01","modified_gmt":"2015-12-08T16:45:01","slug":"bernie-and-the-snake-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/12\/09\/bernie-and-the-snake-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Bernie and the Snake People"},"content":{"rendered":"

Katherine Ernst<\/a> on the odd match of Bernie Sanders and his Millennial<\/font><\/strike> Snake People supporters:<\/p>\n

A friend, who like me straddles the demarcation line between Millennial and Gen-Xer, was being bombarded at her Millennial-filled office with endless pro-Bernie Sanders \u201cmemes.\u201d Things had reached a comic nadir (or zenith, depending on your perspective) with the non-ironic electronic dissemination of a doctored image of Sanders \u2014 framed by a heavenly rainbow \u2014 with a kitten under each arm: \u201cI FIGHT FOR THE 99 \u2018PURR-CENT,\u2019\u201d the bold white letters proclaimed. Quipped my friend: \u201cI eat lunch by myself most days now.\u201d<\/p>\n

I commiserated. The same stuff was spamming my social media feeds; Bernie-fever sometimes seemed more intense, more omnipresent than the Obama-gasms of seven years ago. \u201cFeel the Bern\u201d jokes abounded, as did links to left-wing philippics on how Bernie was going to right all capitalist and racist wrongs. Most common were pics of the candidate in heroic, Soviet-worker-like pose \u2014 made by his campaign for the express purpose of \u201cgrassroots\u201d reposting \u2014 next to quotations such as, \u201cI have opposed Keystone from day one.\u201d<\/p>\n

My friend and I were not imagining things: the millennial love affair with Sanders is real. A recent NBC News-Survey Monkey poll found that \u201cMillennials … are more than twice as likely to vote for Sanders than Clinton, leading her 54 percent to 26 percent.\u201d The Guardian<\/em> notes that \u201cOn Facebook 1.8 million people like Sanders\u2019s page, 0.6 million more than the Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, and 1.6 million more than Republican Jeb Bush.\u201d The New Yorker<\/em> concurs: \u201cToday\u2019s Millennials, who will make up thirty-six percent of eligible voters in 2016, have no such candidate to call their own, except for Sanders. If they were to vote at their capacity, they\u2019d be the country\u2019s largest voting bloc.\u201d<\/p>\n

None of this is lost on Sanders. Indeed, his whole campaign is about getting college kids frothed up on \u201crevolution.\u201d As he told Bill Maher: \u201c[W]e\u2019re being very aggressive in reaching out to young people … what we want to do is tap, Bill, the idealism of the kids. And what the kids are saying, for example, is that this country should lead the world in transforming our energy system and dealing with climate change.\u201d Indeed, in successive debates \u2014 including one held 24 hours after the Isis attacks in Paris \u2014 Sanders identified climate change as our \u201cgreatest national security threat.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Katherine Ernst on the odd match of Bernie Sanders and his Millennial Snake People supporters: A friend, who like me straddles the demarcation line between Millennial and Gen-Xer, was being bombarded at her Millennial-filled office with endless pro-Bernie Sanders \u201cmemes.\u201d Things had reached a comic nadir (or zenith, depending on your perspective) with the non-ironic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,53,13],"tags":[768,188,956],"class_list":["post-33873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","category-usa","tag-democrat","tag-electionwatch","tag-millennials"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8Ol","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33873"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33874,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33873\/revisions\/33874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}