The Platform
Sanders counters his own private loss to Hillary Clinton to become the Democratic nominee in 2016 with the larger victory of impacting the party platform. Of course, platforms really don’t do much to actually impact votes in any given year, but they do serve a long-term purpose which befits the term. The are the platform from which future change springs forth. The progressive-minded platform which Sanders worked for makes this point metaphorically clear:
“As part of the political revolution, our next mission was to write the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party: a platform that would live on beyond the campaign, and, more importantly, a platform that would serve as a beacon for Democratic candidates at the federal, state, and local levels.”
“We were about building a movement.”
When you stop to actually consider the words and their meaning in that metaphor, it sounds kind of wrong. How does one go about “building” the act of moving? Be that as it may, building the movement—whether sensical at its foundation or not—is the central metaphor describing the Sanders campaign intention in 2016. It was not—according to the man himself—about building a movement of himself into the Oval Office, but about changing the fundamental psyche of the America electorate.
Things Don’t Go Better with Koch
The super-rich, super-extreme right-wing mega-donors known as the Koch brothers are the metaphorical devil for Sanders. Or maybe not so much metaphorical. And the number one puppy whose collar is leashed to this distinctly unfair means of subsidizing politicians is former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan for whom Sanders has his own nickname:
“Paul Ryan is the flesh-and-blood representative of oligarchy. He is fully supported by the Koch brothers, the third-richest family in America, and other billionaires.”
The Speech
On September 21, 2017, Bernie Sanders gave a speech at Westminster College in Missouri. He wanted the speech to be big and ambitious; a definitive outline for a progressive role in the world to be played by the United States. The point was also to get attention in this aspect, it certainly met expectations:
“The speech was like a thunderclap breaking the silence of any serious foreign-policy challenge from the left.”
The Media
Trump and Sanders do share an inherent distrust of American mainstream media. Where they differ is in the semantics. Sanders expresses a view that is logically considered in light of economic ideology and historical analysis of the relations of production whereas Trump just likes power of empty metaphors to anger up the blood of people distrustful of critical thinking skills:
“Unlike Trump, I do not believe that mainstream media is `fake news’ or an `enemy of the people.’ I do believe, however, as I have said many times, that for a variety of obvious reasons, multinational conglomerates that own our media are not interested in analyzing the power of big-money interests, or the needs of working families.”
