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Guest column: Sanders ‘can’t win’ presidency? He’s rising in Democratic polls
Op-Ed · June 18, 2015
I first heard Senator Bernie Sanders speak at the 2011 Harkin Steak Fry, toward the end of my term on the West Branch City Council.
When the Senator addressed the issue of corporate tax giveaways, my attention was immediately captured.
Here was a guy on the national level, talking with complete comprehension about an issues that I was experiencing first-hand on the local level: the adverse effects of corporate welfare.
At the local level we’ve had a front row seat to the repercussions of big tax breaks for companies promising good jobs and benefits, but offering job cuts and lawsuits, instead. Senator Sanders spoke in no uncertain terms that day: the fleecing of America is happening on a grand scale, and we are suffering for it.
So when he threw his hat into the ring for the 2016 Presidential Election, I was more than happy to give him my support.
On May 29th my wife and I welcomed Senator Sanders and about 200 supporters into our home, right here in West Branch. Our party even drew the attention of an uninvited drone, but that’s okay. What that drone saw from the sky was a lot of voters on the ground hungry for change.
And this enthusiasm isn’t just confined to West Branch. During that same weekend, Sanders drew in 700 people in Davenport, over 1,100 people in Iowa City, and in the small town of Kensett, population 240, over 300 people showed up to hear him speak.
The reason for these high turnouts is Bernie’s message. Simply put, the candidate is WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). Bernie makes no apologies for the things in which he believes and offers no spin on his willingness to learn from the success of other countries. If other countries are outperforming America (as they are in clean energy and high speed rails) we should be analyzing how they’re doing it, catching up, and then doing it better.
Despite the national media’s complete disregard for the Sanders campaign, he’s gaining ground on Clinton. In a recent Wisconsin straw poll, Sanders pulled in 41 percent while Clinton pulled in 49 percent. Those are pretty good numbers for a guy the media says “can’t win.”
I for one am not surprised by these numbers. His message is resonating and people are responding.
And let’s not forget what the media was telling us in the summer of 2007. I seem to remember another candidate we were told couldn’t win. I also remember Iowa voters had something to say about that, and now we call that candidate “Mr. President.”
David Johnson is a former member of the West Branch City Council and is active in the Democratic Party.
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