Bernie is indeed single-issue
Friday, February 19, 2016 by Dave Winer

I watched Bernie Sanders on MSNBC last night, I don't know why, I guess because it was a town hall involving HRC too, but I didn't stay around to hear her talk I was so fed up with Sanders and his yelling and lying, and the way he disses HRC and more important the way he disses me, a voter who is trying to hear a complete answer to a straight question. And trying to understand what it is people see in him.

One of the first questions they asked is if he is a single-issue candidate as HRC says he is. He answered a different question, explaining what a jerk HRC is for saying he's a single-issue candidate, and how he's running a clean race. Heh. And then he talks at length about his single issue. So yes, he is a single-issue candidate, and when you call him on it he gets nasty.

It's a consistent pattern. 1. Bernie, is this true? 2. They're members of the Establishment so of course you'd expect them to say that. 3. But Bernie is it true? 4. They're members of the Establishment. 

Then one of the citizens of the town hall asks him what he's going to do about the tough lives black and Hispanic people have, esp men who are incarcerated at much higher rates than whites, with the caveat that we've heard all about how you're going to address the problem by getting them better jobs, and could you say something other than that, because not all of the problems are economic, some of them involve prejudice. So Bernie proceeds to explain how he's going to get them better jobs and that should solve the problem. He says it a bunch of different ways, filling up a lot of time, but he's repeating the same idea over and over, if you actually listen to the words he's saying.

I watched for another fifteen minutes as he did it over and over. Clearly they've thought it through and decided that he must not talk about anything other than this because he's a single-issue candidate and doesn't know enough about anything else to speak coherently about it.

  • And by definition ... a single-issue problem solver is a one trick pony ;)