Despite endless stories about his 2016 campaign being a den of sexism and sexual harassment, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is definitely running for president. When Sen. Sanders was confronted with these details, he pretty much said he was too busy running for president, and by that, he means losing to Hillary, to address the crisis. Yeah, not the best answer, Bernie. Still, you’re pretty far left, though I think the Democratic base probably liked you because you were a left-wing alternative to Hillary in 2016. Now, we have oodles of left-wingers to fill that void, who are younger, female, and are people of color. You’re an old, white dude. That breed is not popular with Democrats who bean count how many blacks, Jews, Asians, gays, females, transgendered people, and non-binaries are in a room before they can feel whether they’re comfortable or not. If there are a majority of whites, it’s problematic. Like South Africa Apartheid problematic, so cue the endless lectures about white supremacy, institutional ills, and intersectionality, the latter of which is straight trash and tends to eat their own.
Anyway, I strayed away. Before Bernie 2020 is official, I think the ‘we hate white people crowd’ within the Democratic Party needs to just look at this video that supposedly shows Bernie Sanders getting plastered with some soviets during a trip to the USSR in 1988. Bernie, who was mayor of Burlington at the time, had recently married Jane and decided to use his work trip to Yaroslavl, Burlington’s sister city, where Mrs. Sanders referred to it as their “honeymoon.” She was being light-hearted about it. Still, two things: 1. Sanders pounded vodka with true Soviets. That has to score him points with the far left. 2. It looks like he was having a good time. 3. If we have to have a debate about old videos of current politicians, thanks to the Ocasio-Cortez dancing non-troversy, then this one is king. The progressive publication The Forward has more:
NEW: Recently discovered footage from 1988 reveals a shirtless Bernie Sanders with his wife, Jane, on their honeymoon in the USSR, drunkenly signing “This Land Is Your Land” with a group of presumed Soviets.
— TO? ?O?E T?AViS (@TopRopeTravis) January 28, 2019
H/T: @mgranville1pic.twitter.com/bpUsYRdZ7R
Travis Justin, a Navy veteran and leader of “Draft Beto 2020,” a group that is urging Texas representative Beto O’Rourke to seek presidential election, apparently first posted the video to Twitter. “Recently discovered footage from 1988 reveals a shirtless Bernie Sanders with his wife, Jane, on their honeymoon in the USSR, drunkenly singing ‘This Land Is Your Land’ with a group of presumed Soviets,” Justin captioned the clip, which was surfaced by another Sanders detractor on Twitter.
It’s true that in 1988 Bernie and Jane Sanders spent time in the Soviet Union immediately after their wedding, but Sanders was the mayor of Burlington at the time, and the trip, to Burlington’s Soviet sister city, Yaroslavl, was a part of his official duties. Sanders wrote openly about it in his memoir, jokingly referring to it as a “honeymoon.”
The video, which somewhat hilariously features a shirtless Sanders belting out the lyrics to the Woody Guthrie classic with a table of apparent locals, does look like a good time. But, as Leonid Bershidsky wrote in Bloomberg of the alleged “honeymoon,” which was brought up during the 2016 primary debates to suggest that Sanders has Communist affiliations, the Soviet Union in 1988 was “hardly a place for an admirer of Communism to find comfort.”
So we will instead have to take comfort, or not, in this possible 2020 candidate’s body acceptance, formidable glasses game, and willingness to reach across the table and break bread (or vodka) with people who are a different.
Oh, okay—so maybe not as hardcore about the communist part. Still, politics aside, Bernie singing songs with Russians, while allegedly wasted, in a country whose defunct socioeconomic system he wants to export here isn’t shocking is it? Someone has told him that the country whose economic system he pretty much wants doesn’t exist because it was unsustainable, right? Oh yeah—that part hasn’t seeped through yet. And that goes for pretty much every Democrat who votes and those who will make up this clown show of a presidential field.
Also, is Bernie a Russian agent? Hey, I'm just asking given that the bar for that allegation is merely drinking Stoli...which is what Bernie did here.