Before any Bernie Bros attack me, I think it's important for me to mention that I once also used to be one too. Sen. Bernie Sanders' initial bid for the presidency in 2016 honestly changed me as an individual. I was just 17 at the time, turning 18 seven months after the general election, which therefore excluded me from voting. That, however, didn't discourage me.
Bernie's campaign ignited some kind of fuel within me that I never knew existed before. I never really took an interest in politics for two main reasons, one being that it seemed both difficult and boring to try to understand, and the second being that I always seemed to have a distrust in the American federal government. And by the government, I mean the politicians in office. Growing up with Republican parents, therefore, I blindly supported whoever they supported, assuming that my parents must know best.
The first aspect of Sen. Sanders that surprised me was how anti-politician he was. He didn't exude any of the characteristics that any typical politician would. Sanders, to me, was just like one of us. He cared about values that mattered us, he spoke about issues that are often brushed away by top-tier politicians, but most importantly, it appeared to me at least that he wasn't in this for the victory or for the power. He was in this because he genuinely wanted to help people.
I couldn't vote for him, but I did everything within my power to spread his message. I made an Instagram account dedicated to him (which I never told anyone about), bought his merch, covered my belongings in his stickers. I arguably developed an unhealthy obsession with him, imagining a nation with a leader that was human, unlike the plethora of robotic and indifferent leaders we've had before. I watched all the polls, tuned in to every single primary election, tracking his every loss and victory.
Bernie's loss for the Democratic nomination hit me really hard. I had invested so much of my time into this idea of him winning that I didn't know how to handle it when Clinton was nominated instead. It didn't make sense to me. Everyone I knew voted for either Bernie or Trump in the primaries. In addition, Bernie won every single caucus held in the primaries (tied in Iowa), a type of election where voters are not anonymous and individuals must congregate in groups to cast their votes.
This was the first thing that tipped me over the possibility of corruption, or at least vote tampering in the primaries. Bernie won in landslides in every single caucus, but when it came to open and closed primaries, Clinton somehow accumulated huge amounts of votes, often defeating Bernie by arguably unrealistic percentages. Where were these votes coming from? And why did this not reflect in the caucuses?
Shortly after Clinton secured the Democratic nomination, making history as the first female candidate to do so, WikiLeaks released 20,000 emails from the DNC. The emails showed the very evident bias that the DNC had against Bernie (although they previously argued they were neutral), where DNC chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz dismissed any chances of Bernie's victory and wrote several emails about how they could "advance Clinton instead towards the nomination." She resigned a few days after the emails were released.
We may have a new DNC chairman now, but the corruption and moreover affinity for the status quo still resides within the Democratic Party. Bernie Sanders represented change, especially with his democratic socialist ideals, which was something that scared Democrats. The reason why Trump was able to defeat Clinton, despite polls suggesting otherwise, was because he represented the same thing as Bernie did, but on the other side of the spectrum. Americans are fed up with politicians sitting idle in office, which is why Clinton never resonated with the voters.
When I registered to vote last year, I chose the Independent party because I refuse to align myself with the party that is blatantly overrun by greed and corruption. Sanders, however, is still running as a Democrat — a mistake that he committed in his first time around. He was treated like crap, who is to say that it won't happen again? Only three years have passed since his first bid, which means not enough has changed for the DNC to accept his "radical" ideas. The DNC cheated him out of the nomination, something indisputable when assessing all the evidence we have, and I am 100% sure they'll do it again.
