Stories have been popping up recently about the culture of sexual harassment inside the Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign, and the Vermont senator’s aides are trying desperately to get out in front of it as they chart a course for 2020. In an interview with The New York Times, Sanders’ former campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, acknowledged that they had made mistakes in their initial run for the Democratic nomination. Chief among them? They had violated the sacred identity politics creed: Thou shalt not fill your campaign with white men!
Weaver, said the Times, “expressed regret for some of the operation’s shortcomings.”
“Was it too male? Yes. Was it too white? Yes,” said Weaver.
Of course, this excuse would have made a lot more sense if the perpetrators of sexual harassment on the campaign trail…had actually been white. But most of the complaints were lobbed against Arturo Carmona, the head of the Sanders campaign’s Latino Outreach. And even in the incident described by The New York Times, the problematic man in the spotlight is Latino Outreach manager Bill Velazquez who, upon listening to a staffer’s complaint about sexual harassment on the team, answered with: “I bet you would have liked it if he were younger.”
So what does any of that have to do with white males?
The impression we get is that, instead of taking the complaints as seriously as they should be taken, the Bernie campaign wants to sweep it under the rug. That’s not easy to do in the #MeToo era, but putting the blame on “whites” and “men” is an excellent way to start. If you play the identity politics game correctly, the SJWs calling for blood will be left without a comeback. Oh? You hate whites and men, too? Hmm, you must be an ALLY. We’ll move on to an easier target!
Without recognizing, of course, that absolutely nothing of value was ever done.
Bernie himself didn’t even bother taking that course. Asked about the charges by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, he shrugged and said he was “too busy” to have noticed any of that.
“I was a little bit busy running around the country trying to make the case,” he said.
As far as the culture of harassment that some former aides have characterized, Sanders said: “I am not gonna sit here and tell you that we did everything right in terms of human resources, in terms of addressing the needs that I am hearing now that women felt disrespected, that there was sexual harassment, which was not dealt with as effectively as possible.
“I certainly apologize to any woman who felt she was not treated appropriately, and of course, if I run, we will do better next time,” he continued.
Better, as in, we’ll staff up with every minority you can think of under the sun.
Ah, but the guy at the top will still be a WHITE MALE, so we’ll see if he’s able to regain the kind of traction he got last time. We’re guessing not.
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