Bernie Sanders comes home



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Sanders is expected to tell his supporters at Brooklyn College: "I did not have any parents who gave me millions of dollars to build luxury." The fight against the working class of his own family against the family. President Donald Trump's childhood is the son of a wealthy real estate developer – skyscrapers, casinos and country clubs – but I had something more precious: I had the model of a father who had a courage incredible to cross an ocean, without money in your pocket and not knowing a word of English. "

Sanders sometimes spoke and wrote from time to time from his youth in Brooklyn, where he was raised in a small rent-controlled apartment during the decade following World War II. But his refusal to push him deeper into his campaign message, or to talk about his family's history in a political context, has been a source of frustration for some of his allies, who desperately need that the 77-year-old player presents a more complete picture. of his life to the electors. Aides said that in two speeches delivered this weekend, the second Sunday night in Chicago – where he graduated and became a militant in the fire of the civil rights movement – this will change.

"I've also learned a lot about immigration as a child because my father arrived from Poland in this country at the age of 17, with nothing in his pocket," he said. said Saturday Sanders, according to prepared statements. "He came to flee the misery that reigned in his community and to escape widespread anti-Semitism." Needless to say, I would not be with you today if he had not made this trip from Poland, because practically all his family had been destroyed by the Nazis. "

Eli Sanders, his father, arrived in the United States in the early 1920s and eventually married Dorothy Glassberg, daughter of immigrants. They had two children, the older brother Larry, who would become a politician in the UK, and Bernie, who in 2016 became the first self-proclaimed Jewish candidate to win a major presidential election after defeating Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire. Sanders' mother died decades earlier, soon after her youngest son graduated from high school.

"Coming from a lower middle class family, I will never forget how much money – or really lack of money – has always been a source of stress for our home. ", said Sanders in his written remarks. "My mother's dream was that one day we would leave this rent-controlled apartment to move in. This dream never happened, she died young while we were still living in that apartment. "

Linking these experiences and addressing them openly is a challenge that Sanders has generally avoided in his public life. His political career began only after he moved to Vermont, a state he represented in both houses of Congress in the early 1970s. As a senator and, more recently, a presidential candidate, Sanders regularly criticized personal issues during interviews as "gossiping" or a "distraction" of issues such as his insistence on single payer health care, efforts to strengthen the social safety net. with higher taxes and more robust investments from the government, and employ to empower unionized workers in their fight against corporate giants.

"I did not come from a family that had the power to go on TV to entertain people by saying to the workers:" You're fired, "we should say Saturday, a photo of Trump who fits his broader message. "I come from a family that knew too well the scary power that employers can have about ordinary workers."

If Sanders follows up on his speech (it turned out that he casts scripts in public speeches), this more personal coaching will also indicate a new willingness to seek advice from long-time allies and lieutenants.

"People need to know how he got to where he is, which motivates him," Sanders campaign co-chair Nina Turner told CNN on Friday morning. "We all have stories, everyone has a story and our stories are our strength, our stories are what connects us, so (people) need to hear his biography of him."

Comparing the years from 2020 to 2016, she added, "This time, people really understand his mission, but they do not know why, and telling him his story will tell them why."

Questions about Sanders' discomfort with his own story began to surface as his campaign intensified three years ago. Interviewed by CNN's Anderson Cooper during a debate with Hillary Clinton in 2016 over the concerns voiced by a group of Jewish leaders that he was downplaying his Judaism, Sanders offered what was then a rare glimpse of what was going on. he described as an "essential element of who I am". like a human being. "

"I am very proud to be Jewish and being Jewish is so much what I am," Sanders said. "My father's family was shattered by Hitler in the Holocaust.I know what a crazy and radical and extremist policy means.I learned this lesson when I was little, when my mother I was going shopping and people were working in the shops that had numbers on their hands because they were in Hitler's concentration camp. "

A few months earlier, in October 2015, Sanders had greeted a young Muslim student on stage after saying that the Islamophobic rhetoric of Republican candidates like Ben Carson and Donald Trump had made her "sick".

"Allow me to be very personal here if I can – I am Jewish," said Sanders, greeting the applause of a crowd of George Mason University. "My father's family died in concentration camps … (…) I will do everything in my power to rid this country of the ugly stain of racism that has existed for far too many years."

More than three years later, Sanders began his 2020 campaign with an email calling Trump "a pathological liar, a fraudster, a racist, a sexist, a xenophobe and someone who undermines American democracy while he leads us in an authoritarian direction. " The language, which made the headlines at the time, largely reflected the way Sanders described Trump during much of his presidency.

But at the very beginning of a primary that saw Democrats test different ways of dealing with Trump, Sanders' biggest question could be how he talks about himself.

"It's a different approach from Bernie's last campaign, which was a huge success, but a lot of people did not really know his story," Maurice Mitchell, National Director of the Party of Canada, told CNN. families of workers. "Especially in such a congested area, all candidates will have to tell their personal story and ultimately link it to the change they are trying to make today." This complete bow will be essential. . "

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