Warring With Warren: How Bernie Sanders' History of Misogyny Finally Caught Up to Him
For those of us who have been vetting Bernie Sanders since the 2016 presidential primary, we knew that he had a troubling history. We knew about his checkered past where he left vibrant Brooklyn to seek solace in homogenous Vermont, where he could work to try and advance his socialistic policy goals via an insignificant third party. We knew that during this time he was a leech, writing rape fantasy essays, stealing his neighbors' electricity, and doing a series of unskilled jobs while his son and son's mother struggled to live. We knew that he had a spur-of-the-moment honeymoon in the Soviet Union and that he attended a pro-Sandanista rally where "Death to America!" was a prominent chant. We knew that he willingly tried to dump toxic waste on the poor Latino town of Sierra Blanca, Texas. And we knew Sanders' abysmal voting record including controversial votes against the Brady Bill, Amber Alert, and Ted Kennedy's immigration bill while voting for the AUMF, the 1994 Crime Bill, and recognizing the vicious Minutemen on our southern border.
But more than just his history, we knew about Bernie the person. A person who always considered himself the smartest in the room. There's a reason why Sanders has only passed a total of 7 bills, 2 of which named post offices. He doesn't play well with others. The reason is Sanders' temperament. We see it at debates all the time. His sense of entitlement. Of needing to dominate the conversation. Of needing to participate. Of needing to get in his stump speech, regardless of the question being asked. Bernie Sanders has a very narrow lane and he chooses to stay in this lane at all costs. When challenged, he becomes flustered. When he becomes flustered, he becomes angry. And his temperament, based on always being in control, quickly becomes confrontational, so much so that his voice rises and he becomes accusatory against whoever had the audacity to challenge him in the first place.
Nowhere has this been more apparent than with Sanders' treatment of women. The latest spat between Sanders and Elizabeth Warren where Sanders allegedly said that a woman could not win the presidency serves as the latest example of Sanders openly showing disdain for the fairer sex. But this is in no way a one-off instance of Sanders dismissing women in politics. Take, for example, his treatment of former Vermont Governor Madeleine Kunin who he ran against as an independent in 1986. Sanders urged voters not to vote for Kunin because she was a woman. Sanders said that would be a "sexist position" for a voter to vote for Kunin because of that reason. Kunin later reflected on the race by saying that Sanders was "focused like a laser beam on class analysis in which women's issues were essentially a distraction from more important issues." She summarized her thoughts in 2016 by remarking how only a man like Sanders could be considered a political outsider despite spending over 35 years in government.
Kunin shared her thoughts at the time when the primary was just getting started. Over the next 6 months, Kunin's assessment of Sanders would be proven to be spot on. Time and time again, Bernie Sanders and his staff would resort to sexist, misogynistic attacks against the one person keeping him from power: Hillary Clinton. Starting from early in the primary season, Sanders would base his criticism of Clinton on old, sexist tropes. He criticized her character for giving paid speeches, something that previous male Secretaries of State had repeatedly done. He criticized her experience by saying she was "not qualified" to become president despite the fact that she was the most qualified presidential candidate in a half-century. And even though he vowed not to, he criticized her professionalism by parroting the Republican line of attack against her use of a private email server while serving as Secretary of State.
But it wasn't just Clinton that Sanders would attack. He also attacked those that endorsed her. Perhaps nowhere was this attack more misogynistic than when Sanders attacked Planned Parenthood after they formally endorsed Hillary Clinton by calling them "the establishment". Despite Hillary Clinton being a lifelong champion of women, including famously saying that "women's rights are human rights" at the UN Conference on Women in Beijing in 1999, Sanders felt entitled to Planned Parenthood's endorsement despite not having anywhere near the track record that Hillary Clinton did. Rather than accept Planned Parenthood's choice and move on, Sanders simply couldn't believe that an organization would make such a clear and understandable decision and he chose to instead insult the organization and the century of work it has done in the name of women's health. But this was quickly becoming Sanders' MO; attacking those individuals and organizations that did not accept Bernie Sanders as their Lord and Savior.
And with this MO came a culture of misogyny that permeated throughout the 2016 election. From his earliest rallies, Sanders would attract male-dominated crowds. Combined with his constant belittling of Hillary Clinton and her accomplishments, Sanders would start to create is a culture of entitlement around his campaign. With that entitlement came male staff in positions of authority over female staffers, which is not uncommon in political campaigns. What is not common; however, is multiple credible claims of sexism and pay inequity and a political candidate at the head of the campaign who allegedly knew nothing about it. When these revelations emerged in early 2019, it was not at all shocking for those who us who have had to endure various BernieBro supporters on social media over the past 5 years. The truth is that Sanders needed that type of misogynistic culture to be successful. He needed his campaign staff to question Hillary Clinton's credentials because she was a woman. Without all that, Sanders would have to admit to himself that he was losing to a woman, something that Sanders simply could not bring himself to do.
Bernie Sanders is no friend to women. He's no friend to Elizabeth Warren, as we've seen this week. Despite having a nonaggression pact, Sanders has been flailing in the polls and now sees Warren as a rival rather an ally. With Sanders having flashbacks of 2016 when he lost to another more qualified woman, Sanders again chose to go negative and attack someone who, like Hillary Clinton, chose to run a campaign on issues rather than personal attacks. But this is who Bernie Sanders is and will always be. It's who he was in 1986 when he was losing to another qualified woman in Madeleine Kunin. To Sanders' credit, he has been consistent. He has been consistently anti-woman whenever his political career is threatened by one. For someone who refuses to give any sort of recognition to Hillary Clinton, the 65.8 million of us who voted for her continue to view Bernie Sanders as a misogynist, whose class-based view of the world continuously fails to understand and acknowledge women's issues. Standing here, nearly 35 years later, it is grossly apparent that Bernie Sanders is still no friend of women.
And that won't change any time soon.