It's not just about this meme, this meme is just the latest meme Bernie's had. This meme is not an isolated incident. It's been a thing with Bernie ever since a bird came down when he had a speech, and it's the behaviour around the memes which is dangerous.
You want to know how Trump became a god-king among the insurrections and his followers? This is part of the answer, he became an idea not a man to his followers. It's why the Bernie Bros became a thing which the left has been desperately trying to erase from history because it makes the movement look bad.
True, but not all popularity is good for society. When someone stops being a politician and starts being a deity to their followers something has gone horribly wrong. No, Bernie is not anyone's "cool uncle" to his followers, they are not related to him. He doesn't know who these people are. This ins't about likability, this is not the same thing as having a beer with a candidate this is celebrity worship which risks harming people around them who aren't in the group. That was bad, this is worse. Bernie's not their friend, they want him to be their family when he's neither - he's a politician. Especially when it's combined with stubborn contrariness and conspiracy theories about rigged elections against the "establishment" - a worrying trend among both Bernie's and Trump's supporters which this feeds. I know why this are to be, the problem is it shouldn't be accepted as something we should encourage in society.2. Presidential contests (and many political contests) are popularity contests. So some candidates are going to be more popular than others. Not saying this is the right way to go, I'd agree with you that it shouldn't be. But it is. And Bernie is actually kind of like your cool uncle. Not that this is a great qualification to be elected President, but it is going to make someone more likable than others. The reason he's a household name instead of the newest version of Dennis Kucinich is because in '16 every major politician got out of the way for Hillary Clinton because it was "her turn".
Sure, but that's not the complaint. It's the reactions to Bernie's rise which are the problem. Hillary's popularity is debatable, if she truly was as hated as the left would believe she'd have been Bloomberg'd out of the race.In a normal election cycle without an incumbent there would have been a healthy range of candidates to choose from and Bernie would likely have polled at under 5% as one of the crazy candidates that some on the far left would sigh and say, "If only someone like that could get elected in our country". Instead it was only Clinton and your crazy but loveable uncle Bernie. And since Hillary Clinton is one of the least popular politicians in my lifetime (again, not least qualified but least liked by the average voter) folks were desperate for an alternative. So Bernie went from what should have been under 5% to oddly competitive.
Minority voters chose other candidates more than Bernie, this is a big reason why Biden won in '20. They're also in a coalition, all factions who don't win have to do that and do it again next time, that's the process. It's incredibly rich that Bernie's supposed to be the champion of minority voters when he couldn't be bothered going to the anniversary of Bloody Sunday.This excited many on the left because (like minority voters who are also pandered to, with talk of "hot sauce in my purse wherever I go" and the like) they usually have to eat s##t, get in line, and support the middle-of-the-road candidate the Party elite has pushed and accommodated. Now they had someone who held beliefs closer to theirs. And (a rare treat, and usually disqualifying) someone who actually seemed to believe in what he was saying, rather than saying what they needed to in order to be elected. This gave him a popularity he probably did not deserve, and allowed some to project qualities on him they wanted rather than who he necessarily was. Just as people did with Obama in '08.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/01/u...andidates.html
Bernie has a problematic history among minority voting blocs, if they were so behind hm as we're supposed to be believed he'd have been president years ago. "Party elite" - vernacular the far left and far right have in common in disparaging anyone who won't step into line when they say jump, despite failing to achieve things like winning elections. That's their candidates one job, if that candidate fails they need to ask more questions about why they're losing then blaming the nebulous "establishment" which includes organisations like Planned Parenthood.
https://www.vox.com/2016/1/20/108014...-establishment
It's disingenuous to suggest other candidates followers aren't genuinely supporting their politicians, it's dangerous close to "fake news" to my liking. People have valid opinions in believing in candidates which aren't named Bernie sanders. This is where the cult of personality starts freaking out political rivals because it becomes more about feels than facts.
Bernie wishes he was Obama, and Obama's cult of personality wasn't as persistent or dangerous as Bernie's. Bernie's followers projecting things on him is why this is a problem, that's what the memes encourage the idea of him like that, not that he's actually a man and politician. He's more like Santa Claus than a real person with these memes.
What you're saying is true but Bernie sanders being elected won't change that those are systemic problems which take decades to fix, no single president can do that. Even Bernie. Again, this is missing the problem that how Bernie is being deified is not how politicians should be reacted to by the public, that's another problem which American politics don't need. We're stuck with incrementalism because breaking the system isn't an option. Even assuming Bernie lives up to that if he were president the Democrats would boot him out before too much comes to pass because they're not the GOP. Democrats have standards and they don't like destroying the system by people who don't have plans for what to do afterward, which the right would exploit to put their own king on the throne to rule the ashes. That "bowl of oatmeal" was more popular than Bernie was, that's why he's president.The truth is most of the time politics is boring (sometimes by design, keeps average people from looking too deeply into things that are going on). People don't like boring. We just elected the political equivalent of a bowl of oatmeal that's probably slightly past its expiration date. But right now having spent the last four years with the meal equivalent of a still-living boar running around destroying things and defecating all over the carpet we're pretty OK with bland, stale oatmeal. How long will it take the American public to forget that boar though? One Presidential election cycle, two? We're (I say we as I'm a lifelong Democratic voter as apparently is a large section of this board) going to have to put a popular product out there at some point. Hopefully they can do something to make Harris seem more interesting than they did in '20 when she had to drop out from low polling. She'll have at least four years in the spotlight to build a resume. But it is important that she be at least somewhat likable. Whether that should matter or not, it does.