What Bernie Should Have Said

It must not have been a happy day in the Bernie Sanders household Wednesday.

It took very little time and sleuthing to identify the shooter in the Alexandria terror attack lodged against Republican congressmen, and not a lot more to when he was identified as a rabid Bernie Sanders supporter.  Sanders, of course, had to go out and make a speech on short notice which, to his credit, he did.

And it was a decent speech and, I believe, an accurate depiction of his actual views, that violence is never a means to advance one's political viewpoint.  OK, that was fine and reasonable and no one will knock the old fellow for getting out there and saying something.

But of course, it wasn't enough.

I had a back-of-the-mind feeling listening to it that, though his heart was in what he said, he had stopped far short of what he needed to have said, very much in the vein of my column yesterday when I made the analogy to American Muslims who stop far short of public denunciation of Islamist terrorists.  Bernie didn't say enough either.

I was going to leave it at that, but then I heard from my friend and occasional guest essayist here, Ed Fenstermacher.  Ed has seen enough of my "What So-and-So should have said" pieces that his mind naturally went to what would have made Bernie's speech more effective and actually helpful.

Bernie had said that violence was not a legitimate way for someone to express his or her political viewpoint, which is true.  But the shooter -- and, for that matter, many of the people running around disrupting events this past election and post-inauguration -- were Bernie supporters, and that applied a more acidic test to his words, one which his speech failed to pass.

Ed decided to finish Bernie's speech for him, and I will happily co-opt his words and provide them as a "What we wish Bernie had finished his speech with" moment.  And that, friends, was this that Bernie Sanders should have added:

“My friends and supporters, when anyone goes out and commits violence in the progressive cause, they tar all of us with the same brush.  They demean me, and demean everyone who agrees with me.  They imply that we have no valid arguments on our side.  If you believe in the progressive cause, be peaceful, tone down the rhetoric, act civilly towards those you disagree with, find common cause where you can.”  

By not saying that, Ed insisted correctly, the senator condemned Wednesday’s acts without doing anything to stem tomorrow’s.  As he noted, intolerance is a feature of the left, of which Sanders is a de facto leader, and along with other intolerants like the Islamists, they have a common enemy in freedom.  The American left wants to mandate what you can and cannot do, say and think; freedom is not in their vocabulary when push comes to shove -- which is why the Obamist left defends the Islamists, even though Islamism represses the rights of those the left claims to defend.

Violence is not constrained, of course, to weaponry, as Sanders well knows.  I wonder, from this point, how the incident will affect his performance in televised committee hearings.  You've seen him, and I have.  I mean, Joe Manchin he ain't.  Outside of Kamala "Let me talk past my allotted time or you're a sexist" Harris, I'm not sure who is more rude to Republicans testifying in committee than Bernie Sanders.

Do we expect that to change?  Do we think that, perhaps, the next time there is a committee hearing involving the testimony of someone Bernie disagrees with, it will be different?  Perhaps there's another "What Bernie Should Say" topic for that.  I, for one, would like him to take the first 30 seconds of his allotted time in the very next televised hearing on anything and say this, perhaps softening the Brooklynese for once:

"I yield to no one in the passion of my convictions, and I expect to disagree with you in much of what you say here.  But I was extremely affected by the events of June 14th, and I wish to commit here to applying what I preached that day, in regard to civility in our political discourse and avoiding villainizing those with whom I may disagree.  I am concerned about the impact of my tone on those who support me, and will maintain a civil tone out of respect to those hurt on that day."

Now if only Kamala Harris can be fixed.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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