The 2016 campaign is under way –
Hillary Clinton: "I'm running for president"
– and it's pretty clear who's leading in
internet sharing.
So how do you become the president of the
internet?
Well, you say what you think, and you give
no f***s about the consequences.
George Stephanopoulous:"I can hear the Republican
attack ad right now – 'he wants America
to look more Scandanavia.'"
Sanders: "And what's wrong with that?
In those countries, health care is a right
of all people, in those countries college
education, graduate school is free.
Retirement benefits, childcare are stronger
than in the United States of America."
Bernie Sanders is running as a democrat, but
he's really like a Scandanavian social democrat.
Not a USSR socialist.
But he's a guy who believes that free markets
should be really sharply curtailed by expensive
public services.
Even if it means very high tax rates.
There's not that many politicians who stand
up for this so frankly.
Or who don't really care about raising money
from rich people.
Sanders: "This great nation and its government
belong to all of the people, and not to a
handful of billionaires."
And the public really does agree with a lot
of his positions.
People are with him on labor law reform.
They're with him on raising the minimum wage.
They agree with him that the rich pay too
little in federal taxes.
And Sanders is the guy who launched a one-man
filibuster to try to stop the Bush tax cuts.
Sanders: "...giving tax breaks to millionaires
and billionaires who don't need it."
There's even a new poll indicating that over
50% of likely voters might agree with Sanders
about the merits of a completely government
run health care system.
Still, Sanders isn't quite poised to capture
the White House.
So even if relatively few Americans agree
with all of Sanders' views, they agree strongly
enough to like it all on Facebook, to upvote
it all on reddit.
Six months ago, if Bernie Sanders had started
talking about free college tuition, nobody
would have covered it.
But because people saw how much enthusiasm
there was about some of his earlier statements,
lots of people, Vox.com and every website
I know, wrote about it.
The American party system is unusual around
the world.
We have just two parties representing over
300 million people.
Canada has about a tenth that population,
but there are five parties in its parliament.
Israel's tiny but they have 10 parties in
their legislature.
Sanders: "People are frustrated and angry
about a two party system which is dominated
by big money, and which does not pay attention
to the needs of working people, or elderly
people, or poor people."
This is how Bernie Sanders is winning the
internet.
He's not speaking in the bland, lowest common
denominator model of most presidential candidates.
He's like a third party candidate, who just
happens to be running inside the Democratic
party.
Which is literally what he's doing.
