The "Bernie Bros" theme used to help take down Sanders' troublesome campaign always sounded like it came straight out of the Clinton camp. "Bernie bros" looked from where I sat at the time like well-intentioned but misled white true-believing progressive males whose support of a progressive platform distinctly opposed their specific interests as white males--among a coalition of mewling, openly self-interested groups--made these guys heroically selfless.
So of course the Democrats have to kill them.
A New York Times article today invokes the Me Too movement to help pre-empt another Sanders run at wrecking the Democratic program in 2020:
In February 2016, Giulianna Di Lauro, a Latino outreach strategist for Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential operation, complained to her supervisor that she had been harassed by a campaign surrogate whom she drove to events ahead of the Democratic primary in Nevada.Political campaigns are probably fairly randy affairs with the war-like atmosphere and life on the road. I don't know if feminists will kill that or just use it heretofore whenever they can to produce stories like this one.
She said the surrogate told her she had “beautiful curly hair” and asked if he could touch it, Ms. Di Lauro said in an interview. Thinking he would just touch a strand, she consented. But she said that he ran his hand through her hair in a “sexual way” and continued to grab, touch and “push my boundaries” for the rest of the day.
“I just wanted to be done with it so badly,” she said.
When she reported the incident to Bill Velazquez, a manager on the Latino outreach team, he told her, “I bet you would have liked it if he were younger,” according to her account and another woman who witnessed the exchange. Then he laughed.
A campaign surrogate is a celebrity or similar non-poliitcal figure that participates in a campaign event. Turns out the surrogate in question here was likely there to provide Sanders with much needed "diversity", as the "Bernie bros" were guilty of whiteness as well as bro-ness
In her interview with The Times, Ms. Di Lauro said she told several people who were high up in the campaign, including Rich Pelletier, who served as national field director, about her encounter in Nevada with the surrogate, a Mexican game show host named Marco Antonio Regil. But she felt she was not taken seriously by the campaign.It turns out nobody is more "bro" than a Mexican game show host. Who knew? Anyone who's ever seen a Mexican game show.
It's going to be a very entertaining campaign season.
