Dear Bernie,
Hello from the front lines of your revolution. As a hard-working volunteer in your campaign, talking to everyone I can about your candidacy, and doing my own research into your qualifications (the better to share my convictions with others), I am VERY FRUSTRATED by what you are NOT saying in the debates and on the stump.
First, you have never taken on the meme, now successfully adopted by the corporate Mainstream Media, and most of my old-school feminist and liberal friends: that Hilary is the practical realist and can get things done, while you are the impractical idealist, or worst, just a gadfly that accomplishes nothing other than diagnosing the problem, and having no solutions.
Really?
Why don't you tell the world about your spectacular success as mayor of Burlington? Or your reputation in Congress as "The Amendment King" where you succeeded actually getting some of your excellent ideas incorporated into policy? This compared with the zero number of bills authored by Clinton, who spent her time in the Senate amassing power by leveraging her name to raise big bucks that she used to build the Clinton political machine that now supports her presidential campaign.
Why not let the electorate know that you ran for Mayor as an Independent competing against candidates from both parties, and won by only a dozen votes. After that you were told that while you might be the Mayor, the existing powers still ran the city, and the hostile Board of Alderman even stopped you from being able to hire your own secretary and staff. Facing such overwhelming opposition, you cleverly went to work figuring out what you actually could do, and did it. You exposed the crony capitalism behind the city's no-bid contracts, and freed up money that had otherwise gone into the pockets of the politician's friends. With that money you made sure that the poor and working people got their streets snow-plowed as they had previously had to wait for the equipment to finish the wealthy neighborhoods first, and hope another storm didn't come in before the snow plows went back up to the rich. And for those disabled, elderly and infirm you organized the youth to volunteer to dig the snow from their doors. So the blizzards and severe Vermont winters became a lot less stressful for all your constituents because the people were your priority.
As the citizens of Burlington recognized that they at last had a hard-working champion who was dedicated to their well-being, and who created excellent programs that improved their lives, without raising taxes on anyone other than the largest corporations, they replaced the Board of Aldermen with representatives who would work with you to continue to make Burlington a great place for everyone to live. And they re-elected you to FOUR terms by increasingly larger landslides. Your successes in Burlington were stellar, and too many to chronicle here,, but they didn't go unnoticed on the national stage. You were named as one of America's Most Effective Mayors by US News and World Reports, and Burlington started appearing on lists of the Best Cities to Live In in the US. Bernie, Invite people to Google "Bernie Sanders as Mayor of Burlington" to see for themselves what can happen when an Executive devotes his full power and attention to serving those who elected him. It was actually real change that was believable. Your many accomplishments continue to this day making Burlington a model city.
So who is practical? Who gets things done, when given the opportunity? No need to speculate about this----your accomplishments speak for themselves. Oh, but, if you don't point them out, no one knows they exist, except for the contented citizens of Burlington. Time to get the word out, Bernie!
