Bernie Sanders Is Running

*jumps into Christmas tree*

It figures that the very first bit of news I saw this morning was something that made me want to return to my sick bed immediately. I suppose that was always going to be the case, but I thought it would be Donald Trump news. NOPE!

Bernie Sanders has declared that he, too, is running for president, as a Democrat, despite the fact that he repeatedly said he wouldn't run unless he thought he was the best candidate to defeat Trump — which is quite a commentary on all the candidates already running, none of whom are cishet white men.

He's got a very Bernie response to that, naturally:

When asked by VPR's Bob Kinzel about concerns that he no longer best represents "the face of the new Democratic Party," Sanders, 77, said:

"We have got to look at candidates, you know, not by the color of their skin, not by their sexual orientation or their gender, and not by their age," Sanders said. "I mean, I think we have got to try to move us toward a non-discriminatory society which looks at people based on their abilities, based on what they stand for."

That's a very interesting (cough) position to justify arguing that people should vote for the old white man.

[Content Note: Video autoplays at link] He released a video this morning, which infuriated me within its first 15 seconds. It begins thus: "Hi, I'm Bernie Sanders. I'm running for president. And I'm asking you today to be part of an unprecedented grassroots campaign of one million active volunteers in every state in our country."

That would not be "unprecedented." President Barack Obama blazed his path to the White House in 2008 with a campaign strategy of organizing millions of volunteers in every state in the country. There were books written about how revolutionary it was. Like, as one example, Groundbreakers: How Obama's 2.2 Million Volunteers Transformed Campaigning in America. Even if Sanders only read the goddamned title, he would know that what he's proposing is hardly "unprecedented."

Hillary Clinton also had millions of campaign volunteers across every state during the 2016 general election. That seems like something a person who claims to have been one of her most vociferous advocates once she defeated him should know.

So, in the first 15 seconds of his campaign announcement, Sanders engages in the casual erasure of a campaign strategy developed by the nation's first Black president and replicated by the nation's first major-party female nominee.

And that's frankly all I needed to hear. Bernie Sanders never changes.