Bernie Sanders Was Called Out for Online Supporters’ Vicious Behavior. He Shut It Down.

“They are not part of our movement.”

Bernie Sanders speaks during a Democratic presidential primary debate on Wednesday, February 19, 2020, in Las Vegas.John Locher/AP

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Bernie Sanders was put on the spot at the Democratic debate Wednesday night over the vicious online attacks by some of his online supporters. Sanders bluntly condemned their behavior.

“We have more than 10.6 million people on Twitter, and 99.9 percent of them are decent human beings,” Sanders said. “If there are a few people who make ugly remarks, I disown those people.”

“They are not part of our movement,” he concluded.

Sanders’ comments came after former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg reminded viewers that Sanders supporters had threatened top officials of Nevada’s Culinary Union, a Democratic powerhouse, over the phone and online in the lead-up to Saturday’s Nevada caucuses, the third nominating contest of the Democratic primary. (The union has recently warned its members about Sanders’ Medicare-for-All plan.)

Buttigieg seized on Sanders’ response, suggesting the senator was showing a lack of personal responsibility. Buttigieg said he respected what Sanders’ said, but wondered, “At a certain point, you gotta ask yourself: Why did this pattern arise? Why is this especially the case among your supporters?”

Sanders vehemently disagreed, adding that his campaign surrogates like former Ohio state senator Nina Turner have also been the subject of “ugly, sexist, racist attacks.”

Buttigieg pushed back: “It’s about how you inspire people to act. I think you have to accept some responsibility.”

Sanders’ online supporters have been a source of fascination and derision throughout the campaign, earning particular scrutiny after the behavior toward the Culinary Union leaders came to light. Earlier this week, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg released an ad featuring a supercut of some of Sanders’ supporters most stunning barbs. Sanders already condemned that behavior during a CNN town hall on Tuesday night, telling an audience that he doesn’t tolerate “ugly attacks against anybody.”

“I have an idea about how you stop sexism on the internet,” Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar volunteered after the exchange Wednesday. “Nominate a woman.” Yeah, sure, that’ll solve it, Amy.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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