To the Editor:
Your coverage of Senator Bernie Sanders has portrayed him as a hippie who escaped urban life to act out revolutionarily in back-to-the-land Vermont (“Outsider Went Mainstream, but Message Changed Little,” July 4); as an outlier whose colleagues in Congress see him as combative and uncompromising (“Sanders Fights Portrait of Him on the Fringes,” Aug. 15); and as a grumpy outsider who gives disaffected Democrats an opportunity to vent (“Sanders Draws Big Crowds to His ‘Revolution,’” Aug. 21).
I’m 57 years old and have voted in every presidential election since 1976, and for the first time I’m inspired enough by a candidate to donate money and volunteer my time. Last time I checked, the approval rating of Congress was at 15 percent, so I don’t think your readers put much stock in what Mr. Sanders’s colleagues think of him.
Maybe more relevant reporting would be on the thousands of us in the middle class who support Mr. Sanders’s positions, like a $15 per hour minimum wage; access to a college education without crushing debt; overturning the Citizens United decision that allows corporations to buy elections; and taxing the financial transactions of Wall Street speculators.
Maybe we aren’t all grumpy, disaffected outliers; maybe we recognize someone who could give this country the new direction it so desperately needs. Maybe we are what democracy looks like.
DEBORAH HYMAN
Seattle
Note from KBJ: Progressivism = economic illiteracy.
