Bernie Sanders ‘After Berners’ Still Lured By Donald Trump After Mike Pence Added
A select group of Bernie Sanders fans are not pleased that he is supporting Hillary Clinton as the Democratic Party presidential nominee, and now these “After Berners” that tweet #NeverHillary are being targeted by Donald Trump as potential allies, once again, at the Republican National Convention (RNC).
As it appears, this could be a tactic by the Trump campaign to lure Bernie Sanders fans that were potentially turned off of voting for Donald Trump when Mike Pence was added as his vice president.
Obviously, Bernie Sanders fans are the group that everyone wants to persuade, and it appeared that the arguments were mostly coming from Hillary Clinton supporters or Jill Stein’s Green Party fans.
Regardless, Washington Post claims Donald Trump’s “online army” has been trying to bring in the #NeverHillary crowd or After Berners to vote for Trump for awhile. As time has gone on, Donald Trump has upped the ante on Bernie Sanders fans, and his attempts to lure them have been constant.
For example, on July 12 Donald Trump tweeted “To all the Bernie voters who want to stop bad trade deals and global special interests, we welcome you with open arms. People first.”
Could this small group of Bernie Sanders fans end up voting for Donald Trump instead of Hillary Clinton? While that seemed to be the case for a while, Yahoo wrote on July 18 that adding Mike Pence as his vice president “destroyed” any chance for Trump to bring in Bernie Sanders fans.
About Pence, they stated he “offers nothing to the lost-at-sea Sanders voter whose frustration with the status quo makes them open to Trump.”
They quoted one Bernie Sanders fan stating that Pence was also a huge problem for potential #NeverHillary Donald Trump voters because “we all know Trump will probably get impeached in the first year so his VP will be president.”
Perhaps for these reasons, at the RNC, Donald Trump and his supporters bashed Hillary Clinton, according to the BBC, and July 19 was “focused almost exclusively on attacking” her. In particular, they attacked Hillary Clinton by talking about a hot-button issue that many #NeverHillary Bernie Sanders fans focus on: the FBI not prosecuting her for the email scandal.
Like some Bernie Sanders fans, Republicans are upset with Hillary Clinton because of her “use of a private email account while she was serving as secretary of state.” In July, the FBI noted after investigating Hillary Clinton, that she was “extremely careless” but decided not to prosecute her.
Of course, Bernie Sanders himself is a bit cautious about Hillary Clinton and the way she has handled certain situations. For example, as previously reported by the Inquisitr, Bernie Sanders said in a CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer around July 6 that he does not necessarily trust Hillary Clinton’s “judgement” because she voted for the Iraq War in 2002, according to Slate.
As far as whether or not Donald Trump’s attempts to attract Bernie Sanders fans is working, there are a few tweets around mid-July that support Donald Trump because he is anti-war and therefore closer ideologically to Bernie Sanders than Hillary Clinton. Nevertheless, this appears to be a minority opinion from Bernie Sanders fans on social media.
For instance, on Twitter, some Bernie Sanders supporters are focused on the fact that Hillary Clinton is a “warmonger” but said Berners should ignore Bernie’s support of Clinton and vote for Jill Stein. Instead of supporting Donald Trump, these Bernie Sanders fans will sometimes tag their posts with #NeverHillaryOrTrump or #VoteJillNotHill.
On YouTube, Bernie Sanders supporters that attract a lot of viewers are posting videos with titles like “Sane Progressive Eviscerates the Lesser of Two Evils Rationalization and the Hypocrisy of Liberals.”
Another video quotes Jill Stein saying “I’m not okay with a warmonger like Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. We deserve better.” While these videos may not be pro-Hillary Clinton, they do not appear to be for Donald Trump and are more likely to support Jill Stein.
In other words, the anti-Hillary Clinton group may not be joining Donald Trump’s campaign in droves, but Bernie Sanders fans that despise her are planning to fart in protest of Hillary Clinton at the Democratic National Convention, according to a July 19 report from Time.
In the end, Bernie Sanders himself remains firm that “Donald Trump must be defeated,” according to a July 13 report from Burlington Free Press, and recently tweeted the following philosophy about politics on July 17.
“Despite what the media tells you, politics is not a soap opera. Politics is about coming together to improve the lives of all.”
[Photo by Andrew Harnick/AP Images]
