LOL Bernie

Mark Johnson at VTDigger: Sanders Campaign Drops $300k on Private Jet Travel. "Sen. Bernie Sanders 2018 re-election campaign spent almost $300,000 on private jet service for a recent cross country tour to stump for Democrats and test the presidential waters. According to federal campaign finance reports, Friends of Bernie Sanders, the senator's official 2018 Senate campaign committee, spent $297,685.50 with Apollo Jets, a private charter jet service headquartered in New York."

So much for Mr. Man of the People Who Totally Travels Coach.

The explanation is terrific:

"He wanted to go where he thinks he can be helpful in energizing the base and bringing in young people and independent voters and working-class voters who supported him," Jeff Weaver, Sanders' 2016 campaign manager and longtime political adviser, told the Associated Press about the nine-state tour.

Arianna Jones, senior communications adviser for Friends of Bernie Sanders, said Tuesday: "This expense was for transportation for the senator's 9-day, 9-state tour to support Democratic candidates up and down the ballot ahead of Election Day."

"This cost covered the entirety of the tour from Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, South Carolina, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, California, and back to Vermont," Jones said. The senator participated in 25 events, Jones said.

Jones said it was necessary to use a private jet service "to allow the senator to campaign in all of the states where candidates wanted his help and get back to Vermont in order to join the Vermont Democratic Party coordinated campaign's final GOTV efforts. As Bernie often said while encouraging voters to get involved leading up to Election Day, this was the most important midterm election in our lifetimes and he wanted to have maximum impact."

Uh, I know that the midwest is a backwards backwater full of dum-dum future socialists who just haven't encountered complicated ideas like universal healthcare yet, but they've got airports.

Anyway.

Listen, I don't care if Bernie Sanders spends cash he raised to use a private jet if that's what he wants to do. I'm just exhausted with being shouted at by people who pretend that this guy isn't a politician exactly like other politicians.

And, frankly, if you can read about Bernie's obsession with his crowd sizes and his fixation on Facebook stream audience numbers and his continual refusal to meaningfully engage with Black leaders in Vermont and his taking credit for ideas that other politicians (often women) had long before he did and his spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on private air travel and still think he's the radical departure from "establishment" politicians that you say he is, your biggest problem isn't what I think of Bernie Sanders.