Bernie was a red diaper baby, born in Brooklyn in 1941. In 1980, at the age of 39, he was elected Mayor of Vermont’s largest city, Burlington. Eight years later he remarried, and the day after the wedding he flew to the Soviet Union for his honeymoon.
The man was 47 years old, educated and well informed. He knew what the USSR was, and what it stood for, and its bloody history. He nonetheless went to Moscow, and lavished praise on the most prolific mass murderers and the greatest despots of the 20th century.
If you’re under 30, you don’t know anything about the Soviet Union. It ended before you were born. So Bernie’s past association with it means nothing to you. This is one reason why Sanders gets 45% of the Democrat vote under the age of 30.
Just 13% of Democrats over 45 go for Bernie. These people have some memory of what the USSR was like, and they want nothing to do with it, or its apologists.
Political campaigns can be educational. It’s tricky, and has to be done with great skill. But Trump has a lot of smart people working for him, and I’m betting they can come up with a way to explain what the old Soviet Union was really like, and demonstrate to the ignorant youth vote that only a complete nut would take his new wife on a honeymoon there.
reaganproject.com 