It would seem that Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), that tireless champion of the poor, downtrodden, and underpaid is kind of full of it.
The Washington Post reports that the field hires on Sanders’ presidential campaign aren’t happy with what their socialist overlords are paying them:
Unionized campaign organizers working for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential effort are battling with its management, arguing that the compensation and treatment they are receiving does not meet the standards Sanders espouses in his rhetoric, according to internal communications.
Campaign field hires have demanded an annual salary they say would be equivalent to a $15-an-hour wage, which Sanders for years has said should be the federal minimum. The organizers and other employees supporting them have invoked the senator’s words and principles in making their case to campaign manager Faiz Shakir, the documents reviewed by The Washington Post show.
I am presently being paid the maximum wage in schadenfreude while writing about this, by the way.
Sanders is an insufferable blowhard when pretending to care about others from one of his three houses. He routinely publicly shames corporations like McDonald’s about their profits, and demands they pay their employees more. Never mind that most McDonald’s restaurants are owned by franchisees and not the corporation; Sanders never lets business reality interfere with his redistribution rants.
This tension within his campaign is particularly delicious because Bernie has been portraying himself as a paragon of employer magnanimity:
The independent from Vermont has proudly touted his campaign as the first presidential effort to unionize its employees, and his defense of the working class has been a signature element of his brand of democratic socialism and a rallying cry for the populist movement he claims to lead.
Leftists of all stripes have long been noted for not wishing that the rules they want to impose on others apply to themselves. Hypocrisy is a cornerstone of progressivism and socialism.
The Sanders campaign’s eagerness to suck up to Big Labor set up the internecine drama:
By encouraging these workers to unionize, Sanders and his campaign opened a path to negotiate for more than the low wages that typically have prevailed in past campaigns. They are seizing the opportunity.
The campaign is now digesting an extra helping of “be careful what you wish for,” and it will be interesting to see if any of Sanders’ primary opponents will bring this up in the next debate.
Odds are that they don’t want their staffers to start doing some math of their own.
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