Bernie or Hillary?

About

Bernie or Hillary? refers to a series of fake campaign posters supporting Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic Presidential Primary against Hillary Clinton in which Sanders is depicted as being more knowledgable than Clinton on a series of popular but apolitical topics.

Origin

The initial series of 12 posters were originally posted online by user ObviousPlant on both Tumblr,^[1] Reddit^[2] and Imgur^[6] on January 28th, 2016, with the added caption, "Left in the streets of Los Angeles." The original reddit post, in the subreddit /r/pics, received 550 points (97% upvoted) and the Tumblr post had received over 38,000 notes as of February 2nd, 2016.

Spread

The format of the poster, which was relatively easy to Photoshop, quickly became popular in Bernie Sanders meme groups like the Facebook group Bernie Sanders' Dank Meme Stash, which has over 79,000 members.^[3] While some members posted the original posters from ObviousPlant, others created their own versions by filling in new topics and generating new answers for the candidates. In the Facebook group alone, some of the most popular of these edits gained over 300 likes each, and were shared out of the group into general newsfeeds.^[4] In addition, many tweeted versions of the meme; an article on New York Magazine collected versions distributed on Twitter.^[5]

2020 Revival

The format saw use in the 2020 Democratic Primary, featuring Sanders vs. candidates in the large field, including Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, and Joe Biden.

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References