As I do now, from time to time, I look in at Salon webazine to see what the play-left is up to. The answer is unsurprising, doing what the play left always does and has done pretty much since Eugene McCarthy brought stunt candidacies into its present form and Ralph Nader proved that they are a grotesquely irresponsible act of ego. They're enabling Republicans.
Up today is an invitation to tantrum by Sophia A. McClennen, Bernie Sanders is not a sore loser: Our democracy is screwed unless we fix the unfair rules which is extending the Bernie or Busters lines about alleged corruption sinking his campaign, lines which I'm sorry to say Bernie Sanders is encouraging with his complaints that super-delegates are not pledged delegates, and, apparently, not only that but wanting them apportioned on a winner-take-all basis instead of the proportional basis that pledged delegates are awarded in the Democratic Party. The closed primary issue as opposed to open primaries is being used which is odd because- Bernie Sanders won more than a few closed primary and caucus states, he and his supporters seem to forget that, but, then, this isn't about intellectual honesty it's about twisting slogans in any way needed to make it come out the way you want.
I am convinced that, contrary to the title of her piece that Bernie Sanders is proving he is not only a sore loser but has the potential to act as a spoiler even as he proclaims that he would never risk putting Donald Trump or Ted Cruz in office. If he doesn't realize that is what he has been doing even as recently as this weekend, he is a lot less politically savvy than I'd always figured he was. His continued twisting and turning and churning over the rules of the process as a means of trying to coerce super delegates to flip for him even as it's obvious he can't do that has no other explanation than that he is willing to do exactly that.
If he hasn't noticed, whenever he or Jeff Weaver or Tad Devine, Susan Sarandon, Michael Moore or his other surrogates do that, it sets off the Bernie or Busters who will reinforce and extend whatever they say into, frankly, stuff that sounds like the insane anti-Clinton stuff from the 1990s. I can't believe that this would continue if the man at the top of his campaign doesn't want that to. A responsible presidential candidate asking for the Democratic nomination wouldn't be doing what Bernie Sanders is continuing to do.
If Sanders blows this election for the Democrats he will have confirmed the worst case for why the left can't be trusted. AND I DON'T MEAN THAT HE WILL HAVE DONE THAT FOR THE DNC OR OTHER ESTABLISHMENT DEMOCRATS. If he blows this election for Democrats he will have confirmed that even his left can't be trusted by those of us whose rights and lives depend on the defeat of the Republican-facist, corporate machine. He and his campaign will have shown us that we can't trust the left and need a real left that cares about the reality we live in as opposed to the fantasies of the play left.
I have been a long time fan of Bernie Sanders because I thought he was not a member of the play left, His talk has certainly not been the typical bull shit that play-leftism, much of it issuing from mildly discontented academics and those - especially those in the social sciences - whose job doesn't depend on having a connection with real reality. Such a "left" is more of a life-style statement than it is anything real.
But talk is cheap as compared to offices won, laws changed and policies enacted. Reality is real, posturing is easy.
I thought Bernie Sanders understood that winning an election meant something and making sure someone like Trump doesn't win means at least as much. I'm not convinced of that anymore. He's going to have to make some big changes if he's going to convince me that he's what he's sold himself as being. Firing Weaver might be a good way to start. I can imagine all too well what kind of a Chief of Staff he'd make.
Sanders is now pandering for campaign $$$$, which he gets to keep when he loses.
ReplyDeleteHe announced over the weekend it will be a "contested convention' because Clinton will need the super delegates to clinch the nomination, therefore Sanders has grounds to complain on the floor, therefore keep sending in $$$$ because he's going to contest all the primaries to the end.
Fine. Contest them. But don't pretend that gives you some end game where you win the nomination in a floor fight. Because a), that's not going to happen, and b), that gives you no legitimacy at all as the candidate, especially since your campaign has complained about the lack of "democracy" in the process.
You want to erase all appearance of democracy, one person/one vote? Win at the convention using arcane rules and making backroom deals for votes.
It's over. Sanders needs to back Clinton and go home. He's no less a politician than she is.
That Bernie Sanders hasn't been supporting Democratic candidates for other offices in any but a few, selected instances has rather shocked me. I read a complaint by John Fetterman in Pennsylvania, pointing out that not only didn't Bernie Sanders help him but that the Bernie Sanders voters in large numbers didn't vote for down ticket candidates.
DeleteThis season I've read a number of critical stories about Sanders in the Vermont alternative weekly, Seven Days. It is a good remedy to the adoration heaped on him in the national, leftist press.
I still like Bernie Sanders but that residual of affection is fast running out. I think he came to believe too much in his own PR and he went for far too long without effective challenges to him. I would hate for him to turn into the same kind of contemptible spectacle as the post-Senate Eugene McCarthy or the totally contemptible Ralph Nader but that's the road he's on.
Oh, and I've read that more than a fifth of the Sanders voters in Wisconsin didn't bother voting against the horrible candidate for Supreme Court. Too many of them are not only not serious, a lot of them are repulsively immature.
DeleteWell, of course they are, which is why so many of them whine on-line about how unfair the primaries are ("undemocratic" is the new "My guy didn't win!"), and what a burden it is to have to register with a party in order to vote in that party's primary.
DeleteIf all you want to do is vote for Bernie, you have to engage a minimal amount of effort to do so in closed primary states. If you can't do that much, then you aren't serious, and probably won't be voting in November anyway. Which belies Sanders' claim that he's started a movement, or is bringing new people in to the process.
How many Sanders supporters have said on-line they won't vote for Clinton in November? Which means they're going to join the majority of Americans who don't vote. Yet they think their refusal is different, somehow.
I don't get it.