Bernie Sanders is clearly not going to concede that he lost the nomination for president because, unsurprisingly, it turns out most Democrats prefer a Democrat to be the Democratic presidential candidate. He has yet to admit he lost and the longer that he holds out that concession that Hillary Clinton's win was a clear one, with 57% of the votes, the more damage he does to her chances of beating Donald Trump and to his reputation. Both of which show that he is not a particularly skilled politician if beating Trump is, as he claims it to be, his highest priority. I'm becoming more convinced, the longer he holds out, that Bernie Sanders is afraid that his revolutionary forces will turn on him if he does speak realistically to them, I don't think he really believes they will stick with him. He should save us all a lot of bother and run the test. If they are really up for mounting a revolution they will stick with it though they've lost the nomination. If their participation is only as thick as the ink on a Bernie sign, it's better to find out now when it can fade away in the summer sun before November.
His continuing to deny reality is also unfortunate because it diminishes his strength to advocate for his political policy agenda. I am entirely in favor of most of that, though not all of it, some of it is essential to save life on the planet, democracy and a decent world and society. Some of it is just unattainable a bit of it is stupid.
His speech to his supporters the other day had much in it I could agree with but it also had some things in it that I am absolutely against. Foremost of those are his just bad and even foolish demands in terms of future nomination contests. For someone who was not a Democrat before last year, he seems to think he has some kind of right to dictate how our party nominates candidates. And he seems to have learned, in what I am just about certain is his first and only fight for a nomination, only that the things that he believes deprived him of the nomination should go. He is against closed primaries and super delegates. At least that's what I got from his speech. It seemed as if those were the excuse for him not conceding his loss.
He leaves out the worst feature of the nominations process, those states which hold caucuses - the most antiquated, least democratic, least voter friendly and so most vote suppressing of all election processes in current use. Caucuses favored Bernie Sanders, as someone said, Hillary Clinton was the candidate of the primaries, Bernie Sanders the candidate of the caucuses. And the caucuses had a minuscule voter turn out as compared to the primaries. In the North Dakota caucuse, Bernie Sanders won with 253 votes and Hillary Clinton lost with 101 votes. That is total votes, not a margin of votes. [Note: See correction below ] You can compare that with the South Dakota primary held on the same night which Hillary Clinton won with 27,046 votes and Bernie Sanders lost with 25,958 votes. Clearly primaries get the most voter participation and caucuses discourage the most voter participation. But Bernie Sanders' claimed reform to the system would, apparently, allow for caucuses, which discredits his effort as some kind of radical reform of the nomination process.
On the other hand his proposal to do away with closed primaries is really a call for the Democratic Party to commit suicide. There is no reason for a political party to hand its nominations process to people outside of the party, not any logical reason, nor any reason of justice, fairness nor on the basis of any rights that non-members of the party have to that decision. In places where that was possible, in West Virginia, for example, non-Democrats can vote for someone they believe is the weakest possible candidate for the party in order to try to hand the election to Republicans. I believe that's what happened in that state this year.
As I said, if there are open primaries, officially or, as in my state, de facto, then Democrats should swamp the Green Party, take it over and either make the Democratic nominee its nominee or they should dissolve the party which has most prominently run spoiler candidates in order to defeat Democratic candidates, putting Republicans in office. The Greens have certainly given Democrats more than enough justification for doing that over the past twenty years. Including some races in which their candidate was financed by Republican money, as in the Senatorial race in Pennsylvania twelve years ago.
If you can tell me why it would be wrong for Democrats to hijack the Green Party nomination process in order to dominate its convention and change its rules, you will be telling us exactly what's wrong with open primaries and what's wrong with Bernie Sanders idea of reforming the Democratic Party. Only more so. It's exactly what he's trying to do now.
Bernie Sanders didn't prove he had the support of most Democrats, he came in from outside of the party to run for president on the pretext of "moving the discussion to the left". Well, that may have been a good idea which I favored right up until the time he made it clear that he was really intent on tearing down Hillary Clinton, who was clearly going to be the nominee of the party based on the number of votes cast and that he was also intent on tearing down and discrediting the Democratic Party - no doubt to the delight of Republicans and their media mouthpieces. And that became apparent a number of months ago. For him to come in from outside of the party to demand rules that would destroy its integrity as an expression of members of the Democratic Party is outrageously arrogant and displays a sense of entitlement that his admittedly impressive but failing nomination campaign doesn't justify.
At this point, there isnt much to be gained by giving into Sanders on those points. He's not even conceding his loss, being a problem for our legitimate nominee. And that's nothing compared to the continuing trash talking - using Republican talking points, of his supporters.
Nor, given what happened in the Republican nomination this year, do I think that his demand to scrap the super delegates is a good idea, either. Super delegates are there to hedge against the possibility that voters could be talked into making a really bad choice for the nomination which couldn't be undone at the last minute. Samantha Bee gave the example of John Edwards whose career-ending affair was revealed at a time it would have been a total disaster for Democrats if he had won the nomination. I think Donald Trump is a far better example, though Ted Cruz could serve for one as well. The super delegates were adopted as a means of addressing several losing elections in a short period when it was clear that the nominations hadn't produced strong candidates. However, the super delegates have never overturned the will of the voters, it is another clue as to Standers real motives in that he is attempting to talk them into doing that this year.
I don't blame Bernie Sanders for shifting positions as it appears will advantage him in an election - he is a politician, it's the rarest of politicians who won't do that, politicians who get to hold offices, that is. I do blame him for trying to pretend his trying to game things for his advantage are some kind of reform, when he wants to keep some of the worst features of the nomination process in place, those which advantaged him, this year.
Democrats might consider changing the super delegate rules - as they almost always have - but they should demand an end to caucuses and they should demand an end to open primaries. If independents, Greens, and ratfucking Republicans want to vote for the Democratic nominee, they should have to make the effort to become members of the party. And they should have to stay in it until the next presidential election. Democrats have the right to protect the integrity of our party. Bernie Sanders will be gone after this year, if he keeps up with the pretense that he is a Democrat, I say that's his right. What isn't his right is to dictate the destruction of the party to suit his theoretical inclinations.
Update: I just found out that the figures for North Dakota I cited were misreported in both of the sources I checked. Those are the numbers of delegates to the state convention, not raw votes. I apologize for the error. Apparently I wasn't the only one who was confused on that point a it was misreported in both of my sources consulted. I did not find an actual vote count, which is a problem in itself. Clearly when the result isn't based on a clean and clear tabulation of votes the process isn't transparent. Any number of problems with caucuses could be cited, the incredibly cumbersome and absurd system in Nevada with both county conventions and a state convention in addition to the local caucuses are emblematic of why they should all be replaced with primaries.
Let's see, according to Salon (http://www.salon.com/2016/06/17/sanders_vows_to_continue_political_revolution_says_defeating_trump_is_not_enough_we_must_transform_america/), Sanders wants to 'transform America" and thinks his revolution, where he's running for POTUS, represents a "grass roots" revolution that isn't going to be top down.
ReplyDeleteEven though all he wants to do now is "reform" the Democratic Party so it will elect him again in 4 or 8 years (so he'll take office when he's 83?). And this isn't "top down" because....well, unicorns, apparently. Or fairies at the bottom of the garden.
Honestly, he's as disconnected from reality as Trump. You can't make this stuff up. The office of President is not a revolutionary office. You want revolution, you overthrow the political system, you replace the political culture, like Russia tried to do (and ended up with Czars, all the way down to Putin), or France, who executed the king then replaced him; or England, who deposed the King then replaced him.
Yes, a real revolution would involve "transforming America," but Bernie is not the Messiah, political or otherwise, and he's not leading a spiritual movement, or even (really) a political one.
He's gone off the rails, is what he's done.
I am really saddened with how I see Bernie Sanders now instead of back when he mounted his filibuster four or so years ago. Heck, I'm saddened with how I see him since he said that nobody cared about Hillary Clinton's e-mails. Apparently nobody are his deadender supporters who are eagerly anticipating her being indicted over them these days.
ReplyDeleteI am entirely unenthusiastic about revolution as a means of changing things, though I am afraid in the United States the Constitution leaves us with no other practical means of making effective change - I don't, by the way think that's going to happen, not in the life time of anyone alive today, not without a true and horrific disaster happening. The French Revolution is the quintessential example of why that is a stupid idea, which so many on the atheist-"left" hold up as a great event in history. The reign of terror, the military-imperial rule of Napoleon, the subsequent century + of violence punctuated authoritarian governments, etc. look pretty unimpressive to me. It was one of the keys to my deciding that the atheist-left, much of it derived from the Brit-atheist left, was totally screwed up and that it would never become unscrewed. I now see Bernie Sanders as another foot stone in that long sad tale.