It is probably too much to hope for but I hope one of the things that comes out of the decision by the Bernie Sanders campaign to burn down the Democratic Party they can't control is an unofficial but real boycott of Tad Devine and his PR outfit, Devine Mulvey Longabaugh. If there's one person in this who has asked for that, it's Devine. Though there are others in the upper reaches of the campaign who deserve to be punished for what they're doing, he's the one who could be made to feel the burn of the fire he's helped set. Democratic politicians and others who might have hired him for their campaign should look elsewhere, remembering what he's done this year.
These next few days are going to be crucial, not for the Sanders campaign, but for the left that is associated with this disaster. It is on fire and it's not "The Burn" it's also burning down. Instead of creating an effective movement that will change politics and the political climate in the country, Sanders is proving that he not only lacked real substance to make the slogans real, he lacked the character to be the leader of such a movement. We needed a Reverend Martin Luther King jr. I'm afraid we got an unreconstructed early 1970s era bomb thrower who is more intent on their self-indulgent kicks than in actually making change.
How bad is it likely to get for the left? After noting the now steady flow of even some of his stronger supporters declaring Bernie Lost Me, Joan Walsh at The Nation says:
But the Sanders camp is defiant, with the senator himself condemning the threats and reports of violence, but—and you never add “but” to a sentence that’s condemning threatening behavior—insisting party leaders had it coming, because convention rules were less than fair or “transparent.” Sanders has continued to rip the Democratic Party for unfairness, and his supporters are now telling reporters there will be trouble at the convention in Philadelphia over the “rigged” primary process.
“When you lose a fair fight, then you’re sad and disappointed. When you lose a rigged fight, then you’re angry and you hit the streets,” Charles Chamberlain, the executive director of the liberal group Democracy for America, told MSNBC. He predicted “disruption” in Philadelphia, and then he went off a cliff: “I think a little bit of disruption is exciting. That’s democracy,” Chamberlain said. “The reality is without that, all you have is boring parliamentary procedure and everyone falls asleep. So I think it’s exciting and it’s actually healthy.” “Disrupting” a party convention because parliamentary procedure is “boring” seems the height of entitlement.
What an ass. If there is something that the left doesn't need it's such executive direction.
After the more than merely obligatory condemnation of some in the Democratic National Committee, especially Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Walsh also says that Bernie Sanders' campaign has been heavily white and male and, what I've suspected for a while now, many men and some women whose antipathy towards Hillary Clinton is a product of misogyny.
This is starting to get delusional, and dangerous to the American movement for social justice.
First of all, I don’t accept the presumption of moral and ideological superiority from a coalition that is dominated by white men, trying to overturn the will of black, brown, and female voters or somehow deem it fraudulent. There’s a growing element of male entitlement in the Sanders “movement” that supporter Sally Kohn articulates well:
It’s also too easy to suggest that Sanders’ supporters are a different kind of angry than Trump’s. Are we entirely sure about that? The populist right may be more inclined toward misogyny and xenophobia, but the populist left is not immune from these afflictions. And as I’ve written before, when you see progressive white men—many of whom enthusiastically supported Barack Obama’s candidacy—hate Clinton with every fiber of their being despite the fact that she’s a carbon copy of Obama’s ideology (or in fact now running slightly to his left), it’s hard to find any other explanation than sexism. Either way, the brutish, boorish behavior of Bernie Bros (and their female compatriots, too) was a huge reason I was reluctant to seemingly side with them in endorsing Sanders—and has been the only reason I have ever questioned my decision to do so since.
I remember the misogyny heaped on Hillary Clinton by many of the same names and online pseudonyms during the 2008 campaign. Though I never had the feeling that Barack Obama shared that with some of his followers. I'm not at all confident that the same is true of Bernie Sanders, not after seeing how he has been willing to encourage the worst of attacks against her. Obama knew he had the real prospect of being president, Sanders doesn't have any real prospect of being president. Especially not now that he's attacking the party he isn't really a member of even as he asks for its nomination.
Considering that Democrats don't win elections on the votes of white men but on those of women, black voters, Latino voters, and others, anyone who acts towards those most valued members of the Democratic Party as the Sanders supporters have are only helping the Republicans.
Getting back to Tad Devine:
Thursday’s New York Times, Sanders campaign leaders and their supporters said they plan to escalate their attacks on Clinton and the party. Top strategist Tad Devine insisted he’s “not thinking about” whether the attacks will hurt Clinton in her battle against Trump; they will do what they can to run up his delegate count, especially in California.
It's one thing for a campaign that is winning to go hard ball but one which has already lost the possibility of being the nominee doing what Sanders is doing, obviously on the advice of Tad Devine has earned itself the antipathy of anyone who is interested in avoiding total disaster. These aren't responsible politicians and their advisers, they're teenage boys playing chicken with a car they hijacked. I think one thing that needs to be done is finding some way for keeping other non-Democrats from declaring their affiliation so they can either take over the party or destroy it when they find that, shockingly, most Democrats prefer their candidate to be a Democrat. Tad Devine deserves to be boycotted and blackballed for his part in it.
If Sanders goes back to the Senate I hope Democrats have a big enough majority so they can disassociate themselves from him. I don't trust him. I don't think a man who has shown his level of angry spite is trustworthy. I expect him to end his career as badly as he's ending his campaign. That's a recurring motif among would-be leaders of the left. There have been lots of failed messiahs who had a temporary mass following, Sanders is obviously just another one.
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