Today’s political thought
If you had Bernie Sanders in your Presidential Deadpool, it’s time to head to the pay window. He stated today that he does not believe he will be the nominee, he’s laid off over half of his staff and others are taking jobs with Hillary’s campaign. Take the L out of LOVER and it’s OVER.
As proof that none of these have been malicious, I supported Sanders. To a point. I agreed with his platform, I loved how he ran. Up to a point. Which I will discuss later.
Sanders was an unlikely candidate. A 74 year old Jewish socialist who has been a strong left leaning voice in Congress, but has little to show as being accomplished there. He would have been this year’s Dennis Kucinich except for the fact that the Democrats really didn’t have a solid left candidate (no matter what the media tells you, Clinton has always been a centrist) in a national climate that discourages the left. A person on the right who is as extreme as Sanders is on the left is thought of as mainstream, which shows just how far the country has been pulled to the right side of the equation.
Sanders would have been mainstream in 1976, but now, he is as close as we get to a true Liberal candidate, and he inspired fervor among his followers, but he was never quite mainstream enough. He won in low turnout caucuses and smaller states, but no matter what the mainstream narrative is, there is a large, solid group of Democratic Party loyalists, and Hillary has spent 25 years working that base. In the end, it was that older party base that put her over the top in California, as well as Black and Latino voters, who will be critical in the fall.
Sanders also alienated that base by going into Conspiracyland, claiming that the media was out to get him, that the system was rigged and other statements that made your mainstream Democratic Party loyalists sour on him. I was turned off after the New York primary when he guaranteed he would win, despite the polls all showing an easy victory for Hillary, then blaming the media and “a corrupt system” for his loss. The same thing is now coming forward from his supporters, even though Hillary was a lock according to poll after poll after poll…the only thing the poll didn’t catch is how wide Hillary’s victory would be.
The number of votes for her vs him is a higher percentage than the 1988 Bush over Dukakis election.
He also was hurt by years of right wing media telling us how the budget worked and why we can’t have nice things that don’t blow up brown people. I personally knew that Sanders was done when my Father (who is a moderate with some left leaning tendencies) told me about how there was no way to pay for Sanders’s plans.
And no matter how many position papers you put out, no matter how workable your plan is, if you can’t convince people your plan works, they aren’t going to vote for you.
His ideas will be put in the Democratic Platform, and if his supporters don’t pull the “I’ll just stay home” that they claim to do, he can be a Goldwater type figure, where he loses, but his ideas eventually win by his supporters staying and working the party. Or, he can be like Dennis Kucinich, giving up after his run and taking the easy media gigs. I am hoping for the former.
