From Pine View Farm

The Berned-Over District 2

From the Bangor Daily News, William M. Daley poses a question for Bernie Sanders. I’ll paraphrase it:

I’m a member of the Democratic Party for a very practical reason; I even volunteer in my own small way.

I realized that, after decades of voting, I had only ever voted for two Republicans (Larry Coughlin when I lived in Pennsylvania and Bill Roth when I lived in Delaware, both of them good and decent men, though Roth was in his dotage when he ultimately left political life); neither would be welcome in Today’s Republican Party(TM).

As I try to live in the real world, whatever the details of my ideology might be (trust me, it’s much farther left than you might think-I might even be willing to voter for Franklin Roosevelt, were he on the ticket), I decided that I had to cast my lot in the real world. I joined the party that better represented me, as there are only two realistic alternatives in the USA. (If you have a pipe dream of a third party* in the United States, all I can say is that I want a drag on that pipe, because it must be some really kick-ass stuff . . . .)

Parties are organized and have rules; it’s part of what makes them “organized” “parties.”

You just joined the Party, Bernie, solely so you could run for the nomination and for no other reason. Hell, I’ve been a Democrat longer than you have, and I’m nobody who is younger than you and who officially joined the Party just a few years ago.

You knew the rules going in, and now you want to dictate new rules because your grapes turned sour.

If you lose according to the rules, you have lost. The rules didn’t beat you.

You lost.

Forget the Corvair; Ralph Nader’s legacy will forever be President George the Worst. It would be a damned shame if Bernie Sanders’s legacy is President Ronald McDonald Trump.

Give it up, Bernie; you’ve worn out your welcome. Don’t be another Nader.


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*I have dim memories of a few–an almost infinitesimal minority–of “student radicals” during the Viet Nam War (who weren’t as radical as they thought they were; they were mostly just anti-war-for-a-lie) who used to speak of the “uniting the workers and the peasants” in a “revolution.” That certainly worked out well for them, did it not? They could not see that, in the real world, the workers (they were called “hardhats” in the parlance of the day) and the peasants (“farmers”) were all in for that war for a lie and hated their cause, their terminology, and them.

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2 comments

  1. Racer X

    July 5, 2016 at 10:22 am

    “Now, getting past the mainstream media minds, there’s the widespread anger among her supporters on social media, the lesser blogs, and IRL at Bernie’s actions. They use the same arguments—why can’t the arrogant loser accept that he lost?—and fail to understand how he’s maximizing his leverage while he’s still got it, which won’t be for long. They also fail to understand that the slow negotiations actually make it more likely that his supporters will come around, since he’s creating the perception that Clinton has to “earn” his vote. Progressives trust Bernie, and when he eventually gives the nod, it will carry far more weight than if he had thrown in the towel without fighting to the bitter end.”

    https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/06/the-psychology-of-why-hillary-clinton-supporters-a.html

     
  2. Frank

    July 5, 2016 at 10:50 am

    I reckon that’s one way to rationalize it. I certainly applaud his efforts to move the Party and its official platform to the left. As I’ve said before, I would happily vote for him, were he the nominee.

    I don’t see how that argument, though, applies to his and his campaign’s bitching about the party rules. AFAIC, that’s not a negotiating tactic.

    That’s being a sore loser.

    Just my two cents.

    Afterthought:

    In addition, complaining about the rules, rather than encouraging the most obnoxious of the Bernie Bros to eventually reconcile themselves to and support a Clinton nomination, serves rather to undermine the legitimacy thereof.

    I see no upside to this tactic.