I, like so many others this first week in June have had enough with the Bernie Sanders campaign. What began with a challenge that was certainly destined to be a symbolic campaign to show how many Democrats didn't like the influence of the super rich and super big institutions on our government has turned into an exercise in ego which is risking putting a champion of those things in the White House.
On the way a lot of us have learned some extremely unattractive things about Bernie Sanders, who turns out to have benefited from his relative obscurity as a Senator from one of our smallest states who, as an Independent popular with the residents of his state, didn't inspire the kind of concerted attack from the Republican lie machine or even an honest exposure of his record. Sanders, who has spent the past year attacking the Democratic Party has, actually, benefited most from his accommodation with the Democrats of his own state who have also not gone after him in any concerted way. What benefits that had in his ability to tell a few truths about the corrupting effect of billionaire cash on government of, by and for The People have, by his own actions, been swamped by his enabling of Trump fascism.
And what you can say about the way in which Vermont Democrats have laid off on some, actually, quite politically damaging aspects of Bernie Sanders public documents and private associations which could have damaged his brand all along you can say about Hillary Clinton's campaign, which has treated the man and his followers with velvet gloves. Even as they have attacked her in ways not seen since Jerry Falwell was peddling those videos accusing her of murdering Vincent Foster back in the 1990s.
And what you can say about unattractive aspects of Bernie Sanders that his own actions have exposed, you can say about many of his most prominent surrogates and supporters. Especially those from the worlds of Hollywood and Youtube. I don't think I'll ever feel the same way about Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon or Cenk Uygur ever again. The excuse that the Sanders campaign for his actions, that the Sanders phenomenon is bigger than this one election, that it is going to turn into some kind of lasting movement, is as delusional as the idea that the Greens were going to turn into a real political party that would change American politics forever.
Once Bernie Sanders has finally accepted the reality that he has already lost the nomination, he has blown whatever chance he had to influence future events in the past two months. He has already failed the test of leadership, he is not made of the right kind of stuff to be a leader, anyone who reaches the age of 74 almost certainly would have already had to demonstrate that before now for it to really be there. He has shown that he doesn't intend to do what Hillary Clinton did in 2008, graciously accept the will of the voters, work to avert catastrophe, other than making vague allusions to it not being a good idea.
Just as McCain-Palin was a guaranteed catastrophe averted in 2008, Trump-whoever is an even better guarantee of one being risked in June 2016. June is not the month for the man who has already lost the chance to be the only thing between the country, the world and Donald Trump to be talking the way that Bernie Sanders is talking, acting the way he's acting. I agree with what Southern Beale and Stephen Stromberg said at the links above. Bernie Sanders has, all by himself, by his own choices, destroyed any chance of such a movement forming around him and his campaign. It will evaporate by the end of fall, certainly if his spoiler campaign puts Trump in office. There will be no faith in the judgement of his supporters if that happens again so soon after the Bush II years, they will have further discredited movements of the left.
I think, sadly, tragically, his own personality gives testimony as to why the idea of a movement of the democratic left forming from the top down, around a single charismatic figure is entirely wrong-headed. A truly democratic left movement would have to come from leaders who know that their ideas, their own theories, their own persona are not supreme, not even in a movement, never mind the country. Apparently what so many had to learn in the 1930s from such phenomena as the Huey Long movement is unlearned by those caught up in the Sanders phenomenon, a point which, by the way was, was noted by others long before I thought of that comparison.
"It had happened. The people had endorsed my plan for the redistribution of wealth and I was President of the United States."
That's what Bernie Sanders might be saying in January of 2017, right?
We can't see the future. But we do know it's definitely how Huey Long began his 1935 fantasy memoir, "My First Days in the White House."
Here's Long later in the first chapter: "I promise life to the guaranties of our immortal document, the Declaration of Independence, which has decreed that all shall be born equal, and by this I mean that children shall not come into this life burdened with debt, but on the contrary, shall inherit the right to life, liberty and such education and training as qualifies them and equips them to take their proper rank in the pursuance of the occupation and vocation wherein they are worth most to themselves and to this country. And now I must be about my work."
The senator from Louisiana then goes on to announce his cabinet, which includes former President Herbert Hoover as secretary of Commerce and newly defeated former President Franklin D. Roosevelt as Secretary of the Navy.
Only I can't see Bernie Sanders reaching out to his former opponents in that way, or even claiming that he would, that would require a humility I see no signs of in him. Not now, not after seeing him fully exposed on a national stage with all of the cameras and the mass events. We were lucky that we never had to face the prospect of finding out if Long would would make good on his potential for despotism. I would never have thought, as late as the end of March, that such a comparison could be made to Sanders. Now I can see it all too well. Not that the comparison is that good a fit. Douglas Perry in the Oregonian goes on to diminish the comparison, pointing out that Sanders is a far weaker political character than the charismatic Huey Long. Long had the real potential to become an American strong-man, a domestic version of Mussolini. Sanders, by his own actions this spring has shown that he's merely willing to put one in office out of personal spite and vanity. And I don't think putting it any less strongly than that is honest. Some of his supporters have said that they think it would be a good idea. Apparently Susan Sarandon has learned nothing from her activism or playing some of the roles she's played, Michael Moore has learned nothing from making the movies he has and Cenk Uygur has learned nothing from his career in media. Maybe they should read All The Kings Men as a refresher of what they could be wishing on the country.
The now repellent Jeff Weaver, Sanders' long time office and now campaign manager will go back to his comic book store. I think that is a fitting symbol of what the campaign he has managed became as it developed. Super heros and villains, both grotesquely exaggerated, inked and filled in with garish colors not found in nature. If we are extremely unlucky it will have turned out that Sanders should never have called him out of his natural milieu to manage this campaign which turns out to be more damaging to the left than building its credibility. There was still time to salvage that in March, that chance passed, not taken.
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