Berning down the Democratic Party

"Remember when Bernie was asked to name a single instance of Clinton’s corruption, and couldn’t? That was funny."

(If you want to see the source for that quote, go here.)

The DNC is mulling over convention "concessions" to Sanders. A disastrous move. Sanders is working for Trump; he deserves nothing better than a bootprint on his ass.

An increasing number of people are waking up to the fact that Bernie Sanders is out to elect Trump. Most do not yet understand the true nature what is going on. But there is a growing awareness that something is wrong here.

Michael Tomasky at the Daily Beast inches toward the unsayable truth...

But now, after the Nevada fracas and his gobsmacking statement in the wake of it, it’s remorselessly clear that he wants to obliterate the Democratic Party. Revolutions take on lives of their own. Robespierre never thought back in 1790 or ’91 that the guillotine would be needed. But as the dialecticians like to say, historical circumstances change. By 1793, those little sheep who’d been misled by sellouts like Danton were part of the…corrupt establishment.

Leftists like Sanders regard the Democratic Party as a far bigger problem in the world than the Republican Party. The thinking goes like this: The Republicans, sure, everybody knows they’re evil. That’s obvious. But the Democrats, they’re evil too. They adopt a few attractive positions, say nice things on certain issues as long as saying those nice things doesn’t really threaten the established economic order, so they’re even worse, finally, because they fool people into thinking they’re on their side. I heard this a hundred times from the old guys who used to hector me at the Socialist Scholars Conference in Manhattan 25 years ago when I used to speak there.

That’s what Bernie is. If he’d stayed in Brooklyn, he’d have been a Social Scholars Conference hectorer.

And his aides, according to a New York Times piece posted Wednesday night, are ready to “harm” Clinton over the course of the next month, because Sanders also believes these farkakte general-election polls taken before anyone has spent a single dollar attacking him.

But right now, he and Jane are like Thelma and Louise. Driving the car off the cliff. With Weaver in the backseat for good measure, saying “Let’s not get caught” as Bernie floors it.

TPM summarizes a recent WP editorial...

“Mr. Sanders’s irresponsibility is sadly unsurprising,” the editorial board wrote. “He has indulged and encouraged hyperbolic feelings that the country is badly adrift, that most of the nation agrees with a left-wing agenda but is trapped in a corrupt system, and that nothing but a political revolution will do.”

The comments are better than the post...

Ok, Bernie, you want to keep tearing away at Hillary? Let's see the tax returns. Complete ones.

Let's see the ones with Jane's income from Burlington College. How about the one with Jane's Golden Parachute from Burlington -- $200,000 from a college with 200 students. Pretty good deal. Let's see it.

Jane Sanders' corruption destroyed that college. I suspect that she is the real reason her husband became so easy for Roger Stone to blackmail. From Legal Insurrection:

Additionally, the Washington Free Beacon reported in January of this year that under Jane Sanders’ tenure, Burlington College steered funds to her daughter and a family friend who had been an adviser to Bernie Sanders while he was mayor of Burlington:

After working for the campaign, the senator’s wife would come under scrutiny for expenditures at Burlington College, where she was hired as president in 2004. While she led the school, it paid six-figure sums to her daughter and the son of a family friend.

The Sanders campaign and their allies in media may try to spin this unfortunate situation but the bottom line in undeniable. Burlington College is a victim of poor decisions and crony politics on the behalf of Jane Sanders.

Bernie couldn't name a single instance of Hillary's "corruption." I have just proven that the Sanders family is corrupt as hell. Burlington College found that out the hard way.

Let's return to those comments at TPM. I love this one...

Sanders has managed to convince his supporters that America has turned into some kind of irredeemable hellhole therefore revolution (i.e. burning down the system) is necessary; and

Sanders is referring to "revolution' as a very sanitary, controllable situation that doesnl't involve extreme violence, pain, dislocation etc. All his followers have to do is "protest" "march" etc. He might want to remind the younger folk what happened at Kent State.

Actually, I think today's young people long for violence. It has a certain romance for inexperienced dimwits -- until the actual pain kicks in, and until they learn the hard way that revolutions usually go wrong, and often empower reactionaries.

 (The Nazis came to power because the communists and socialists ignored the right-wing parties while doing everything possible to weaken Germany's version of the Democratic party.)

They're imagining their revolution as velvet-flavored. That's because they think everyone thinks the way they do except for the few plutocrat meanies who run things. And they think anyone who disagrees with them is quite simply wrong, and will see the error of their ways when it's explained why they're wrong.

Very hip.

I don't know if there is anything in world history that could compare to a revolution in a country where the population is so politically polarized and is in possession of over 300 million guns. The suffering and death would be unimaginable. It would be hell on earth.

Precisely the point I've made over the years. Conservatives outnumber liberals in this country, and conservatives/Dominionists/right-wing-paranoids are far better armed -- and far more willing to kill. The only revolution likely to occur in this nation is one that lefties really do not want to see.

From Washington Monthly:

From the beginning I questioned the seriousness of Bernie Sanders’ proposals. Long before the disastrous New York Daily News interview, it seemed obvious to me that he was better at pointing out problems than he was at crafting actual solutions.

Then came the debates. Sanders’ explanation for any barrier to progressive change was the corruption of big money - that was true for both Democrats and Republicans. Discussion became almost impossible. Anyone who didn’t agree with him was an establishment sell-out.

As it became increasingly clear that he was going to lose the nomination to Hillary Clinton - despite doing better than anyone thought he would - the excuses began. It was because Southern states with African American voters went early in the process. Then it was because of closed primaries. Initially the campaign railed against the superdelegates. All that was reversed in an attempt to justify Sanders staying in the race based on the idea that he could flip them to support him instead of Clinton. None of that made any sense and his message got lost in complaints about the process.

"Complaining about the process" IS his message. He is utterly disingenuous. He knows full well that the caucuses are undemocratic -- but he doesn't complain about that, because he was able to game the caucuses. He disdains superdelegates until he decides that they can be useful. He tried to bring Republican ringers into Nevada and then he cries "Unfair!" when they won't let him rig the system.

He complains about "closed primaries," thereby revealing his debt to the Trump forces. Open primaries allow the Republicans to choose the opponent they prefer. It has been clear from the start that they want to run against Sanders. Why should outsiders get to choose the Democratic party nominee? Our party is our party. Open primaries are inherently corrupt.

The Nixonian Sanders team plays dirty trick after dirty trick (see preceding post). Then, in a classic example of mirror imaging, they flood the comments section of every site with phoney charges against Clinton.

The Washington Monthly piece attracted some quotable commentary:

At this point it seems Sen. Sanders' continued reliance on moving the goals posts, rationalizations and perceived injustices has a bigger chance of setting back progressive goals then advancing them. It's sad and more then a little infuriating.

I can't remember the last time I saw a Bernie supporter who wasn't peddling obvious untruths.

sanders supporters showed up at trump rallies and tore down security tents, blocked roads and forced rallies to end early or be canceled. Then they started showing up at Clinton rallies doing the samething. Now NV.

There is no excuse. Your perceived slights do not justify the sanders camp actions. Period.

Now let's turn to Balloon Juice, a blog that once favored Sanders. What BJ is saying now is priceless:

Only nihilists, college students who are living off their parents, and white employed men with nothing to fear from the Trump administration have the luxury of thinking like this. In other words, the Bernie coalition. Since Jane is on his payroll and also got a nice 200k golden parachute for destroying Burlington College, Sanders will be fine, too.

In case I’m not clear, fuck these guys.

From the comments:

Bernie’s worst feature as a candidate has been his total inability to lose with any grace, class, or composure.

Any time and place the voters have rejected him, it must have been illegitimate in some way. Now his dead enders believe they were cheated out of something. To borrow a sports metaphor: Scoreboard, kids. It doesn’t lie.

When he actually encouraged them to feel like the cheated victims, it was a major sign of bad character. It also plays into the general concern that he may be poisoning the general election well.

And Sanders, at this point, needs to start losing big in the remaining states. Not because Hillary needs those delegates to win but because Sanders needs to realize that he has no “momentum” and that he has lost any future support. Sanders is impervious to courtesy, logic, or assumptions of good behavior at this point.

Bernie should drop out because the longer he pretends that the ultimate result is not in doubt, the more he has to twist the narrative into one of a stolen nomination, and the more his campaign becomes beholden to a new variety of Truther.

He could have kept competing on the fucking issues right through to the end without turning it into a fucking purity pity party, but he and Weaver and the other #BernItDown-ers chose otherwise.

I can’t imagine how booing and insulting a popular California senator three weeks before we vote can possibly go wrong for Bernie’s campaign. Can you?

Turning to Kos -- which has been surprisingly even-handed this cycle -- I see a headline gets close to the real truth: "Sanders campaign admits it wants to hurt Clinton, even if that means helping Trump"

Sanders is flat-out "not thinking about" whether his efforts to hurt Clinton could aid Trump—he's just going to "put the blinders on" and worry only about himself, not the national and global issues at stake. It's an absurd and outrageous win-at-all-costs strategy: absurd because Sanders cannot even win, no matter what “power” he might grab hold of; outrageous because Trump poses an existential threat to this country—and to this world.

Sanders claims he still wants to influence the Democratic agenda, but if he finishes out his campaign by trying to tear down the one person who can actually stop Trump, how can he expect anyone at the Democratic convention to listen to what he has to say?

Why should he be allowed to lead -- or even address -- a party that he despises, and which increasingly despises him right back? Bernie wants to allow Republicans to vote in a Democratic primary. Any candidate who advocates that kind of treason should receive a standing BOO at the convention.

Now let's turn to bostonboomer at Skydancing...

Finally some journalists are beginning to understand that Bernie Sanders is serious about trying to destroy the Democratic Party in hope that his “political revolution” will emerge from the chaos he and his supporters create.

Now that he has lost, Sanders seems determined to take everyone else down with him and hand the presidency to a seriously insane person with no experience in politics or government and no interest in learning about either.

Look, I'll say it again: Donald Trump's secret manager and political hit man is Roger Stone. Stone has engineered every Democratic split since the Nixon years. That's not conspiracy theory: It's conspiracy fact. In the upper part of the left column, I provide links to all the proof you could ever need.

What makes you think that this election cycle is any different?

What makes you think that Bernie Sanders differs from John Anderson? In 1980, the progs of that era would have scoffed at anyone who suggested that Anderson was a ringer for Team Reagan. Yet that's precisely what Anderson was. History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as Bernie Sanders.

(As George Bernard Shaw once said: "If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.")

A SkyDancing reader offers a comment that sounds some of the themes that have often been heard in these humble pages...

Yes, Sanders has always reminded me of one of those angry ’60’s radicals who hate just about every aspect of America, and who think that the Democrats are the real enemy, just like the Communists hated FDR in the ’30’s, because his policies were seen by them as calming down the people who otherwise might rise up in violent revolution like they did in Russia.

Sanders is the wish fulfillment of all of those Left internet sites which have hated the Clintons for decades. They thought that Obama was their wish fulfillment, but he let them down, so they tranferred their adulation to Sanders. The anti-Hillary wing of the party was always going to get 40% or so against her. Sanders didn’t do anything special, and it never shocked me that he got this percentage. The far Left would vote for just about anyone instead of Hillary. Apparently there are people who now are convincing themselves that they would rather have Trump than Hillary. A site which I used to read eight years ago, Naked Capitalism, had a repulsive headline today which I saw linked, but would not read; something about Big Business preferring Hillary, because “they would rather have the former Goldwater Girl than Trump.” The Left hates Hillary, someone who voted the same as Sanders 93% of the time in the Senate, so much, that they will convince themselves that an insane megalomanic would be better, because he is not Hillary. They are such pretentious and arrogant fools. The German Socialists said, “Nach Hitler, Uns,” (“After Hitler, Us”) in the early 1930’s.

And Sanders, like most of the ’60’s radicals, is intransigent, self-righteous, without warmth or real human empathy; it is all about the abstract collective for him. I don’t know what it will take to get him to stop. He has already done great damage, and is intent on doing more.

He's going to go third party. Bet on it.

Do not believe his claims to the contrary. He is completely in thrall to Roger Stone.