Andrew O’Hehir (emphasis added):
For many Sanders supporters, and not just the younger generation for whom his campaign was a political awakening, deferring the dream of “political revolution” — or at least major reform, which is really what the Vermont senator has proposed — will be exquisitely painful. But Hillary Clinton herself is not the problem, although she clearly stands for and stands with the Democratic establishment Sanders sought to overthrow. …
… Clinton is correct that the primary race between her and Obama in 2008 was closer than this one, and that she trailed by fewer pledged delegates (about half her current margin over Sanders) when she threw in the towel in June of that year. She pronounced it “perplexing” that Sanders might push on to the convention in the face of obvious defeat, and that he might yet attempt to sway superdelegates to defy the decision of a clear majority of the Democratic electorate. “That’s never happened before,” she said, “and it’s not going to happen this year.” All that is true, but what it tells me is that Clinton fails to understand the point of the Sanders campaign or, more likely, is deliberately choosing to ignore it….
… Bernie Sanders, who came closer to pulling off an internal coup within the Democratic Party than anyone would have believed possible a year ago, needs to push on just a little longer, in order to bring his own bargain with his supporters to a conclusion.
Sanders needs to assure his followers that this race was not like the 2008 race, or any other in recent memory, and that if it ends with an inevitable defeat and an inevitable truce, it does not end in capitulation. Hillary Clinton’s 2016 victory is not the victory of Clintonism. If the fight for the future of the Democratic Party is suspended for the moment, at least at the presidential level, it is not over. Indeed, it has barely begun. The final stage of the Hillary Clinton bargain lies not in surrender, or in accepting a return to politics as usual. It lies in the resolution to stop fighting now, in order to fight on another day.
Clinton supporters want very much to believe that this race really is like the 2008 race, except that Clinton won this time. And they want the old man who lost to capitulate and throw his wholehearted endorsement behind Clinton, the way Clinton eventually supported Obama, albeit probably not before she pried a promise of a cabinet position out of Obama. A man’s capitulation is a vital part of the payback scenario they expect and dearly desire. They are absolutely clueless why he can’t play out the standard script without betraying both his principles and his supporters. O’Hehir gets it, and explains it about as well as anyone can.
This primary campaign wasn’t just about two people competing for a presidential nomination. It wasn’t nearly that simple. This is something that a lot of Sanders supporters need to understand also, especially the ones calling for Sanders to run as a third party or independent candidate, which would accomplish nothing. This campaign was not so much about making Bernie Sanders the POTUS but more about “retaking the party from the pro-corporate center-right forces that have controlled it since the Bill Clinton era,” in O’Hehir’s words.
Sanders was just the vehicle to carry that demand forward. The demand itself has not been retracted.
Those of us who have watched beltway Democrats betray one principle after another for the sake of hanging on to their cozy niches in the Washington political power grid are damn tired of it and want it to stop. Last October Matt Yglesias wrote that the Democrats had grown smug and complacent.
The presidency is extremely important, of course. But there are also thousands of critically important offices all the way down the ballot. And the vast majority — 70 percent of state legislatures, more than 60 percent of governors, 55 percent of attorneys general and secretaries of state — are in Republicans hands. And, of course, Republicans control both chambers of Congress. …
… Democrats have nothing at all in the works to redress their crippling weakness down the ballot. Democrats aren’t even talking about how to improve on their weak points, because by and large they don’t even admit that they exist. … The GOP might be in chaos, but Democrats are in a torpor.
Yglesias goes on to explain that the Dems have no actual plan for taking back states and appear to be perfectly content for having achieved what seems to be a lock on the White House, thanks to the Electoral College map. And yes, I still expect Hillary Clinton to win in November. What might happen in 2020 is too far away to speculate about.
As I’ve been writing in many recent post, voter demographics are telling us that most voters under the age of 50 — and a whopping 80-something-percent majority under the age of 30 — are nearly frantic to pry the smug, complacent Dem establishment out of the Democratic party so that it might wake up and get a clue. Although there are some great individual Dems, the party itself has become a repository for soulless apparatchiks who appear to run as Democrats more out of habit than conviction. It’s been a very long time since working-class people especially could count on the party, as a party, to stand up for and actually work for policies they need. They did manage to pass the ACA, yes, but much of the demand for watering down the original bill — which was itself far short of what is really needed — came not just from Republicans but from Blue Dog Democrats.
In short, we need Dems with fire in the belly. Instead, mostly their bellies are full of foie gras and lobster, or whatever they serve at $353,400 fundraiser dinners.
In this primary season, instead of engaging with the concerns of Sanders supporters, “Hillary people seem to have become (and maybe always were) more about keeping Bernie people off the boat than they are about rowing past Trump,” wrote a guy on Facebook.
Establishment/Clinton Democrats seem like the party of Eisenhower with a dash of Nixon and a sprinkle of identity politics now — part careerist apparatchik, part hippie puncher, part Prius owner with a rainbow bumpersticker — who apparently believe that a ‘sore winner’ vibe and yelling at the kids to get offa their lawn is the righteous, best way forward.
That’s definitely the vibe I’ve picked up from the Clinton people all along. They haven’t so much been disagreeing with Sanders, inasmuch as they are able to accurately address his concerns at all, which they don’t. They simply dismiss those concerns as somehow having been generated by Karl Rove. From the beginning they’ve been outraged he’s challenged Her Majesty at all.
Clinton is definitely the candidate for complacent people who have given up on the idea that Washington can accomplish anything useful (see “The Can’t-Do Nation“). They rarely express hope of Clinton doing anything in particular except appointing pro-Roe v. Wade Supreme Court justices, which is something I want, too. But too many of them seem to just want payback — for the endless Whitewater investigations, for Bush v. Gore, for the time in 1974 they lost a job to a less-qualified man.
Getting back to capitulation — Sanders absolutely cannot just stand up next to Clinton at the convention and throw his support behind her. At the core of it this was not about the two of them competing for a job. It was not about the individual Bernie Sanders versus the individual Hillary Clinton. It’s about a schism on the Left that’s still getting wider, and the fight to resolve what’s wrong with the Democrats has to continue. For Sanders to wholeheartedly endorse Clinton would be surrendering that fight, which has barely begun.
At some point I expect him to suspend his campaign and tell his supporters that it’s better for the nation to have Clinton in the White House than Trump. I believe he’s said as much a couple of times already. But if they want him to give a speech puffing up Clinton as a great future president and as just what the nation needs, no. He cannot do that. It would betray everything the campaign was about.
O’Hehir is right about “the resolution to stop fighting now, in order to fight on another day.” I keep hearing about vast hoards of Sanders supporters who plan to protest in Philadelphia and demand he be given the nomination, which is a stupid demand. That battle is over.
Many of these people sincerely believe the election results in many primaries were not honest, and some of them have some pretty good arguments back that up. But by the time these claims are thoroughly investigated and proved (or disproved), Cliinton will be giving her first State of the Union address. Possibly her second or third. As we learned in 2000 and 2001, recounts after the inauguration don’t count.
It may be that Hillary Clinton will turn into a great, visionary, progressive POTUS, but I see no indication she’s got it in her (see Jim Hightower on that point). And she’ll get no passes from the Left just because she’s got a “D” after her name. If Clinton supporters are still looking for the fairy-tell ending that rights all the the ways they feel wronged, they’re going to be disappointed.
“Hillary Clinton herself is not the problem, although she clearly stands for and stands with the Democratic establishment”
Nope, sorry guys, but this just isn’t true. Hillary herself definitely is part of the problem. If you’re as old as I, it must take a strenuous see-no-evil effort to ignore the whiff of Nixon when you look at Clinton — the massive sense of entitlement, the contempt for the rabble, the secrecy and duplicity, the electoral dirty-dealing, the rule-breaking and cover-ups, the flagrant bribery and corruption — there’s just no mistaking it. What we used to call “serious character issues”.
Even if you ignored her conservatism, bad judgement, and business as usual credentials, Hillary would still be a bad choice for the office.
paintedjaguar — read the line again. It didn’t say Clinton was not part of the problem; it said she is not THE problem. The problem is bigger than she is, but of course it includes her.
“Although there are some great individual Dems, the party itself has become a repository for soulless apparatchiks who appear to run as Democrats more out of habit than conviction.”
On the whole, that’s true, maha.
But, since 2006 the party has added Senators like Franken, Wyden, Warren, among others. There are less Red Dog (ah calls ’em that, ’cause thar ain’t nothing Blue ’bout ’em!) in both the House and the Senate.
CA will have a Democratic female minority in the US Senate, since both the top two in the voting in that states primary were both minority women with a “D” after their name.
Russ Feingold is likely to beat that brain damaged amoeba in human form, Johnson.
Tammy Duckworth has a great chance to beat Kirk.
Former Iowa Lt. Gov. Patty Judge has a good chance against that cowardly pipsqueak, Grassley.
The Dem’s have some excellent candidates for House seats, too!
So, in those cases, the Democratic base is helping the party build from the middle – up.
The problem is that in some House races, the Democrats don’t or can’t find, someone to contest a Republican, which is a mortal sin.
And, they don’t concentrate much on running good Dem’s in Red States for State Legislatures. In essence, abandoning Dean’s “50 State Strategy,” to hold onto what they have, instead of seeking out voices to give people some real progressives to at least listen to, and consider.
This is where the GOP is smart. They spend a lot of money – or, rather, their billionaire backers do – on those state races.
That’s the breeding ground for more conservative, bigoted, Christians.
Dem’s also don’t spend a lot of time or money on local races. Yet another breeding ground for wingnut warriors!
If the party helped out local Democrats spread the word, then they’d be working on progress from the bottom – up!
And, hopefully, Hillary will beat tRUMP.
But, in that regard, the people at the top of the Democratic Party are, in essence, building a nicer house as time goes along – BUT WITH NO FOUNDATION!!!
FECKIN’ EEDJITS!!!!!!!!
All right then, maha, no more passive voice. The Clintons — and their followers — ARE the problem, and have been since the late eighties. Political/economic events don’t just happen like natural disasters, it’s all agency.
paintedjaguar — The Clintons are the most visible element, possible the central element, but by themselves they are not THE problem. You have to look at a whole vast network of allies and power brokers that keep them where they are.
paintedjaguar: Hillary as ‘our Nixon’ makes sense; but in terms of a sense of grievance, not entitlement. Nixon was plagued by the sense of being dissed. Whittier was not Ivy, you see. Hillary is Ivy, but a woman, so that’s her grievance.
Some people have called Nixon the last liberal President. The EPA, affirmative action, and going to China. Maybe Hillary will be the last conservative President.
One charming trait that she shares with Nixon: bad at lying. She _tries_ to lie, but like Nixon, she has tells. She will be, despite herself, an even better leaker than Snowden.
One charming trait that Hillary shares with Nixon: bad at lying. She _tries_ to lie, but like Nixon, she has tells.
Very astute. Disheartening, but astute.
If you watch Hillary in front of large groups and some debates, yeah, she has “tells.”
But if you look at her in personal and small settings, she is terrific.
Nixon sucked inter-personally, and a lot of times in larger speeches!
But after his CA Gubernatorial race, he figured out how to use “divide and conquer” to his advantage – aka: “The Southern Strategy.”
“They did manage to pass the ACA, yes, but much of the demand for watering down the original bill — which was itself far short of what is really needed — came not just from Republicans but from Blue Dog Democrats.”
Pretty much this. Throughout the 2008-2010 period the dems came up with endless excuses as to why there was no action on ostensible democrat priorities like card check union votes or even just getting rid of the hedge fund manager tax loophole. Usually it was “but you need 60 votes in the senate and a sparkely unicorn to pass anything, Mr. Smart Guy”
I’ve grown tired of the endless schuck and jive routine. Elected dems are either incompetent at implementing their stated principles are they do not actually believe them. At this point I no longer care about which it is.
Could someone explain a little about what this means: “Many of these people sincerely believe the election results in many primaries were not honest, and some of them have some pretty good arguments back that up”?
Are you saying that people were prevented from voting? That voting machines did not record ballots properly? That election officials are falsely reporting results?
//Are you saying that people were prevented from voting? That voting machines did not record ballots properly? That election officials are falsely reporting results?// Yes. Please start paying attention.
I have two sisters who were born five years apart on the same day as Abraham Lincoln was assassinated..Not the year but, the month and day. I’m not sure what relevance that has to due with anything.. but if Hillary’s mother being born on the day when the 19th amendment was ratified has some meaningful significance to her becoming the presumptive nominee then surely my link to Abraham Lincoln must destine me for some yet undiscovered form of greatness.
Please, please say that the better Bernie did all this without Koch money, or even other soiled, agenda tainted, money, could or should do.
“Sanders absolutely cannot just stand up next to Clinton at the convention and throw his support behind her.”
Why would he. He is pure. He paved the path. He was not the sell out. He damn near won. He put the fear in all of their hearts that we may actually have a quorum for a real democracy in America of the USA.
Best of all he stole the wind. The money wind.
And he made sensible points.
No.
Hillary needs all he has and more. We need all of that and more.
Hillary bargains from weakness. Let us see what she can do.
Yeah, the “pure” thing bothered me a little, too. “Honest” would have been a better word.
No. There is a lot a grey to play. All I am saying is that her hand is only what she can make of it. The other party is cursed with all the tRump “card”. As was so delightfully stated today in the press, we will only know what happened to the GOP when the cultural anthropologists submit their report.
As for Hillary, we are all counting on her.
But some deal must be done. At this point she must show that she can play a not so perfect hand, in my mind a bit of a weak one, and recognize what is the path to take. I envy her not.
bernie,
Uhm….
Please explain to me, exactly, how Sanders is “pure.”
Not Jesus,, not Michael Valentine Smith, not “Tommy,” were ever “pure.
That’s what made them all human!
America tried to create comic-book “Super-heroes” to aviod this, and make them “pure.”
But the decision was that even even THEY had to have tragic flaws.
No one is “pure.”
It’s NOT interesting, dramatically!
Just ask Aristotle – EVERY “hero” has to have a tragic flaw.
Mine is, that I have none.
😈
maha – “The Clintons are the most visible element, possible the central element, but by themselves they are not THE problem.”
Yes, of course. I meant to say “the Clintons and their fellow travellers” not just “the Clintons and their followers”. Bill and Hill were eager tools who got promoted into the clubhouse for services rendered.
IMO, things are playing out nicely. I’d have preferred for Bernie to prevail, but no tantrums will change reality, even if they can do serious damage. Sanders was offered a position, I’m sure, like the one Christie accepted, sock puppet to the candidate. Sanders is ‘keeping the band together’ to paraphrase the Blues Brothers.
Not one of the GOP candidates for president had maintained the influence over party policy that Sanders is poised to do. He won’t ‘rule’ Clinton – he will help her win, but the price of that support will be that Clinton must listen to the ‘revolution’ – she will have to modify her positions or risk their wrath and retribution in 2020.
Well, the thing is, Bernie lost, and lost by a comfortable margin after choosing to participate in the Democratic primaries. When he signed up to participate, there was always a real possibility he’d lose–and he did. And, Clinton won by holding small rallies, spending far less money than him, and getting far less positive press. Living in Cali, every story I read over the last three weeks in the local news sources stressed how close Sandars was making things, playing up the polls that said things were close, ignoring the polls suggesting she was well ahead. She ran a great, quiet campaign, and I think she deserves credit for the win.
Also, to those people stuck in conspiracy mode, California is a great place to vote. If you’re a mail-in voter, you can mail your ballot, drop it off, and if you lose it, go into your polling place and vote provisionally. If you are No Party Preference, you can go into your polling place and request a Democratic ballot to vote in the primary, if you didn’t request a mail-in Democratic ballot prior to the election. Oh, and ballots are taken all the way until polls close. To top it off, you can register online. We also have a long legacy of state Secretaries that take their jobs seriously too. There’s no state that’s more inclusive than this one, and whatever mistakes happen, it’s not because the State hasn’t tried to make the process as inclusive as possible.
I liked Bernie’s message and appreciate the spark he brought to the campaign. I was disappointed at what the AP did on Monday as a Cali voter. That said, he just didn’t run as a great a campaign as Clinton, though he garnered a lot of media coverage. It’s hard to say that, but it’s true.
@paradoctor
“One charming trait that she shares with Nixon: bad at lying. She _tries_ to lie, but like Nixon, she has tells. She will be, despite herself, an even better leaker than Snowden.”
There’s historical precedent:
We know him well,
He cannot tell
Untrue or groundless tales.
He always tries
To utter lies
But every time he fails.
–the chorus in The Mikado, vouching for Koko’s outlandish account of a fictitious execution.
Bernie Sanders, until recently, was not a member of the Democratic party. He is to the left of virtually every other member of Congress, not to mention the President. He has some wonderful ideas that would be nice to implement, except that we, as a nation, have no money to pay for it. We are under crushing debt, which, sorry to say, has to be accounted for. Not only that, much of our debt is “owed” to us, in the form of massive IOUs that form a disturbingly large portion of our social security trust. Thus, we do not have simple problems, nor are they problems that are going to go away just because we have very restive portions of the population at each of the (very vocal) political extremes.
As to the election, Clinton won decisively, playing by rules which were well known to all candidates prior to the election. Many people are saying otherwise, and I’m sure that they have great reasons which make sense within their viewpoints, but I’m not seeing it.
For the first time in nearly 30 years, we have a chance to turn the Supreme Court liberal. If we can win the Senate, all of those numerous vacant judicial positions can be filled (and they won’t be Conservative hacks). If Trump keeps on imploding, the House might be in play as well, and about 4-8 years ahead of demographic schedule. If the Courts and the Congress move Left, the country moves Left, and it won’t really matter which of the exaggerating fools (Democratic, of course) we end up electing as President. These are the real stakes here.
Or, we can keep on complaining that the 3.5 million vote advantage that Clinton has over Sanders is somehow meaningless, and that Sanders is the true winner because, you know, because…..seriously, the Republicans have been playing the “all politics is local” strategy with great success, for 40+ years, kicking our asses locally and statewide all because we get ourselves caught up in national election squabbles over which of the arrogant candidates is more “pure”. Honestly…..
wburke and KC — Please actually read posts before you comment on them. Nothing you wrote is relevant to the post. If you did read the post and still don’t know what it says, please consider remedial reading classes. Please also note that leaving comments on a post you obviously didn’t read is a violation of commenting rules for this site, which will get you banned in the future. Thanks much.
This seemingly desperate need on the part of the Bernie Cult to dominate and dictate to Democrats what their beliefs and values are and shall be, seems to be one of their defining character traits.
No matter how deeply you may want ideological domination and control of Democratic voters, it’s just not going to happen.
Democratic voters no more need the acceptance, than they do the votes, of Bernie’s cultists to nominate and elect Hillary Clinton, or anyone else for that matter.
If Mr. Sanders supporters need to rationalize to themselves that his support of the Democratic agenda is really their support of his agenda, in order to make themselves useful, I think Democrats, generally speaking, will tolerate them, for a while.
M13: Thank you for being another reminder what oblivious assholes Clinton supporters can be. You can go now.
Oblivious to what?
The need to impose an ideology on the Democratic party, and through them, the country?
You need to understand something my friend, Democrats do not owe you or Bernie Sanders anything.
If you want to support Democrats, welcome to the party.
If you want to impose your ideological agenda on the Democratic party and Democratic voters, then you really have nothing to offer them or your country.
That’s what the political process is for. You support the candidates who share your views and try to get them elected.
I’ve been a registered Democrat since 1972 and have voted for every Democratic presidential nominee since McGovern, plus who knows how many down ballot candidates. If the Democrats don’t owe me anything after all that, then neither do I owe them anything. We can shake hands and part company.
What, precisely, does Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party establishment offer my country or anybody else, except that she is not Donald Trump? I do give her that — she is not Donald Trump. And I expect her to win in November. But we may well be looking at the last hoorah of the once-great Democratic Party.
“We can shake hands and part company”
For me, I think that is the biggest favor the ideologues can do for the Democratic party.
I think Bernie’s ideological cultists are toxic and sow the seeds of destruction of the coming Democratic majority.
My view.
M13 — “I think Bernie’s ideological cultists are toxic and sow the seeds of destruction of the coming Democratic majority.”
Um, dude, those “ideological cultists” WERE the “coming Democratic majority.” “According to a recent analysis from Tufts University, Sanders has now ‘surpassed Barack Obama’s 2008 Democratic primary totals among young people in the 25 states where we can draw a comparison — whether you count by raw vote total or percentage of the overall vote share,’ as reported by Jeff Stein on Vox. Sanders is beating Clinton by a whopping 71-to-28 margin among voters under 30. And even in states where Sanders lost to Clinton by significant margins, like North Carolina, the Senator still managed to take the youth vote.”
The coming Democratic majority just been dumped off the boat. Good luck winning them back.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I take your comment to mean that in your view, the value of a person’s vote depends on the age of the voter, and it is the presumption of entitlement, not the vote of the majority, which will guide the direction of the Democratic party.
I’ve little doubt Mrs. Clinton will cast her net as far and as wide as she can, to convince as many Americans as can be convinced, that the best vote for our country is a vote for her and a vote for Democrats, from the top to the bottom of the ticket.
As far as those folks who want the winners of elections to curry their favor, get in line, it is a long one.
//Correct me if I’m wrong but I take your comment to mean that in your view, the value of a person’s vote depends on the age of the voter, and it is the presumption of entitlement, not the vote of the majority, which will guide the direction of the Democratic party.//
I’m saying that if you were expecting millennial voters to become loyal Democrats in the future, then you’d do well stop stop being an asshole and start building bridges. Hillary Clinton’s support comes from voters over 50, and while they are much more reliable about turning out to vote, they are also a lot more certain to die off first. Sanders may have lost the nomination fight, but the Democrats would have to be complete idiots to utterly ignore the perspectives of his voters. However, it seems they probably are complete idiots; see, for example, Matt Taibbi on this point.
Maha, I did read your post. I don’t think I was being disrespectful at all, and I believe that I made relevant points, especially pertaining to the fact that the primary campaign is over, that Hillary managed to win by a comfortable amount under rules that were well known before the campaign started, and that we really do need to come together in this campaign and achieve what is actually possible to achieve. What I’m reading here suggests that you are seeing a different reality than I am seeing. There is a generally sense among Bernie supporters that this whole election process was crooked, and that by declaring a result, that the Bernie side is being marginalized. I don’t see it. I’m crunching the numbers constantly, and I see Democrats voting very predictably, and a spirited Progressive challenge that will most probably keep Hillary from tilting toward the center. I’m not sure how anyone could be expecting a better result, given our current demographics. If this is a disrespectful comment, between people who probably agree on about 99% of fundamentals, then we truly are fractured. With all due respect, palms together.
wburke — it’s not just a matter of “the numbers.” First, the DNC really did have its thumb on the scale for Clinton, big time. Please read this post from last month for an explanation of how that happened.
It’s also the case that in just about every primary some odd things have happened that really do sound suspicious — exit polls and vote tallies that don’t match; people declaring they received the wrong ballots, or who somehow were dropped from the registered voter lists; obstacles to voting such as not enough polling places to accommodate voters, not enough ballots; broken voting machines; etc. Now, I don’t doubt most of this is from ongoing problems that are the fault of local election boards. But added together with the dismissive attitude Sanders’s supporters have felt dripped upon them by the Clinton campaign all along and it adds up to a sense of being railroaded; that the DNC just wanted to shove Sanders out of the way without listening to what his supporters were saying or respecting their opinions.
So Sanders supporters on the whole aren’t feeling that they lost a close race; they feel the race itself was a sham.
Thank you for the response. I realize that Sander’s supporters feel this way, and I am not a fan of Debbie Wasserman Schultz (I believe that her inept response was a big factor in the 2014 midterms debacle). For what it’s worth, I recall being screamed at (literally) by a Clinton supporter in 2008, who was sure that the primaries had been rigged for Obama, and also that the super delegates were a scam. It’s the nature of the beast. We need to change the system, we just have to remember to bring this up repeatedly for the next 2-3 years so that it doesn’t happen again.
If Sanders somehow ends up with the nomination, for whatever reason short of armed revolt, I will happily vote for him with no hesitation. My best to you, always.