Bernie Sanders Has Complained about Former Candidates Endorsing Biden

[MineralMan]

I understand his problem with that, but don't think he understands it very well. All of those candidates who dropped out of the race are solid, loyal Democrats. All are typical moderate Democrats, as well. Why would they not support Joe Biden, who agrees with their policies far more solidly than Bernie Sanders does?

Senator Sanders became a Democrat to run for President. He made that clear. He is, and always has been, an Independent, and is proud of that. But, he's running for the nomination of the Democratic Party. Aside from Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, all of the candidates this year have been actual Democrats, who claim membership in and pledge loyalty to the Party.

So, when it became clear that they did not have paths to the nomination, they dropped out of the race and endorsed the Democrat who was most like them and who did have a path to the nomination. Why would they do anything else? Buttigieg and Klobuchar dropped out just before the Super Tuesday primaries. Why? Because they took a look at their chances and made the only rational decision.

Bernie Sanders claims that they did that due to some sort of Party Establishment conspiracy. Nonsense! There's no conspiracy. There is a political party with loyal, long-time members who want to win the election in November. They're not going to endorse a "Democrat of Convenience." That would make no sense at all.

So, Senator Sanders can make any sort of claim he wants. He also claims that his youthful supporters didn't turn out in large enough numbers. Well, OK, he's right about that. They didn't. That's why we hold primary elections - to let voters decide who they want as the Democratic Party nominee. Sorry, Bernie, but it wasn't you in the states you lost.

Complaining and accusing will not help Sanders get more votes. It will only cause people not to vote for him, or not to vote at all in their primary. It looks like that is exactly what his happening. The Democratic Party will choose a nominee who is a solid, trustworthy Democrat in 2020. The Party is not interested in a candidate who isn't really those things.

Sorry, Bernie. 2020 is not your year. It was never going to be your year. How about graciously admitting that you have no path to the nomination and getting behind the person who will be nominated? That would be great. Ask your supporters to do the sensible thing and get behind Joe Biden from here on out. We'd appreciate that.

[empedocles]

1. Hmmm. Gracious Bernie

[MineralMan]

3. It Would Be Great to See Such a Thing.

Perhaps we will.

[empedocles]

4. BS could help his legacy at this point.

[frazzled]

2. The question to be asked is ...

Would he be complaining if they endorsed him? Of course not.

This is a serious question, not just a frivolous observation. Because it points to the rather large character flaw that I think partially explains previous voters abandoning Sanders and new voters failing to materialize for him. It's always about him, and his apparent belief in his own rectitude: to the extent that if someone votes for someone else, or someone endorses someone else, it is a plot, a conspiracy against "the truth." I won't go further than that, though I could.

[Kahuna7]

5. You can't blame bern for thinking he had it all sewn up after, IA, NH and NV...

Afterall. All the pundits said so. It has to be a shock to his system that he didn't really have momentum after NV. Afterall. All the pundits said so.

[Gothmog]

6. From day 1, Bernie built a campaign to appeal to 30%

Link to tweet

So if, from day one, they didn’t think they needed more than 30%, why would they actually run a campaign and build a culture designed to win more than his 30% ceiling? As that article notes, even way back in early 2019, Sanders was picking fights and creating enemies out of potential allies.

We saw that in Sanders’ refusal to broaden his message to bring in more people. When I said exactly that on Meet the Press, that “the problem with Bernie Sanders is that he has the exact same message he had four years ago” when he lost to Hillary Clinton 60-40, the response from the Sanders campaign was, well, this:

Link to tweet

If your message wasn’t a majority message four years ago, and you want to win, wouldn’t you tweak it? They didn’t. Proudly and explicitly did not tweak it. They had zero intention of growing new support by broadening and expanding their message. (Sanders famously refused to even inject more biography into his stump speech to humanize him more.)

Sanders and his campaign saw that their ceiling was 30%, and they built an entire strategy around winning with 30%. That means that instead of seeing the other 70% of voters as allies, they saw them as THE ENEMY. Even when there was ideological alignment.

[Mme. Defarge]

7. This is his last hurrah

and he will not go gently.