Daily Beast: It's Over. Bernie's Push for a Trump-Like Takeover Is Done.

[TomCADem]

I think the big difference is that members of the liberal progressive movement, which BS refers to as the "establishment," have a sense of humility and generally place the needs of the American people above their own needs unlike Republicans who were happy to focus on beating each other up while Trump was happy to attack Republicans as an "outsider" and grab the Republican nomination with less than a majority of Republican delegates.

It is clear that Bernie was hoping for similar narcissism among his Democratic opponents. However, they are not narcissists. Folks like Elizabeth Warren saw the bigger picture of the need to beat Trump and to beat Republicans and she suspended her campaign as did other folks like Klobuchar and Buttigieg. The needs of the American people are bigger than ego or ambitions of one man.

Yet, like Trump who alleged in 2016 that the Republican primary was rigged if he didn't win, we have Bernie who is going to be just as vindictive in trying to burn down the Democratic party to elevate himself because he did not get his way. Now, I think Bernie is going to stay in through the very end and utilize every trick available to try to undermine efforts to beat Trump in an effort to punish Democrats for once again rejecting him.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/michigan-helped-democrats-stop-bernie-sanders-from-a-donald-trump-like-takeover

First, Democrats benefited from having witnessed Trump’s takeover. They realized that you can’t ignore a problem like Bernie.

Remember, Trump’s Republican adversaries assumed he would eventually flame out (while also hoping they might inherit his rabid supporters). Conversely, Democrats harbored no such illusions about Sander’s potential for collapse. Indeed, his big victory in Nevada seems to have provoked an overwhelming response. (Related, it’s possible that some of Sanders’ success in 2016 had to do with Hillary Clinton’s unique weaknesses as a candidate, not least with some of the Democratic base.)

Second, Democrats retain some semblance of adult leadership. Whereas rank-and-file Republicans had largely turned their backs on their standard bearers (George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney) in favor of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter, “establishment” Democrats like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama still command a lot of respect from their rank and file. We don’t know what Obama said to Mayor Pete during their pre-Super Tuesday phone call, but we do know that Buttigieg promptly got out of the race and endorsed Biden.

Of course, and this is reason three, the real credit belongs to the sane and normal Democratic voters (most of all African-Americans) who joined hands to become Biden’s firewall.

Because of the diversity in the Democratic Party, winning the nomination requires stitching together a diverse coalition—a project that tends to have a moderating effect.

[DinahMoeHum]

1. Hell, Bernie's NOT a Democrat, he's an "Independent".

Why waste any more time with him?






#newrostrong

[TomCADem]

2. NY Times: Why Trump Is Calling the G.O.P. Delegate System Rigged

It is clear that Bernie was hoping to replicate Trump's path of winning the nomination by attacking the party as an "outsider." There will always be a percentage of folks who will be drawn to an insurgent as a way of giving the system the bird. Look at your down ballot races when an unknown will still manage to get about 30 percent of the vote against a well established incumbent.

Trump captured the Republican nomination by catering to that 30 percent. Bernie was hoping to capture that same magic by trashing the Democratic party. Yet, unlike Republicans, Democratic leaders put the American people above their personal political ambitions. Of course, Bernie thinks that is not fair.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/04/24/us/elections/trump-gop-delegate-system-rigged.html

Donald J. Trump has been a vocal critic of the Republican Party’s nomination system, calling it “rigged” and accusing other candidates of stealing his delegates.

Mr. Trump has faced several setbacks during the delegate selection process, a complex system of rules for choosing national convention representatives that was put into place long before Mr. Trump became the frontrunner.

Not all delegates who have been selected to represent Mr. Trump are fans of his. The majority of delegates are being selected through a series of elections at local and state conventions. In some states, some of Ted Cruz’s supporters have been selected to represent Mr. Trump at the convention. Mr. Trump has called them “double agents.”

This may not matter at first because they will be bound to Mr. Trump during the first nominating ballot. But if no candidate reaches 1,237 delegates and there is a second ballot, these delegates will be free to vote as they please.

[William769]

3. Bernie bet the house & lost.

[SunSeeker]

4. Thank God for our virtuous Democratic candidates.

[BlueLucy]

5. That's a great article and spot on.

[Thekaspervote]

6. Great post! Thx

[LiberalBrooke]

7. His whole strategy was for everyone to stay in the race.

When other candidates put their own egos aside and rallied around Biden it left Bernie with nothing. He can’t believe that they did that. He cannot accept that it’s over. His grumpy old man routine calling others names did not work and he has no other way forward.

[NurseJackie]

8. "undermine efforts to beat Trump in an effort to punish Democrats for once again rejecting him"

Bernie is going to stay in through the very end and utilize every trick available to try to undermine efforts to beat Trump in an effort to punish Democrats for once again rejecting him.

That is correct. For anyone who has been paying attention for the past four/eight years to his own toxic rhetoric, smears and attacks on the Democratic party... there can be no doubt that he (and his followers) have a strong desire to "destroy the party to 'save' the party" ... that's the philosophy and intention. There is no doubt about it.

The same sentiments are echoed loudly from the chorus of high-profile supporters and official campaign surrogates. Just as before, many of them have already indicated that they will not support Biden (or that they'll "leave it blank'') or write-in some protest vote as some sort of punishment.

People like Cenk and Sarandon and West and Moore take great delight when the GOP comes out on top and actively work to hamper and dampen our efforts (presumably because the place a higher value on being able to say "told you so" rather than actually defeating the GOP.)

[The Magistrate]

9. Exactly, Ma'am

Though it runs a bit deeper than that, in my view.

The 'further left' traditionally take as their chief enemy parties and political figures of the center left, rather than parties and figures of the right. This is because a strong center-left party balks any possibility of revolution. It will have the allegiance of most working people, because it will bring them real benefits in their lives, and by doing so, will shut off influence of the 'further left' by making it clear measures well short of the desperate expedients the 'further left' prescribes for improving the lot of working people are not necessary.

Because center-left parties do uphold the present order of society, the 'further left' sees them as obstacles to its desires quite as much as any reactionary party on the right. Thus you have the 'not a dime's worth of difference' line that views our two major parties as interchangeable. Since the 'further left' cannot comprehend how working people could possibly form an honest attachment to rightist parties, their view comes to be that center-left parties are their chief obstacle to mass support from working people, and they imagine that if center-left parties are broken, they will inherit the mass support of working people, and thus become predominant. Then it will be the time to deal with the reactionary right, but until it is the 'further left' which has undisputed leadership of working people, the reactionary right cannot be dealt with properly.

Properly, here, indicating a policy guided by the slogan quite popular in the radical salad days of the seventies: 'What's the solution? Revolution!' Few nowadays on the 'further left' dream of an actual, barricades and snipers and car-bombs sort of armed revolution, but they do envision a complete overthrow of existing economic and social arrangements. One of the things they fail to understand about working people, and people on the lower rungs of the economic scale generally, is that people who have not much but do have a little are extremely reluctant to put the little they have at risk, and they know that in turmoil and tumult that little will be at risk. There are strains of the 'further left' which do have some understanding of this, and their view is that working people must be made to lose that little they have now, and lose it to the unmitigated predation of the reactionary right. Only then, when they have nothing to lose, will working people be ready for revolution under the banner of the 'further left'. This provides such people still another reason to oppose and demolish center left parties, as these do mitigate the suffering the right would impose on working people, and so are the chief force in balking revolution. These elements view an initial triumph of the reactionary right as an essential step in their own program to achieve revolution, and so are actually quite pleased by the reactionary right achieving political success at the expense of center-left parties.





"From Bernie’s perspective, dropping out of a race once you have no chance of winning is peculiar behavior that can only be explained by the work of a hidden hand. For most politicians, though, it is actually standard operating procedure. Only Sanders seems to think the normal thing to do once voters have made clear they don’t want to nominate you is to continue campaigning anyway."





"When things are not called by their right names, what is said cannot make sense. When what is said does not make sense, what is planned cannot succeed. When plans do not succeed, people become uneasy. When people are uneasy, punishments do not fit crimes. When punishments do not fit crimes, people cannot know where to put hand or foot."

[George II]

10. There's only one person left in the country who thinks he should stay in.

[Nitram]

11. Excellent analysis!