Bernie Sanders Needs to Go Away

Sanders worked against Virginia's winning gubernatorial candidate. 

Is it just me or are others tired of Bernie Sanders, who pretended to be a Democrat to run for the 2016 nomination, but left the party once he returned to the Senate and who has sought to sabotage solid Democrat candidates such as Virginia Governor Ralph Northam by pushing a rival who in my view could not have won the November, 2017, general election?   Sanders - and Elizabeth Warren who also sought to meddle in Virginia's Democratic Party primary - doesn't get it that to effect change, one has to win general elections and that to do that, one needs to win the middle.  I support many of the liberal wing of the Democrat Party, but if one cannot win, then the field is ceded to Republicans who will pursue policies that are the antithesis of what liberals claim to support.  An Ed Gillespie win in Virginia would have been an unmitigated disaster, yet Sanders and Warren tried to set the stage for such a loss.  A piece in Vanity Fair looks at the continued sniping by far left liberals who seemingly put ideological purity over actually winning elections. Here are excerpts:

[T]he Democrats are gaining momentum toward retaking Congress in the 2018 midterms. What’s interesting is that the two trends don’t seem to be intersecting: so far, the blue wave isn’t a Bernie wave.

In rural western Pennsylvania, Conor Lamb won a narrow special-election upset in a heavily Republican district by running a largely centrist campaign: in favor of fracking, not in favor of single-payer health care. In suburban Chicago, incumbent Dan Lipinski, a throwback Blue Dog Democrat—anti-abortion, anti-Obamacare—won a primary in a reliably liberal district by defeating a Sanders-endorsed progressive challenger, Marie Newman. And while dozens of Sanders-inspired candidates are on Democratic primary ballots this fall, their chances generally don’t appear a whole lot better. The reasons are as varied as the 435 congressional districts, but one consistent hurdle appears to be unchanged from the 2016 Sanders-Clinton presidential battle, despite provoking so much controversy: state parties, and the Democratic National Committee, are weighted in favor of entrenched candidates and traditional big-money interest groups.

[S]ays Corbin Trent, a former Sanders operative who is now communications director for Justice Democrats, one of the most prominent groups launched in the wake of the 2016 election to try to elect progressive Democrats. “When we have a Democratic Party that won’t stand behind candidates with a huge capacity to generate grassroots donations and activity, they’re not interested in letting the democratic process shake out.”

At the moment, however, fear and hatred of Trump seem to be motivation enough to elect Democrats in many midterm races. And Bernie Dems still haven’t broken through in many contests where they need to appeal across more diverse geographic and demographic terrain; Sanders himself is now trying to fix his glaring weakness with black voters. “The Bernie crowd went all in against Ralph Northam last year in the Virginia governor Democratic primary—and lost,” says Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat. “And Northam, the more centrist candidate, went on to victory in the general in November, so it’s obvious the Democrats chose the most appropriate candidate. The progressive agenda should absolutely be respected as important to the future of our nation. But it remains to be seen how potent a force the left will be in primarying Democrats. And I think we’re close to being able to say that the swing to the left has been overhyped and is not electorally effective.”