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.”

The Real Bernie Sanders Is Beginning to Show and It's Looking Ugly

While I have friends who continue to rally to Bernie Sanders, I suspect more and more progressives and Democrats are beginning to see the many for what he is: a self-aggrandizing loose canon who puts his own ego and vanity above all else.  It seems that if Sanders cannot win the Democrat nomination, he's only too happy to go on a campaign of destruction against the Democrat Party and in the process potentially hand the presidency to Donald Trump - a man who is the antithesis of what Sanders claims to support.  Frankly, I have lost all patience and all respect for the man who has become a dangerous gadfly.  As a piece in Politico notes, others are similarly losing patience and want Sanders to end his campaign.  Here are article highlights:

Is the left turning on its darling, Bernie Sanders? On Friday, Netroots titan Markos Moulitsas, namesake of the liberal Daily Kos, dropped a rhetorical bomb on the Bern, blaming the candidate for doing too little to denounce death threats received by the Nevada Democratic Party after Sanders’ state convention delegates complained they had received unfair treatment. “The problem isn't Bernie Sanders' supporters,” Moulitsas wrote. “It's Bernie Sanders himself … [He] refuses to forcefully and unambiguously reject that violence, instead rationalizing and explaining it away with a mix of grievances and outright conspiracy theory.”

What we are seeing, however, is that it’s no longer taboo in liberal circles to attack Sanders as he drags out the nomination process at a time when many are itching to turn their fire on Donald Trump. And if his reputation in the party is being damaged outside his base, that will make it harder for him to extract concessions from Clinton regarding the platform and party nomination rules at the convention.

Through much of the campaign, Sanders wore a progressive halo, making it tricky for Clinton to play classic hardball politics (not that she didn’t try). Even if Democratic voters didn’t believe he was the practical choice, his platform still spoke to the ideological aspirations of many in the party. His supporters heard, “I like Bernie, but…” so much that they turned it into a website providing information designed to assuage unsure voters.

Much of the warm, fuzzy sentiment was based on a perception of Sanders as a non-politician, a man so wedded to his ideals that he would not besmirch them by engaging in petty politics.

But in the months that followed, the Sanders campaign adopted an increasingly harder edge, gradually depriving him of angelic protections. Now, with only six states remaining on the primary calendar, the delegate math harder and harder to ignore, and the Clinton’s lead over Donald Trump short of insurmountable, partisan impulses on the left are kicking in, and patience for squabbles is wearing thin.
 This week another prominent figure in the online progressive community, Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall, also blamed Sanders directly for the increased animosity, saying: “The 'burn it down' attitude, the upping the ante … seems to be coming from Sanders himself. Right from the top.” Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum said more in sorrow than in anger this week, “It's sort of painful to see a good person like Bernie turned into such a sullen and resentful man.”

Sanders likely grasps the potential danger of alienating too many progressives. Despite the charges that the toxicity comes “from the top” of the Sanders campaign, Bloomberg News reports that Sanders has personally reached out to fellow senators and given “behind-the-scenes assurances” that he “understands the need for party unity.” . . . . He may believe this is a safe line to walk, remembering the intense yet ephemeral acrimony of the 2008 campaign.

The ideological goals of Sanders and his voters both overlap and compete with the goal of Democratic harmony, complicating his strategic decision-making. But he could try to transcend the binary choice between confrontation and reconciliation. If there’s one thing Sanders can’t stand, is a media distracted by food fights and ignoring matters of substance. . . . Right now, the media is getting a lot of the sport it likes, and Sanders is getting a lot less of what he likes. He might consider delivering a speech on how giving reporters fodder for stories about discord only serves to take the spotlight away from income inequality and corporate influence over democracy – which would be a way to urge better behavior from his supporters without sounding like he’s scolding them.

Because if Bernie wants to own the moral high ground at the convention, he’ll need to return the focus of his campaign to the issues in its final days.