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.”

Democrats Need to Run the [Northam and] Lamb Strategy Over and Over

With progressives energized and basically anyone other than white supremacists, Christian extremists and greed driven vulture capitalists coming to the conclusion that Trump/Pence and the larger Republican Party are a cancer on the nation, Democrats have a golden opportunity to win in a wave come November, 2018.  To do so, they need to run good candidates, run organized and interlinked ground games to get voters to the polls and avoid going to far to the left.  Sadly, many liberal activists do not grasp the reality that winning and defeating Republicans, not electing the most ideologically pure candidate, is the goal.  Ralph Northam in Virginia and Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania show the strategy that Democrats need to replicate over and over again.   Whether or not far left liberals will get their heads out of the asses is the big question.  A piece in New York Magazine lays out what Democrats ought to do.  Here are article highlights:

Democrats need to win two dozen Republican seats to gain a House majority. Approximately 118 districts have more Democratic-leaning electorates than the 18th district of Pennsylvania, which voted for Donald Trump by nearly 20 points, and which Democrat Conor Lamb turned into a competitive race. Several days before the election, Republicans were already spreading the word that the discouraging outcome would be the idiosyncratic result of the unusual candidates on the ballot.

Republican candidate Rick Saccone was not an especially weak nominee, having won several races in competitive environments before. . . . . It is also true that Conor Lamb was an especially strong candidate: Young and lacking a voting record to be picked apart, with a background as a Marine, Lamb cut a favorable profile in comparison with the lifelong politician he faced.

And there are a lot of Conor Lambs out there. Very early in the election cycle, Democrats recruited candidates with nontraditional backgrounds, especially in the military, who would appeal to voters in red districts.  “A rough profile of [Democrats’] ideal candidate has started to emerge: veterans, preferably with small business experience too,” reported Politico last April. . . . . The next month, Axios reported that Republicans were already worried about “Democrats recruiting unusually high-quality House candidates for the 2018 midterms.”

Recruiting veterans is an effective strategy for overcoming the Republican tilt of the House map, which requires Democrats to contest deeply conservative territory in an attempt to gain a majority. Republicans have used ethnonationalist themes for decades to sell voters on an unpopular economic agenda: Election messaging is all American flags, crime, and being tough on terrorism, while the policy agenda is about lax business regulation and regressive tax-cutting. 

This disconnect between politics and policy is Republicans’ weakest point. Their strategy can be hacked. . . . . A candidate with a compelling biography — especially those with a military background — can disarm these attacks pretty easily. It is not a panacea, but a major advantage nonetheless.

[O]ne of the ways in which Democrats benefitted from the massive counter-mobilization that formed immediately after the 2016 election is an unusually high number of people willing to rearrange their lives around the goal of saving their country from an unfit president. In many cases, the possibly corny and self-serving narrative of the “military veteran called to serve their country once again” actually applies. Democrats have more or less unanimously regarded a Trump presidency and a pliant Republican Congress as a national emergency.

The unusual success Lamb showed in running a competitive race in Trump country is not a total fluke, but rather proof of concept for a strategy that could replicate itself across the country.

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren both sought to block Northam's nomination - a fact that means I will NEVER vote for either of them if the opportunity arises - in favor of a false leftist.  Had they succeeded, a Republican would now likely be in the Governor's mansion in Richmond. Had similar urges prevailed in Pennsylvania's 18th District, a Republican would have won there as well.  Democrats need to embrace this reality and back candidates accordingly.

The Mindless Whining and Tantrums of Sanders Supporters.

I can't cite a lousy night's sleep for my crankiness today when it comes to Bernie Sanders supporters who continue to whine and threaten to sit home if Sanders isn't the 2016 Democrat nominee.  As if staying home on their grumpy asses on election day and by default potentially putting a Republican in the White does anything other than spell a death knell for the policies Sanders supporters claim to support and value.  Is seeing the Supreme Court shifted to the right for a generation, more failed trickle down economics, increased military spending at the expense of social programs, and  even more income inequality really worth proving ones "purity" to the Sanders mantra?  I'm sorry, but I see such behavior as both irrational and an example of cutting off one's nose to spite their face.  A pro-Sanders reader sent me a link to a piece that looks at the idiocy of this mindset as laid out by a Sanders supporter who cannot see that refusing to "learn to love Hillary Clinton" threatens everything the author claims to support.  Here are excerpts:

The moment has arrived. That moment when the establishment’s sniggering apologists tell those damn idealists that it is time to get with the program and settle for the latest shabby party product or risk going home empty-handed. Hear the eternal refrain: Don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good.

There has been a slew of these strident come to Jesus jeremiads from the usual suspects after former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s win in the New York primary. But the latest sermon on submitting to destiny from former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau both perfectly encapsulates the mindless DNC Hillary Clinton Campaign talking points, while attempting to provide a how do you do fellow kids credibility because he was part of the 2008 primary fight against Hillary Clinton.

The substance of the screed is as tired as it is tiresome. Favreau makes a number of claims that fail basic scrutiny when he counsels supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders, or “Berniacs” as they are called by The Daily Beast. For instance:

“Maybe you don’t believe that she’s different from the caricature we’ve all helped perpetuate. But she is running a campaign with a policy platform that’s more progressive than her husband’s administration, her 2008 campaign, and—in a few cases—Barack Obama’s administration.”

The problem, of course, is not that Hillary Clinton is not taking progressive positions. The problem is that, given her record, the best analysis of her policy platform is that she is lying about those positions.

Senator Sanders not only offers a progressive platform that he has a well-demonstrated commitment to, but his theory of change is vastly different than former Secretary Clinton’s. Sanders sees change as coming from social movements, such as the Civil Rights Movement he participated in, which uses people power to pressure government officials into making concessions. Clinton claims that she will use her extensive experience in politics and government to personally work the gears of the state apparatus from the inside on behalf of the causes and people she states she cares for.

In summation, for those who genuinely support a progressive platform on domestic and foreign policy, Hillary Clinton is not qualified. Her record shows her approach to domestic policies is to run to the right while throwing up progressive rhetoric to cover her escape, and her foreign policy would be a return to Bush-era belligerence and incompetence.

In other words, no Jon, we won’t learn to love her, though maybe some of us will hold our noses and vote for her in November if she is the nominee to prevent an even worse candidate from taking over the empire. Then again, maybe not.

To quote the author, do Sanders supporters really prefer allowing someone even worse to occupy the White House, nominate Supreme Court appointments and push policies diametrically opposed to what Bernie Sanders supposedly stands for?  Oh, and as for the parallel with the civil rights movement, does the author not recognize that 50 years later, the civil rights battle still is not over.  Wake up to reality!!