Charles P. Pierce: Why We Need to Be Grateful for Bernie Sanders

[babylonsister]

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a45595/bernie-sanders-no-path-keep-running/

Why We Need to Be Grateful for Bernie Sanders

There is no path forward, but that doesn't mean he should stop pushing the party forward.​

By Charles P. Pierce
Jun 7, 2016


Forgive me if I find the scooplet announced last night by the AP and the "election desk" at NBC News just a little skeevy. Two huge states—California and New Jersey—were scheduled to vote on Tuesday, and these two news operations announce that the race for the Democratic presidential nomination is over on Monday night. This was about Being First, and that's all it was about.

What's next? Calling the general election on the first Sunday of November because you've got a poll that tells you who the winner is?

snip//

I do hope Sanders campaigns all the way to the convention.

Regardless of how it ends—and that is completely up to the senator and the people supporting him—the Sanders campaign has been a very important exercise in the ongoing struggle to pry the Democratic party away from the survival strategies the party adopted in the wake of being thumped twice by Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton was a president for his time, and Bernie Sanders was a candidate for his. As was the case in the early 1970s, so too was the case after 2008. Then, it was bad war and Watergate. In the present time, it was a series of bad wars and the theft of most of the American economy. Trust in our institutions failed, not because of ferocious partisanship or political polarization, but because the institutions themselves failed to promote the general welfare.

The 2016 presidential election was the perfect time to make that point, over and over again, and that's what the Sanders campaign forced into the national dialogue. As of this moment, Hillary Rodham Clinton is on record as backing tougher Wall Street reform than she might have been otherwise. Expanding Social Security is now the default position of most Democratic politicians, as is repealing Citizens United and putting the teeth back into the Voting Rights Act. And, of course, there is that pesky open seat on the Supreme Court. The only thing on which HRC hasn't changed is her innate hawkishness which, I admit, would give anyone pause.

I do hope Sanders campaigns all the way to the convention. I hope he talks to every superdelegate he can, but I hope he doesn't pitch himself as a reason to reverse the results of the process. He should get every one of them in a room and pitch them his policies, so they can take them back to their state legislatures or their county commissions as something to fight for.

He lost, but his ideas didn't. That should make a great deal of difference.

[whatthehey]

1. Makes sense to me, with a couple caveats

The concern now should not be Sanders' name on the ballot but some of Sanders' ideas and populism incorporated into the platform, the campaign, the cabinet and the WH staff. I think there's too many burned bridges with the superdelegates and some of his more passionate (in the Trumpian sense) supporters to make them fertile ground though. His supporters among the party itself however need to get a goodly representation on all convention committees and some say in the GE campaign though. That would be a win-win as even HRC's greatest fans must admit she lacks somewhat in the new populist "outsider" outreach department.

[Bluenorthwest]

3. You know I've been a Democrat my entire life and Hillary's campaign has some burned bridges

issues to contend with, I happen to see her campaign as the worst of my lifetime, she lost my respect when she praised Reagan as an AIDS activist hero, an outlandish and offensive statement for which she has yet to make any sort of amends. Lies were hurled at Bernie, 'those photos are not Bernie Sanders' and all of that came from Clinton supporters and it was McCarthyist and it was all of it a pack of lies, lies and more lies.
That stuff does not make me proud of this Party. It makes me ashamed of it. Praising Reagan and lying about Democratic candidates should be reserved for Republicans.
So your rhetoric is hugely self serving, short sighted and reeks of unchecked privilege. In my opinion.

[whatthehey]

4. So you are saying his ideas shouldn't be integrated into the campaign and administration

because some of Clinton's supporters were mean and insensitive (true that, but his too at times). That she is so awful it's Pontius Pilate time? That's burning bridges and short sighted to a far greater extent.

[Larkspur]

2. Agree with Charlie.

I'll hold my nose and vote for HRC in the GE, but the nanosecond she wins the GE, I'll be scrutinizing and criticizing her when she veers right and tries to reward her Wall Street donors.

I did not trust Obama and I have never trusted HRC.