A friend sent me the following link containing Bernie’s remarks to the National Press Club: https:/berniesanders.com/remarks-national-press-club.
I’d like to share my interpretation of those remarks and the signals Bernie is sending both to his supporters and detractors.
I’m really encouraged by what the campaign is putting out. It’s consistent with what I’ve been feeling about the state of the race and my expectations moving forward. I know it has the surface feel of an appeal to fight on and, in a sense, that’s exactly what it is. But pay careful attention to the tone. Gone are harsh references to Clinton or the party. In their place are a frank assessment of where the state of the race stands and the campaign’s goals looking forward.
After last Tuesday’s contests my sense was that if Sanders didn’t drop out by middle of the week, I’d expect him to remain in through the convention. I think it’s now abundantly clear that, if there was ever consideration of dropping out, that’s done. He’s in through California. I also felt that we were at the first step of a long negotiation process, at the end of which Sanders would deliver his endorsement to Clinton. I believe Bernie’s remarks are part of that process.
Look closely at his appeal. He says the super delegates should consider supporting him. Nothing wrong with his saying that. It would be a step too far if he said the system was rigged or corrupt — but he doesn’t go there. It would be, if not a violation of norms, at least flagrantly hypocritical if Sanders — who earlier had been railing against a system in which supers might decide the outcome over the will of the people — now said they should. Once again he doesn’t go there. He’s acknowledging the difficult math, the need for his campaign to win 65% of the remaining delegates. He’s not turning those numbers around or inside out, as have some of his supporters, to arrive at wacky claims that Hillary needs a 65% share.
Not explicit but clearly implied is that he gets that his chances of obtaining said 65% is close to zero. Of course he’s not going to come right out and say that because to do so would be political malpractice. The typical voter (of any candidate; not just Bernie — I say this because some are quick to take offense) doesn’t understand nuance or long-term goals. That supporter, if faced with the full reality, would lose heart and stay home. That’s the last thing any politician wants. The leader of a movement needs to rally the people to the cause, so he says “We’re gonna fight on and we’re gonna win!!!” But what Sanders is trying to do now is get as much support as possible in advance of the convention in order to have as large an impact as possible on the rules, platform and other decisions made at that time (potentially, including the selection of the VP) and beyond.
Take note of the following passage: “But where Secretary Clinton and I agree and where every delegate to the Democratic convention agrees is that it would be a disaster for Donald Trump or some other right-wing Republican to become president of the United States.” What Sanders is clearly signaling here is he’s on the team. No third party run will be entertained. No efforts to subvert the outcome of the election for Clinton or the Democrats will be considered.
What he’s saying has complete integrity. His supporters should stand by him and continue to donate funds, make phone calls and knock on doors. He has the potential to push the party and the Clinton campaign in positive directions. I would actually consider joining at this point because I think he can have a really positive impact. I’d like to see his supporters organized into a movement that continues beyond this single election and, hopefully, even after the good Senator is retired from politics.
Bottom line: Sanders is showing himself to be a man of integrity, playing by the rules of the game. He may speak of going all the way to the convention but understand this does not signal an effort to foist a contested convention on an unwilling party. He’s just saying he’ll continue to fight hard the rest of the way and then, barring something unexpected that could actually make him the nominee (e.g. Clinton suffering a massive medical issue rendering her unfit to serve), continue to maximize his impact on the party and the winning candidate.
Contrast this with the Republican party, where a significant faction with big money behind it is actively trying to subvert the candidate with an enormous lead in both votes and delegates and also prevent the party from coalescing around him (as it ordinarily would). Notice too that many voices on their side are calling for acts of disloyalty should Trump win. Just today, George Will explicitly stated that Republicans should oppose a Trump presidency if he emerges from the convention. He might as well have just come out with an endorsement of Hillary Clinton.
I get that some Sanders supporters are taking statements such as George Will’s — the kind that show the party in the beginning phase of a civil war — as conventional support for Clinton, as if they actually think of her as a Republican. But that’s a misread of the evidence. Republicans would overwhelmingly oppose her against any other major candidate on their side. They would even support Cruz, who is if anything even more extreme than Trump and a man who has acted in selfish ways that have alienated all his natural allies (e.g. other Republican senators). They would have to collectively swallow hard to support Cruz. But they, after earlier feigning the possibility of opposing him in favor of Trump, have turned around 180 degrees and accepted the prospect of a Cruz debacle because they see his ascendance as something the party would survive (much as it survived Goldwater). But Trump’s emergence is different. If he can’t be marginalized, it shows that rank and file Republican are actually not all that conservative and are all of the things Democrats have been alleging for years — racist, nativist, ignorant, crude and scary.
A proper read of this situation is that the Democratic party is fine and will leave Philadelphia unified and ready to take on the Republicans. Hillary will have Bernie’s explicit endorsement. On the other side, the GOP is in disarray. There’s a faction that will never support Trump and yet most of its leaders abhor Cruz. There’s an insider faction that would love to steal the nomination from both but also recognizes that such efforts would irrevocably tear the party to pieces.
When the Republicans get to Cleveland, be sure to be stocked up on popcorn because, whatever the outcome, it will be fascinating to watch and the final result will be far less than optimal. Going forward you’ll see their leaders try to put lipstick on whatever pig is born of that unholy conflagration, but you and I will know better. (My apologies to pigs everywhere for using this particular cliche, as you are wonderfully smart and sweet creatures, worthy of much better treatment than we humans provide and, in spirit, very much the antithesis of Trump, Cruz and the monstrous edifice that has become the Republican party.)
If he ever endorses Hillary, then I will know that his campaign was a sham, just a bid for power with the usual insincere appeals to the masses.
That would me he was just a stalking horse, out to clear the opposition to neoliberal thought. I will regret every dollar I ever sent him and resolve never again to donate to a politician.
Voice the world isn’t black and white. No staunch supporter of any candidate ever likes to seem him/her endorse the primary winner, but that endorsement doesn’t mean that his/her campaign was a sham. While HRC and her team have been going around saying that there’s not much difference between her and Sanders, Bernie has continued to say au contraire. yuuge differences. It’s not Bernie’s fault that more eligible primary voters preferred HRC. Difficult to imagine that anybody could have done better than he did.
While we’re not there yet, Bernie is practical and pragmatic enough to recognize that he may have to make a difficult decision. Not endorsing HRC if she is nominated would be the quickest way for him to make himself and his supporters irrelevant. Unlike you, Bernie sees nothing in Trump that isn’t odious, and also unlike you, he recognizes that HRC has some positive attributes. Unlike Trump and HRC, Bernie is both a good winner and loser.
Let’s see how all this develops before jumping to any interpretations or conclusions.
I’d agree in the cases of Carter-Kennedy, Gore-Bradley, Dean-Kerry and Obama-Clinton. These were candidates with policy differences. But Sanders has been running on ethical differences, corporate cash and it’s corrupting influence. For him to say “Ha! Ha! It was just campaign rhetoric, suckers!” would be a betrayal. I expect him to say something on the lines of “I bow to the voter’s choice and Clinton is better than any Republican.” But a ringing endorsement. “Yes! More corporate cash! yes, more bank bailouts! yes, more job outsourcing!” That would be betrayal.
BTW, I did hold my nose a vote for Kerry, but Dean was not running on changing the political process, just policy and policy that every democrat (sans Lieberman) at least gave lip service to.
Let’s try not to mix apples and oranges. Only the first one shares similarities with this primary season. No daylight between Clinton and Obama, and 2004 was odd in that Dean was/is less liberal than Kerry except both flip side wrt the IWR. Gore-Bradley is similarly confounding because both were early DLC guys. Whether either of them had authentically move away from the position or sounding more liberalish was nothing other than campaign rhetoric can’t be known.
The divide between Carter-Kennedy was every bit as wide at that between HRC-Sanders. Recall, that the campaign financing legislation that had been enacted over the prior decade took that issue off the table in 1980. (Buckley v. Valeo was decided in ’76 but didn’t impact a presidential race until much later). There were several difficulties for voters that year.
Carter may have been personally decent, but corruption and incompetence did exist in his administration; whereas, Kennedy had major personal issues but those around him were decent enough. Carter was the precursor to the DLC and Kennedy was a New Dealer. After four years in DC, Carter was still an outside and Kennedy was an insider. Should Carter have been challenged for the nomination? Probably. Should Kennedy have done it? No, for several reasons: too close in time to Chappaquiddick, his marriage was falling apart (seeing Joan Kennedy dragged around on the campaign trail was painfully sad to watch), and Teddy had a serious drinking problem.
Kennedy was fighting for the soul of Dem Party but it was difficult for voters to see that clearly because at the time, he was such a personally flawed candidate. Kennedy was also surrounded by Kennedy cultists and that further clouded the picture. Kennedy’s team probably figured that Carter was going to lose and that would lock in a GOP Presidency for eight years, and the Kennedy’s weren’t known for being patient and biding their time.
The battle between Carter and Kennedy ending up looking as if it were personal which is unfortunate because it was much bigger than either of them. Don’t know how much each of them came to appreciate that and when, but oddly enough, I think Carter’s ego was bigger than Teddy’s and that he was more rigid.
That’s an excellent analysis of the Carter-Kennedy race!
And yes, I would have preferred a candidate with Kennedy’s platform but without his personal baggage. It’s possible that such a hypothetical candidate could have won the nomination and the Presidency. But maybe the winds of history were against it. Has a sitting President ever been dumped by his party AND the party went on to retain the White House? HST and LBJ were effectively dumped, although they didn’t contest it, but republicans won. Still, those examples had the baggage of an unpopular war and (R) promises to fix it. “I will go to Korea” “I have a plan to end the war which must remain secret”
I just can never vote for a candidate that openly collects her thirty pieces of silver (“speaking fees”). Taking large campaign donations is one thing, which is bad enough, but taking personal cash is just out and out open bribery.
I confess to having certain doubts about Sanders, i.e. can he press the button if the need arises? A President must on occasion be an S.O.B. and a heartless bastard. I don’t know if Bernie has it in him. Hillary certainly does, but her many many lapses of judgement create a fear that she would do it in a fit of rage or accidentally or let a minor situation spin out of control.
If a decent sense of emotional self-control is one of your concerns, Trump is not the candidate for you.
A common complaint about Hillary is that she is too self-controlled.
I caught a clip on the news last night of Sanders at an Indiana rally that day. He trotted out all the old familiar songs: Clinton’s a bought tool of Goldman Sachs, the primary process is corrupt, the only legitimate primaries are the ones where he won big and all the rest were stolen by the system. His audience lapped it up.
So, no, this pig ain’t gonna fly. His audience doesn’t want any new works, they only want the golden oldies, and he’s singing their song.