Hardly democratic.

Enjoyed this paragraph particularly:


From Bernie’s perspective, dropping out of a race once you have no chance of winning is peculiar behavior that can only be explained by the work of a hidden hand. For most politicians, though, it is actually standard operating procedure. Only Sanders seems to think the normal thing to do once voters have made clear they don’t want to nominate you is to continue campaigning anyway.

but sow division and kneecap the nominee.

IMO, the reason Bernie hasn’t dropped out already is because part of his hind-brain hasn’t shifted with the times.

I’m 64, Bernie is 78. When I grew up, American politicians, or at least Democratic politicians, assumed that in the end, if they wanted office, most of their voters were going to be white.

True, supporting minorities and attending to their interests was important, but in the end most of the voters that would put you over the top are going to be white folks. For certain Blue states and many Blue districts, this is still true.

However, there have been tectonic shifts in other parts of the political landscape. Not only are certain districts primarily non-white, but major metro areas and certain western states are trending towards a situation where white voters (Or at least Democratic White voters) are only a plurality, and you have to politic as hard with the others (AA’s, Latinos, Asian-Americans, etc) as you do with the white part of the base of support.

I don’t think Bernie Sanders ever really got this. I’m not sure that Good Old Joe has fully gotten this either, but on the other hand I think he got it better than Bernie and may be learning it well enough to beat Donald Trump and his coalition of reactionaries and racists.

He knew the African American base there was strong and had yet to have a chance to vote.

He believes it contains the fundamental solution to all social problems, but getting there is a sisyphean task. Would any of us, as sensible (!) extremists, think it was a good idea to distract everyone from the revolution to fixing thousands of issues, like reparations for descendants of former slaves (that would offend many in a populist movement) a jailed teen who can't get an abortion (also problematic for some socially conservative populists), air pollution crossing state lines from a new factory, rent gouging in Burlington, need for elder daycare and tax deductions for caregiving, etc?

No. Eye on the prize, and Sanders is hard wired to that.

But there's another thing: Sanders doesn't much like and certainly doesn't respect individual people. Down to the teeming masses from the lonely heights where his far vision is possible is not where his passionate caring is focused. Much in the same way Trump cares about issues if and only as long as he sees himself in them, Sanders cares about individual issues if, and only as, he can use them to point up the desperate need of humanity for his big solutions.

He has a revolution to run, not a free legal clinic or wasting his time being 1 in 100 senate votes he considers corrupt anyway.

Biden, or "good old Joe," on the other hand, is famous for liking and caring about people. Trust by minorities that he's a friend in DC has been developed over decades.

You see the differences in body language. Sanders swats irritably at faces to reject their input and make them stop talking, and is effectively as brusque and dismissive when a group wants to know what he'll do as president about rabid RW judges persecuting their people. Biden hugs and leans in to talk one on one, listens, and discusses what he believes can and should be done to fix their problems.

Huge differences that go to the very core of who they are and how incredibly different they are.

they missed the red flags even in Iowa, NH, and Nevada.

The Majority of the American People want Joe Biden to be their nominee and President.

I'll toss what I see as obvious into the mix: Sanders is prone to extremism by personality. I believe he's been demonstrating typical traits for decades of his well documented past. Including his extreme righteousness and conviction, extreme dishonesty, frequently ruthless behaviors, and blanket contempt and convictions of corruption for all colleagues who aren't with him (all of them) and for anything else that gets in the way of his great endeavors, like popular votes.

Extremist thinking must explain away all facts that contradict what is known to be true, leading to what many others see as dishonesty and odd notions but what they see as great truths others don't comprehend. Sanders knows that Democrats are really just Republicans with conceits and hypocrisies of being different. This belief is integral to his own identity and importance, and nothing has ever convinced him otherwise. He's not crazy, of course, and is quick and competent at backpedaling to safe ground whenever an interviewer calls him on something. But, he never changes his mind.

Anyway, the bottom line, whatever's going on with him, is that Sanders won't accept that voters are choosing someone else with the same respect for and conviction in democracy as our liberal Democratic candidates. Whatever his real goal is, eventual revolutionary takeover or to just cling as long as possible to the national stage denied him for 7 decades, we know he'll once again do whatever he needs to to prevail over the decision of the Democratic majority.

And that meets my lay notions of extreme behavior.

The sort of person Orwell referred to as 'the gangster-gramaphones of continental politics'.


"They believed nothing they could not prove, and could prove everything they believed."

account of the Spanish civil war. Only $2.99 for Kindle, so thanks. I downloaded it, even though someone described atrocious scanning as "vending machine publishing." We are not lacking for time to stumble through a good book.



From lifelong but unusual socialist Orwell: So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot. Hot-spot on!

It lays bare a good deal that can still be observed in the present day, albeit here and now in a somewhat attenuated form.

imagine how much support he's got in the general public?

We here tend to skew a bit more left and radical than the general run....





"From Bernie’s perspective, dropping out of a race once you have no chance of winning is peculiar behavior that can only be explained by the work of a hidden hand. For most politicians, though, it is actually standard operating procedure. Only Sanders seems to think the normal thing to do once voters have made clear they don’t want to nominate you is to continue campaigning anyway."





"When things are not called by their right names, what is said cannot make sense. When what is said does not make sense, what is planned cannot succeed. When plans do not succeed, people become uneasy. When people are uneasy, punishments do not fit crimes. When punishments do not fit crimes, people cannot know where to put hand or foot."