The course of events has spared them the choice, but any significant concessions to 'Bernie' at the convention, even any major role in the campaigning season, will cost some portion of such voters, and bring no benefit in exchange. Sanders cannot control his more fervent supporters. If he makes any serious attempt to swing them behind Mr. Biden, they will turn on him as a sell-out who caved in to the 'Democratic Establishment' and the big corporations. The energy of this election comes from middle of the road types grown disgusted by the cheap thug Trump, and the passion of rank and file Democrats who hate the cheap thug like poison. Sanders repels the former group, and enrages the latter group.


"The defeat and overthrow of a hated enemy is something to be for."





"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."

I don't think BS will be around much longer, he looks like he's barely holding on. They cleaned him up for an interview today but he's been a mess lately which may indicate mental confusion or other problems.

...all the way through the convention and that he will start talking about trying to convince pledged delegates and superdelegates to vote for him even though this would be yet another flip flop on his many stances on this:

Link to tweet

Both he and his supporters are more concerned with the identity they present, to themselves and to others, than anything else.

Sanders in his colossal egotism conflates support for certain policy goals with desire for him to be the leader of a movement to achieve those goals.

This is nonesense.

Even leaving aside the fact that most of those goals are general among Democratic voters and enjoy broad support among Democratic office-holders and Party officials, virtually no one, not even among Sanders' supporters, thinks he can actually achieve them should he come to hold the highest office in the land.

Expressions of support for Sanders are made as a marker of political orientation. Expressing support for Sanders says 'I'm not a moderate, I'm well to the left of most people', and as with most such things, serves to identify a 'cool' group separate from the general run of 'squares'. People doing this do not even particularly want to prevail, in the sense of being in the majority. It is axiomatic that a majority can never be 'cool', the feeling of being 'hip' and part of an 'in-crowd' depends on being outnumbered by the host of the unwashed and unenlightened. The point is not to achieve any political goal, to secure any discrete reform, it is simply to be sure one is perceived as a particular, and special, kind of person.

People who have an actual interest in achieving the goals widespread among Democrats, the goals of all left and progressive and liberal persons in general, recognize readily Sanders is far too flawed as a politician, and as a personality, to make any progress towards their goals. They know Sanders has not achieved any measurable advance towards them in his long Congressional career. They know Sanders' claim to hold patents and copyrights on these goals is nonesense, because they know their own desires pre-date Sanders, and exist in their hearts and minds without the slightest reference to him or influence by him.

In short, while Sanders imagines himself to be the indispensable man, an overwhelming majority of Democratic voters are clear in their minds that Sanders is quite dispensable, and are determined to see him disposed of, as soon as possible.





"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."

I'm glad this article in now just a moot academic description of now null-and-void what-ifs. I'm also glad that these Never Trumpers will find it easy to vote for Biden because we can surely use every vote we can get. But OTOH many of the very same Republicans listed in this old article as well as numerous others who I won't name helped to slowly turn the GOP into what it has become.

The fact that they are now horrified at and are running away from the Frankenstein monster that came outta the Pubbie castle does not totally absolve them from the fact that while they themselves did not perform the operation that brought him to life they sure as hell helped stock the laboratory with the equipment and supplies that were needed.

I have often heard many of these folks talk at length about how dangerous Trump is which is a step in the right direction but I have yet to hear even a single one of them take any responsibility at all for setting the stage and putting things into motion. It sure would be nice to hear some of them accepting some portion of the blame. And if not we'll just have to be satisfied with their vote if not their apology.

...when he decided to embrace the GOP's racist base by pushing self-deportation in 2012. After that, rather than try to expand their constituency, Republican politicians found that they could capture primaries by doubling down on xenophobia and racism.

On the left, I think the biggest fear with Bernie is that he inspires copycats who embrace the idea of attacking the Democratic Party. While it might be personally beneficial, it results in an extreme and fractured party made up of individuals who cannot think of movement that is bigger then their own self-interests. Bernie is like the Ted Cruz of the left in that he elevates himself at the expense of his colleagues, though Bernie takes it a step further by repeatedly renouncing then rejoining the Democratic party,

So, while we can call out Republicans for helping create the setting for a populist run by Trump, many progressives are drawn to Bernie's populist attacks on Democrats.

As a Bernie Sanders supporter in 2016 and 2020, I know that some, although I have no idea how many Bernie supporters, will pull a Suzanne Sarandon and stay home, vote for a fringe candidate who has zero chance of winning even one district, or vote for Trump. The longer Bernie pretends he has a "narrow path to the nomination", which is pure BS, the more his disenchanted hard core supporters are likely to do that. It is time for Bernie to put the country ahead of his anger and frustration of not winning the nomination again. Please, stop the bullshit and put all your energy toward defeating the greatest threat to the nation and world since Adolph Hitler.

The way I see it Trump supporters and Sanders supporters are much alike in one regard but are very different in one fundamental and crucially important way.

For 40 years now we've all been living under the thumb of repressive Reaganomics. As we all know Democratic social and economic policies benefit the vast majority of Americans while Republican policies favor only the few. Trump supporters are those who have bought into this Ronnie bullshit for over a full generation now, stupidly believing that if you give enough to the wealthy eventually a little of it will trickle down to them. Wrong as wrong can be...so now as a result of decades of this nonsense many of them are quite predictably desperate and in dire economic straits. Since they've been brainwashed year after year after year into loathing the left for many of them voting Democratic is anathema to the dogma that has been drilled into their brains. So when they abandoned the "normal" GOP rather than give the Dems a shot they instead turned to Trump in the futile hope that "he alone can fix it". They are finding out just how wrong they were and yet their hatred of liberals will prevent them from ever voting blue no matter how much they themselves get hurt. In fact, it often seems that even as they suffer badly at the hands of the man they made POTUS their only solace is that he attacks the liberals they so despise.

Bernie's folks are similar in their recognition that trickle-down has been an abject failure. But the huge difference between them and Trumptards is that since they are Democrats they care about what is happening to millions of their fellow Americans just as much if not more than their own personal situations. Many BS supporters are actually relatively well off but are still pissed off because so many others are hurting. Contrast this to Trumpists who mostly only care about themselves and their immediate families and perhaps a small circle of close friends. After that to hell with everybody else.

That is the fundamental difference between the two groups that we should try to keep in mind. If Sanders supporters come to their senses and start thinking as you do and stop attacking our best hope of getting rid of Trump then I'm pretty sure Biden folks will welcome them with open arms. Because while we disagree on how exactly we should get to where we wanna go there is very little disagreement on what we want as a group once we finally get there.

but I’ll be damned if I spend my precious time and energy sympathizing with or even listening to a gaggle of arch-conservative assholes who helped whelp and nurture the beast known as the current GOP.

Their spots haven’t changed, they just want Trump out of the way so they can get back to fucking us over in a more “compassionate” way.