A legitimate thank you for moving the Democratic Party to the left.

One of the stranger political locutions of the last few weeks- outside of every top Republican being shocked that a white nationalist candidate would appeal to naked racism- has been Bernie Sanders saying that he believes “the Democratic Convention will be a contested convention.”  There was a strange passivity there, implying a lack of control. It wasn’t that he was choosing it to be contested in the face of math, reason, and democratic imperative- it just, sort of, was. Life, you know? What are ya gonna do?

That willingness to fight on despite having lost, and despite needing to do a 180 on superdelegates, was laid bare in a Politico article late last night, which demonstrated that it was Bernie Sanders in control of every decision the campaign made, including spending. This was a different narrative, pushed by erstwhile supporters and foes alike, that most of the annoying attacks and counterproductive strategies went through Jeff Weaver, whose pugnacity made him something of a centrist and center-left punching bag, Bernie’s own Mark Penn, except competent and resourceful and more likeable and able to do good for his candidate and understanding how campaigns work and not being unable to find his ass in a phone booth with two hands and a map. So not at all like Mark Penn, except in terms of being a target of loathing.

And, assuming that this article is true, and not just the ass-coverings of sunken ship survivors who realized that they might be playing with fire, and their careers, this doesn’t speak as ill of Bernie as I think people are making it out to. Yes, there is the usual bitterness that comes with a hard-fought campaign, where you focus every day on one person who is keeping you from getting what you want. That’s human nature, and that’s politics.

Some of the bitterness is disquieting for Dems, but also normal human nature, such as his anger at Sherrod Brown.

Aides say Sanders thinks that progressives who picked Clinton are cynical, power-chasing chickens — like Sen. Sherrod Brown, one of his most consistent allies in the Senate before endorsing Clinton and campaigning hard for her ahead of the Ohio primary. Sanders is so bitter about it that he’d be ready to nix Brown as an acceptable VP choice, if Clinton ever asked his advice on who’d be a good progressive champion.

In some ways, that doesn’t seem to bode well- it makes Bernie look like the self-appointed progressive messiah, who positions himself as the only acceptable candidate for the Left, and anyone who doesn’t believe so is an apostate. But really, that’s just politics. Everyone gets pissed when they don’t get an endorsement, especially one they are expecting. This should be fine. But…

But the good and the ill of the Sanders campaign was laid bare in what was, for Politico (as always, obsessed with process) a transition paragraph.

This isn’t about what’s good for the Democratic Party in his mind, but about what he thinks is good for advancing the agenda that he’s been pushing since before he got elected mayor of Burlington.

This campaign started out as an agenda one. It was a campaign that Bernie thought he could win, of course. No one runs for President without thinking that, with a few breaks, they might win (and don’t forget how successful a politician Bernie Sanders has been). He’s pushed a radically (for our post-Reagan times) progressive agenda, and has been able to move the party to the left.

That’s where the bad part comes in. In running a revolution, and not a campaign, Bernie and his most ardent supporters have convinced themselves that the Democratic Party is the obstacles to progressive change, and not, for all its ills the major vehicle for it. Politics work in this country because activists push creaking parties in one direction of the other, and sustain that movement. Sometimes you catch lightning in a bottle, like with President Obama, and sometimes you push party elders toward your positions, like with Hillary Clinton. But this is a good thing. It isn’t a loss.

It’s only a loss, weirdly, if they refuse to treat it like one, and continue to fight at and until the convention. (He’s staying in, for now, but that’s fine.Somehow I don’t think Washington DC is going to give him a boost.)This isn’t contested in any real sense, unless Bernie wants to make it such. But I think that’s what Obama will be telling him when they talk on Thursday, as is being reported. I imagine that it there will be a few major talking points.

1. Don’t tell your supporters this was stolen. For one thing, that’s super insulting to the millions of people who voted for Hillary. They don’t represent the 1%. If your supporters think this was stolen, it’ll be harder to sustain the momentum you built. Have them keep driving the party. That’s how this works.
2. Oh yeah- don’t tell them that it was stolen because she’s running against Donald Trump. As my friend BMK said, the conversation should involve the phrase “Donald Trump appearing in the first paragraph of your obituary”.
3. You did a great and good and amazing thing. This is one of the most positive and remarkable campaigns in American history, and you will continue to play a huge role in advancing your agenda. But there is really only one viable high-level political path for that, and that’s the Democratic Party. We can work together on this. Make up with Sherrod Brown. Get over it. Get back to work.

The Politico article showed what a canny and involved politician Bernie Sanders is, to his great credit. And the race showed that a single-minded focus on the evils of inequality can have a remarkable impact. I don’t think Bernie is going to burn it to the ground. The question is whether or not he continues to push for positive progressive growth, or retreats into bitterness.

1. When Fox News wants to help you out, you are doing something
   1. Right?
   2. Wrong?

It’s probably not a stretch to say that the gracious offer of Fox to host a debate before the Democratic primary is not a 100% good-faith gesture.  Turning it down is a very normal part of politics for Hillary Clinton. She has an insurmountable lead, an attempt to flip the superdelgates is antidemocratic. It moves past populism to personality-politics, which is where the facile and ridiculous “Trump and Bernie” comparisons start to make a sliver of sense, very uncomfortably.

What does Bernie expect out of a Fox News debate? A reasoned argument about the policy differences between them? Or an opportunity to savage Hillary Clinton in front of a large audience, and to play into the Fox/GOP narrative of Hillary being untrustworthy and unlikable, dredging up past “scandals”, and thus, doing Trump’s homework for him? If he expects the former, he’s being naive. My fear, and deep regret, is that he isn’t being naive at all.

(Note: I really wanted to do some kind of “Sanders” and “Kentucky Fried Recount” joke, but it’s one of those things that sounds like a joke, but it really isn’t, under any scrutiny. It’s just a collection of words that trigger the referential part of your brain. Scientifically, it’s the Family Guy Correlation.)

As The Guardian reports this morning, the Sanders campaign is “mulling” over calling for a recount in the Kentucky primary, an extremely close race. This is, simply put, narcissistic madness.

There is really no good outcome from this. Even if Sanders doesn’t demand a recount, even mulling one over makes the whole thing seem suspect, like the Hillary team and the crooked Democratic Party are trying to steal things, trying to put one over on Sanders and his supporters, the only ones who have a true passion. Everyone else is a hunchbacked pack of Ralph Steadman caricatures, lurching grotesquely hand-in-hand with blood-soaked billionaires, trying to erase the specter of real democracy.

In short, it’s getting ugly. The narrative that Sanders is now pushing- we’re the real voice of the people, despite being outvoted by the millions- has some validity, but not much. His wins are narrow, not just in delegates, but in total votes. And that’s fine: he’s doing amazingly well, and shouldn’t even still be here. But he has triggered something real and genuine, and something important. It’s why I voted for him. He’s highlighting the ur-issues of American politics, the role of money in distorting any electoral equity.

But this narrative comes with inherent dangers, mostly that anyone standing in the way is a counter-revolutionary. Anything that is messy about voting (and much of the system is bizarre and counterproductive) isn’t seen as a glitch to be fixed, but an enemy to be overcome. An enemy put in place to stop the Voice of the People, the popular tribune, the one man that can save us all. And the number one enemy is Hillary Clinton.

That’s why calling for a recount is dangerous. It doesn’t make sense electorally, as virtually no delegates will shift. But it highlights the dangerous game Sanders is playing. He’s trying to negate the votes of millions of people (largely older and minority) that genuinely want Hillary Clinton to be the nominee, by claiming that the real voters want him to be President. He wants to demonstrate that something is being stolen from him, and his most eager supporters are all too willing to believe it.

That isn’t right, and for such a populist campaign, it is weirdly tyrannical. The nomination is mine, because more people cry at my rallies. Their voters don’t count. Only mine do. Sanders should by all means continue his campaign, and keep pushing for genuine progressive policies. But it is possible to do so in a twilight, accepting that he isn’t being robbed, but that the voters of the Democratic Party chose Hillary Clinton. That’s what happens in elections.

As ugly as 2008 was, Hillary moved toward unity. I believe that Bernie can do so, and that he has to in the face of Trump. But this coalescing idea that if Hillary wins it is because she is a thieving harpy will make it harder to win. Remember, this isn’t about the lesser of two evils. It’s about the greater evil being a genuinely epochal disaster, a country-defining tragedy. Fighting the good fight doesn’t mean imagining yourself Spartacus, and demanding a revolt.

How can you not love this guy? Well, there’s a way…

“I know that the Clinton campaign thinks this campaign is over. They’re wrong,” Sanders said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from New Albany, Indiana. “Maybe it’s over for the insiders and the party establishment but the voters today in Indiana had a different idea.”

Here’s the problem with leading a revolution. Anything that is opposed to it is, by definition, counter-revolutionary. And it isn’t just that: opposition becomes the enemy of progress, it becomes and ill and evil thing. It falls short of perfection, and a revolution doesn’t want to live in a fallen world.

The Bernie Sanders campaign has been incredible. He has changed the tenor of the campaign, and pulled a cautious Hillary Clinton to the left. This is good for policy, of course, but it is also good politics. Forcing her to hedge on trade will be good in November, acolytes of “tacking to the center” be damned. Forcing her to the left on economic inequality will be an enormous boost in the generals, even if it makes pundits itch. Bernie has helped the country, and he has, so far, helped to make sure a Democrat beats Donald Trump.

But it won’t be him. All he can do now is make it harder for Hillary Clinton. And given what he’s done, that’s a damn shame. The legacy of this incredible campaign shouldn’t be the election of Donald Trump. The problem is that Bernie, and a lot of his supporters, seem to feel that math is damnably counter-revolutionary, and so it too must be fought against.

Read more on how Bernie can still help the fight for progress

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Remember 2008? As it became clear that Barack Obama was going to win the nomination, Hillary Clinton and her supporters become more fervent that not only would he not, but that he was a weak candidate who couldn’t possibly beat the Republicans (Hillary less so than her supporters and surrogates, honestly). To me, the culmination of this nonsense was when she won West Virginia in mid-May. It was a rout, and the Clinton camp used that to argue that they were better positioned to win in November, because, as the candidates said “I’m winning Catholic voters and Hispanic voters and blue-collar workers and seniors, the kind of people that Sen. McCain will be fighting for in the general election.”

Those of us in the Obama camp were obviously incredulous. There was no way that she was going to win West Virginia in November. Winning the Democratic primary there was about as valuable as in Idaho or Wyoming, places that wouldn’t go blue if a Democrat promised to make potatoes our new currency. She was losing the popular vote, states won, and total voters. There was no case that she should be the nominee.

So basically, this is kind of weird mirror year, no?

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