Tuesday, October 24, 2017

I don't want to hear "Bernie would have won."

When the last election started out, I was a Sanders delegate. And yet, and yet, even at the time I knew that the oppo in the general election would have been fierce.

The Republicans would have dug up his 1972 alternative press essay on sexuality and gender roles and spun it as rapey. They'd have dragged out his support for the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and said he was a Communist and a traitor. They'd have dog-whistled the white supremacists, painting Sanders as a race traitor, and spun up the anti-semitism, all the while claiming he was a bad Jew and a traitor to Israel. They'd have told the African-Americans he was racist, and told the white folk he was too soft on African-American criminals. They'd have leaned on his atheism.

Sanders lost the Democratic primaries by more-or-less 20%. His support in the general election might have been just as poor. Instead of winning the popular vote and losing the Electoral College vote in a squeaker in the swing states, he might have lost the popular and the Electoral College vote.

So I really don't want to hear "Bernie would have won." Perhaps he would have – Trump won, after all, so anything is possible. But Sanders' victory was not assured and at the time of the primary votes he was less popular than Hillary Clinton. I also don't want to hear people blaming the Democratic Party for not making him the nominee – Clinton won. Even without the machinations of the deplorable Deborah Wasserman Schultz and the Democratic National Committee she chaired, Clinton won. And, most importantly, I don't want to see the opposition to the fascist Republican Party further split. So suck it up, Americans, and let's get on with fighting the fascists.

1 comment:

The Blog Fodder said...

Agree. Bernie would have been too easy to fight given Repubs play dirty all the time