Allies in defeat, redux

(This was the first draft of my much shorter Allies in Defeat post. It has stood up well, and I think it is time to post it.)

After the hideous electoral loss the left suffered on 11/8, it seems that the Sandernistas and the Clintonites are still duking it out.

The Clintonites keep saying that Clinton's loss was due to Sanders, which is wrong. Most Sanders supporters voted for Clinton and Sanders himself campaigned for her. Clinton's loss was due to sexism, racism, bad press, and bad luck, in that order, with sexism far and away the biggest factor.

The Sandernistas alternate among saying that Sanders could have won, that the Democratic Party betrayed them, and that Sanders betrayed them by joining the Senate opposition. We can't, of course, say that Sanders would have lost. Still, I doubt he would have won. I was concerned that a hippie socialist atheist Jew would have had trouble in the general election and Kurt Eichenwald confirmed this in his reporting; Sanders would have been accused of, among other things, rape apology, communism, treason, and everything else Republicans could gin up from his long and varied history.

So what would have happened when Sanders hit a real opponent, someone who did not care about alienating the young college voters in his base? I have seen the opposition book assembled by Republicans for Sanders, and it was brutal. … Could Sanders still have won? Well, Trump won, so anything is possible. But Sanders supporters puffing up their chests as they arrogantly declare Trump would have definitely lost against their candidate deserve to be ignored. — Newsweek

Now we get people saying that Sanders doesn't care about women and people of color while, at the same time, saying that he is willing to be a Trump ally, which is idiotic — he gave up his shot at the Presidency to oppose Trump. Sanders, this past Sunday:

“There is a lot of racism in this country. There is a lot of sexism, a lot of homophobia,” he said. “I don’t have to explain to anybody here the racist background of Mr. Trump … I don’t have to tell anybody here about the slurs, the awful things he has said about Mexicans … Muslim people … and obviously … his attitude towards women.” Sanders urged his audience to unite in order to resist bigotry. “When we bring millions of people together, here in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, when we do that, there is nothing we cannot accomplish,” he said, acknowledging cheers of affirmation from the audience. Sanders highlighted the plight of the middle class in America, a problem he frequently spoke about on the campaign trail. “For 40 years, the middle class of this country has been in decline,” he said. “You see enormous pain and confusion as to why the people on top make huge amounts of money, while the middle class continues to shrink, and 43 million Americans live in poverty.” — The Daily Free Press (Boston University)

The Sanders and Clinton factions are now allies in defeat. We tried Clinton's way, and it didn't work. Now it's time to try Sanders way. Sanders is part of the Senate leadership. He has long experience getting concessions from a hostile coalition and fewer ties to the 1% than anyone else in the Senate. We are on the same side; let's get to work.

But we plainly aren't going to. At this point, what it would take to unify the Resistance would be something like a younger female version of Sanders, and I don't see anyone like that on the national stage.