I think Sanders maybe already losing his leverage. He’s barely in the news anymore on mainstream sites, only the more “hard-boiled politics” news sources are even really covering his shenanigans any longer.
This is why it’s so, so, hard to turn an insurgent candidacy (that loses) into a national political movement. When that candidate’s candidacy is over people quit caring.
Sanders has tried to spread resources around in the past 1.5 months, supporting “fellow traveler” progressive nominees, but it’s looking too little too late. The thing is, if you’re ostensibly running a Presidential campaign, to make it seem legitimate, you have to put almost all the resources into that campaign. So by its nature, a Presidential campaign isn’t a great mechanism for starting a grass roots general political movement since most of your resources have to be devoted to your personal campaign for the Presidency.
The Tea Party, abominable as it is, started off as a grass roots/astroturf campaign from the get go, with national legislative and State legislative focus; and it’s still relevant today, possibly moreso in State legislatures than in Congress but it’s powerful there too.
As much of an “establishment” Democrat as I tend to be, I want DWS gone. I can’t countenance her defense of payday loan sharks, the lowest form of pond scum in the capitalist system.
Meanwhile, Clinton is reaching Sanders’ voters, without having to waste any more time talking with Sanders himself, by getting Warren’s enthusiastic public support instead. Warren is propping up Clinton’s progressive bona fides, and getting all the brownie points, in the way Sanders could have.
In his interview with Andrea Mitchell today, Sanders made quite the Big Deal of his demand to be courted for his endorsement–he’ll vote for Clinton, but he won’t endorse her until his Demands are Met!!!
“Ineffective”, eh? You hate “ineffective” people so much that you are supporting a Congresswoman under whose watch the Democratic Party got decimated in the House and state governments.
Canova supports it at this point, even ignoring Canova’s much more progressive stances on other issues. Might as well criticize Hillary for her Iraq War vote.
I have no idea how good of a Representative she is in regards to constituent service since I don’t live in her district. Sanders has shown how petty he is by picking a personal fight with the DNC chair.
DWS will be out as party chair after the election. The next chair needs to be someone who doesn’t simultaneously hold elective office
Yes, when DWS blundered into having a 2010 census, during a mid-term year, after the GOP voters were furious at Obamacare passing, and then allowing the GOP to gerrymander hugely on that wave. How dare DWS allow that to happen during Tim Kane’s reign as head of the DNC? She should hang her head in shame!
Bernie Sanders would have been a disastrous presidential nominee and an even more disastrous president. All we need to do is to look across the Atlantic and the Labour Party to see what Sanders would have done to the progressive movement. He would have told moderate constituents in moderate left states to go screw themselves and expected liberals in fly-over country to build a rinky-dink coalition. He would fit perfectly into the stereotype of the idealistic but utterly incompetent liberal. I can only hope that some of his supporters start to wake up and get a whiff of reality.
Idealism is great, but in the end, politics is about results. It’s about building coalitions and knowing the end game. Abraham Lincoln, TR, FDR…they were idealists, but they knew that you can’t just fart out opinions. You have to get in the mud and roll around in the slop and deal with people you don’t like. Sanders wouldn’t have lasted a second.
And Clinton flip-flopped on TPP for the same reason. Regardless, considering he’d be running as 1 of 435 members of Congress, his stance on a fait accompli foreign policy measure is practically irrelevant especially compared to his progressive stances on domestic socioeconomic issues.
Do you think DWS had the magic ability to ungerrymander districts? Does she have a super-science age ray that matures underage Hispanics into voters?
It seems to me that 2014 was largely the continuing effects of 2010’s census. Well, that and people, once again, hating Obama and the dimwit GOP voter wanting to [droolingsouthernaccent]Get 'er country back![/droolingsouthernaccent]
Considering how little attention Sanders has paid to congressional races and how few of these candidates he has actually supported, yes, “petty” does seem to be an appropriate descriptor.