I was wrong. I'm sorry. .... [View all]

[salinsky]

A little more than a year ago, I wrote the following after it was announced that Senator Sanders had raised an impressive $1.5 million in the 24 hours after he announced his candidacy:

"The mister and I played a small part in Bernie’s surprisingly successful showing: We made our first political contribution of 2016 to Sanders’ campaign yesterday in the hope that his candidacy would drag Hillary Clinton a few centimeters leftward. Little did we guess we were droplets in a socialist cash tsunami!"

Sanders is still surfing that tsunami, but now I am heartily sorry to have been a part of it. Sanders’ arrogant statement yesterday, in which he failed to condemn the appalling behavior of his supporters at the Nevada Democratic Convention and instead engaged in crybaby complaining about the process, was the last fucking straw for me.

For weeks if not months now, whenever someone would suggest that Sanders might screw the pooch by irreversibly ginning up ill-will toward the Democratic Party among his fringier supporters, I insisted that Sanders cared too much about making progress on his issues and preserving his influence in the senate to go down such a damaging path.

Well, the statement linked above suggests that y’all were right, and I was wrong. Sanders seems prepared to Nader us, so (to quote valued commenter Burnsie) fuck him, the horse he rode in on, the farrier who shod the horse and the farmers who grew the wheat and oats.

I still hope and trust that the vast majority of Sanders supporters will come around after Clinton wins the nomination. All the ones I personally know plan to do that — they aren’t morons.

I still suspect that many of the loopier BernieBros were never Democrats in the first place but rather Greenies who voted for Jill Stein in 2012 because Obama wasn’t pure enough for them or Paultroons who are in it for the Fed audit. So if they defect, it won’t much matter.

But I’ve learned my lesson about making political gestures. This is serious shit; it’s too important for playacting. I wish I were confident Senator Sanders understands that.

https://www.balloon-juice.com/2016/05/18/i-was-wrong-im-sorry/