As I’m sure virtually everyone who regularly reads and/or uses this website on a regular basis knows, Hillary Clinton has locked up a majority of pledged delegates to next month’s Democratic National Convention, and, combined with superdelegate support, will be our party’s presidential nominee for the general election.
As far as Bernie Sanders is concerned, he should drop out of the race, although I don’t really care who he decides to endorse for president, so as long as he doesn’t endorse Donald Trump.
A great philosopher from North Carolina once said, “Second place is just the first place loser.” However, this is one instance in which the second place finisher being just the first place loser doesn’t really apply, but, instead, is an instance of the second-place finisher being someone with a considerable impact on national politics here in America. Bernie will have at least a limited national legacy, as the Democratic Party platform (which is non-binding, meaning that no Democratic candidate for public office is required to run on the party platform) is likely to be a lot more progressive than it would have been had Hillary faced no serious opposition for the Democratic nomination. Bernie didn’t really run a campaign to win the Democratic nomination, instead, he ran a campaign designed to pull Hillary closer to the progressive base of the Democratic party on issues that she was willing to do so. Additionally, it’s possible (especially with six state Democratic Party organizations and Elizabeth Warren on record calling for abolishing superdelegates) that future Democratic presidential nomination races will not include superdelegates, although there’s no guarantee of this, and the Democratic establishment will fight to preserve their power over the presidential nomination process.
Here are some areas where I believe that the Bernie campaign failed in:
- Failing to strongly attack Hillary — It wasn’t that Bernie ran a negative campaign that did him in, it was that he didn’t run enough of a negative campaign. Bernie never ran an actual attack ad on television, and Bernie never really went after Hillary’s strong suit, which is foreign policy, in a significant way outside of occasional mentions of Hillary’s vote for the Iraq War and some other criticisms of Hillary’s foreign policy at debates. Another issue where Bernie didn’t go after Hillary on (in fact, he appeased Hillary on this issue) is Hillary’s use of a private email server for government purposes as U.S. Secretary of State. Bernie could have, without calling Hillary a criminal, called Hillary’s actions highly unethical and something that would not be permitted at all if he had been elected president.
- Failing to strongly attack the Democratic establishment — Make no mistake about it, the current leadership of the Democratic Party acts like a high school clique who doesn’t care about anyone outside of their clique. While Bernie did go on the attack against the DNC’s leadership, he never really went after President Obama, the Democratic leadership in Congress, etc. Bernie could have attacked Obama for presiding over an economic “recovery” that has only benefited the wealthiest Americans, as well as attacked those who attacked him for not being elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat as a bunch of elitists. Instead of embracing the Alan Kulwicki spirit of American rugged individualism while embracing a bold, progressive agenda, Bernie was an anti-establishment candidate appeasing the establishment.
- Overrelying on core economic issues — While economic issues like raising the minimum wage, guaranteeing health insurance to all Americans, and rebuilding America’s infrastructure are all important issues, Bernie didn’t really mention social issues or foreign policy issues anywhere near as often as he did economic issues, although he could have mentioned non-economic issues a lot more often, as that would have complemented his core economic argument. Bernie could have also used his background as a longtime politician from a very rural state to promote a reasonable gun safety policy, although he never did this effectively. Additionally, there wasn’t much of an attempt by Bernie to combine his left-wing populism with policy specifics. Another issue that Bernie didn’t strongly emphasize is marijuana legalization, despite Bernie coming a lot closer to winning a major-party presidential nomination than any marijuana legalization supporter in the history of American presidential politics.
- Unwillingness to tie Hillary to Trump — One thing that a lot of people may not know about Hillary is that she took campaign cash from Donald Trump when she was a U.S. Senator. I don’t ever recall Bernie mentioning Hillary’s ties to Trump during his presidential campaign.
- Bernie’s own elitism — While the Democratic establishment is very elitist, Bernie himself can also be elitist. An example of this occurred during the New York primary campaign, when Bernie called Hillary “unqualifed” to be president. That was the one time during the Democratic presidential campaign where Bernie really ticked me off, as I don’t like calling candidates for public office “unqualified” unless they don’t meet the legal requirements to hold that office (Hillary is legally eligible to run for president).
- Feuds between Bernie and some Democratic politicians — Bernie could have embraced a “three-step solution” to breaking up large financial institutions, consisting of enforcing the current financial regulations to their fullest extent, expanding the Dodd-Frank regulations, and reinstating the Glass-Stegall separation of commercial and investment banking. Hillary chose to only support the second of the three, and Bernie chose to only support the third of the three. In Bernie’s case, his refusal to fully support a three-step solution to reign in Wall Street greed was probably due to a longtime feud between him and Barney Frank, a former U.S. Representative who is one of the two people that Dodd-Frank is named after and a virulent critic of Bernie during his presidential bid.
- Failure to push back on identity politics — A major component of the Democratic establishment’s modus operandi is identity politics. This is especially the case with Hillary, as one of the core components of her campaign is trickle-down feminism, or the flawed belief that electing a woman to a high office will automatically create opportunities for women in every part of society. When Gloria Steinem used sexually suggestive remarks to criticize Bernie supporters and Madeline Albright used identity politics to promote Hillary, Bernie did virtually nothing to push back against identity politics.
- Lack of a willingness to build a shadow party within the Democratic Party — Bernie did a little bit of this by backing a handful of progressive-minded candidates for federal and state legislative races, however, there weren’t that many candidates who received Bernie’s support. One example of downballot primaries that Bernie left on the table was the Pennsylvania U.S. Senate primary, where Bernie claimed to not know who John Fetterman, a Bernie supporter who lost his Senate primary to establishment candidate Katie McGuinty, was. Given that Fetterman was the progressive candidate running against two establishment candidates, Fetterman might have won had Bernie strongly supported him.
- Lack of a real plan to curb media bias — Make no mistake about it, the corporate media is more interested in pushing Trump at every opportunity than objective journalism of any kind. Bernie could have promised to appoint people to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) who support reinstating the Fairness Doctrine and Equal Time Rule, but Bernie never did so.
If you’re going to be an anti-establishment candidate for public office, you need to do a full end run around your party’s establishment, not a half end run like what Bernie did. Trump did a full end run around his party’s establishment and won his party’s nomination. While I will vote for Hillary in the general election, if Trump defeats Hillary, it will be because either Trump and his hinchpeople stole the election (given that Trump’s entire modus operandi is fraud, that wouldn’t surprise me one bit) or because the American people rejected the Democratic establishment’s style of politics, and it will be us, not the establishment or the Bernie or Trump morons, that will be rebuilding the Democratic Party from the ground up.