I am neither a Bernie Sanders nor Hillary Clinton supporter. I am not going to refuse to vote for one if the other doesn’t win. But it seems to me that Hillary supporters in the Democratic Establishment — and that goes for kos as well — have finally found *something* they can use to try to push Bernie to the margins where they’ve always wanted him to remain with the Nevada shenanigans. Nevermind that most observers have a far different view of what happened than the narrative, they have to push story after story after story denigrating Sanders for something he had no part of. Much like Dean’s yell after trying to fire up his supporters, the media has had a field day with the opportunity to portray Sanders as the out-of-touch, curmudgeonly wing-nut they’ve always tried to portray him as.
Also, much like Dean’s “meltdown”, we see again how the Establishment tries to rally support behind “the inevitable nominee” by insulting the very people whose votes and support they will need to win. Thankfully for Hillary, the odds are extremely favorable for her to do absolutely the bare minimum and still win. But it seems to me that if this were a much closer election, telling Sanders supporters, essentially, “You’ll vote for Hillary and like it” is a poor message when attempting some semblance of “unity” before the election. If I were inclined to work for a campaign, I would not want to work for one who considered the millions of activists and supporters of my primary opponent as more harmful to my election chances than the actual opposition party’s campaign machine.
This is an all-too-familiar pattern that we’ve seen time and time again in every election since 2004. Establishment Democrats say “Why do you want to support [Howard Dean/Dennis Kucinich/Barack Obama]? You know they can’t possibly get elected right? All you tens of thousands of small-donation supporters don’t have any idea what it takes to get people involved in Presidential political campaigns! You need to support [John Kerry/Hillary Clinton] because they’ve worked hard to be the nominee. It doesn’t matter that you don’t agree with their policy decisions, why would you care about that? We have to win this election, IT’S NEVER BEEN MORE IMPORTANT! THERE IS SO MUCH AT STAKE! JUST SUPPORT THE NOMINEE ALREADY!” It’s been said that the Democratic primary process is where progressive politics goes to die and I think that has also never been more true than this election season…..