Bernie and the left spent a long time in political wilderness. Because of him and Warren and Ro Khanna and AOC and many many others we have a seat at the grown-up table for the first time in most of our lifetimes and we wrote most of the menu.
So if the primary voters want to give Joe the head of the table, suck it up, call him your favorite uncle and we can spend the next four years putting our sauce on everything and Joe will eat it because he isn't getting anything from Mitch McConnell, not one stale dinner roll. Joe can complain about it being too spicy but he will eat what we serve. All we have to do is smile as we bring the airplane spoon in for a landing.
And here is a little chef’s secret, if you put enough butter on the Public Option, it tastes just like Medicare For All. If you put enough Warren disciples in the executive branch, you won’t even notice there has been a revolution, you’ll just take a bite in a few years and think “when did this place get so good?”
And when Uncle Joe and Aunt Nancy are gone, we inherit the big house. The big tent will be our big tent.
Or you can grab your little tent and go back to the wilderness for another few decades. The Vermont wilderness is beautiful and pure and affirming. It’s also really cold. You can go back out there, hang out with Jill Stein, if you want, and live on trail mix and squirrel guts or whatever that monster eats.
The far left exists to make the left feel good about losing, but there are no 2nd places in American politics. You either win a share of power at the ballot box or you don’t. In the end it is not the radicals or the establishment or the racists or the sexists or the media or even the Russians that decide, it’s just the voters and blaming them for your failure to persuade, makes you seem small. If you still want to run away to the wilderness, that’s your right, at least until Trump turns it into gaudy condos and fracking rigs and probably a few forced labor camps.
So don’t burn the Democratic party down. Burn your participation trophies instead. Don’t raise the black flag, raise the American flag. It belongs as much to us as it does to our opponents. Keep your focus on victory. Ignore the distractions and the tweets and the anger porn ecosystem. Don’t defend Danish values, defend American values. Don’t argue. Persuade! Toss that stale trail mix because in November we feast on Donald Trump and the Republican party or they will surely feast on us.