Everyone knows I am not a Bernie supporter, and I have a deep and abiding loathing for the contingent of his supporters I now call “Chapo Berners.” Take that as full disclosure and a bias warning.
An article/blog post written by Sean Moorhead, a Bernie volunteer in 2016 and 2020, popped up on Medium yesterday, Go read it, if you would, before reading further.
I’m a Bernie volunteer. Here’s how Joe Biden can win Bernie voters.
Did you read it? Then you know the answer to the not-question posed in the headline is, “You ain’t gonna.” (Even though Sean says he is going to vote for and even volunteer for Biden.)
[Biden supporters] want to figure out what concessions will win back the Sanders wing of the party. It is this same dim sense of danger that makes birds fly to high ground before a tidal wave. The prevailing sentiment seems to be "I don’t like Bernie or his Bernie Bros, but that energy…”
[...]
The answer is that you can do nothing.
Okay, that’s disheartening. But as you read further (and yes, I thought his abjuration to “read all of my post or don’t bother reading it at all” was pretty snotty), you see he fights for his case.
The opportunity to win back Bernie's voters came and went four years ago. Bernie could spend the rest of the year campaigning for Joe. Joe could promise to abolish private property by executive order on day one. It would not be enough.
Okay, so nothing that happened in 2019 or 2020 mattered to Bernie supporters, says Sean the author. But then:
[I]n the days immediately before Super Tuesday, several of his opponents dropped out. Their endorsements and a raft of others carried him to victory.
This was a message to Bernie voters: "Fuck off. We would rather drag Joe Biden over the finish line, knowing that he is no longer mentally competent, than cede anything to the candidate who is winning your votes by fifty points or more."
Well, now. The slur about Biden’s mental competence is a big red flag, of course. And who exactly won “your votes by fifty points or more”? He made some claim about Biden losing youth voters by 50 points or more, but he didn’t cite a source, and considering young voters made up about 12% of the primary electorate, they didn’t put themselves forward to be counted. If I read between the lines, Sean seems to believe that all of Bernie’s supporters are thirtysomethings or younger. And how did Biden influence the 2016 results? ...Okay, just never mind.
He then says that whether Biden’s mental competence is actually a thing or not, his friends believe it, so it’s a factor by perception alone.
Whatever, Sean. Your credibility is trending down. Let’s move forward.
Next up: are “Bernie Bros” a thing? Sean says yes, and proudly considers himself one.
It doesn’t bother me if you are rude to the Bernie Bros. I know how intolerable we can be. We specialize in intolerability. You have to react in whatever way feels natural. The way the Biden campaign won made a greater and more unalterable impression on us than any sweet or stern words you have for us now.
(Emphasis mine, because damn.)
But, hey, it’s the Biden campaign and all you boomer voters who made them this way. I would want to ask if Biden’s campaign caused the same phenomenon to occur in 2016, but I doubt he would answer even if I could reach out to him, or cared to try. And apparently losing by overwhelming numbers is because of some unnamed, unexplained conspiracy that probably doesn’t exist, but hey, his friends feel like it does, so there ya go.
Sean. Bubala. This isn’t going well. What’s next?
He reiterates his earlier point that, just as with Clinton in 2016, nothing Biden can do will prompt Bernie voters to cast their lot with him. And then we get this plum:
I know by this point you have all kinds of desperate or righteously angry appeals in mind. "Think about Trump’s racism. Think about the kids in cages. If nothing else, think about the Supreme Court!" Sorry, that shit doesn’t work anymore.
[...]
I said before that you are fighting for decency, dignity, and integrity. I believe that. Unfortunately, none of those things are real. They have no mass, volume, or color. You can't cut off a piece of decency to eat.
Okay, then. Here’s what I read in that statement: “Civil rights don’t matter. Bigotry, of any flavor, doesn’t matter. You can’t see it or shove it in your mouth. POC, gays, women, transgendered people, disabled people, all y’all just shut your damn whiny mouths. You’ll get the help we think you need when we transform society into a beautiful, glittery progressive paradise.” What about those kids in cages? Well, Sean says that shit doesn’t work, either.
That is why we are fighting for real things like healthcare and housing. It’s why we’re so fierce. We can easily remember and explain to other people what we are fighting for and no amount of arguing can make us feel foolish about it. (Of all the people who said, “Liz has a plan for that!” how many could explain in detail what Sen. Warren’s plans were and how they differed from Bernie’s?)
Um, yes, Sean. We can explain how Warren’s plans differ from Sanders’s. As for the rest of it, well, duh, Sean. We’re fighting for healthcare and housing, too. We’re as fierce as you are about it, and more besides. I don’t care how foolish that makes you feel.
I think I’m about done with Sean. But let’s let him finish.
I will help you out. I will vote for Joe Biden and even volunteer for him unless — I add this exception not as a means of escape but because we live in such strange times — the Democratic party collapses and there is a credible third-party campaign to replace it. Most of my friends will not vote and will not help, and to tell you the truth, I don’t blame them
Don’t bother, Sean. We don’t need your sneering ass coming down from the clouds to “help.” I’ve seen the kind of help you offer. No, thanks. And if you think the Democratic Party is going to collapse and a wave of Berniemania will wash over the country to replace it, you’re deluded.
The other day I saw someone on Facebook write to a Bernie Bro, "Now listen here, you will vote as you are told." He got the same response you will get even if you practice empathy and nonconfrontation. Don't waste your time anymore. Out-text us, out-phonebank us, out-canvas us. Campaign in every free hour you have.
We won’t waste our time. And we will outwork you. We already have.
So, why bother with this pointless rant from a random Chapo Berner who is boiling over with condescension, ignorance and white male privilege? (You know he’s white and so do I.)
Because Sean, and people like him, want us to think that they are the majority of the Bernie voters. He’s dead fucking wrong. I know it and you know it.
We have our contingent of Chapo Berners on this site. But we have a much larger contingent of good, decent, principled Bernie supporters who understand the magnitude of the multi-headed crisis we face. That’s true everywhere in the US, not just in the rarefied air of the Daily Kos.
Sean and his gaggle of sneering assholes won’t help Biden retake this country from Trump and Team Nazi. (Sean says he will. I don’t believe him, and I’m not sure his brand of “help” will do any good outside of his vote.) And, as I’ve been saying all along, we don’t need them. They vastly inflate their actual importance. What we need to do is unify with the Democrats, independents, liberals, progressives, moderates, centrists, and even the Never Trumpers, and blow Trump’s doors off. Retake Congress. Retake state legislatures. Make the 2018 blue wave a harbinger of more to come.
Sorry, Sean. You and your small but loud contingent of overprivileged shits don’t have to be part of this, though you can if you can bring yourself to do so. The objective here is scouring the government, on all levels, of the Nazis and conservative assholes who are running our society into the ground, and, with the COVID-19 outbreak (which Sean doesn’t bother to even mention — after all, you can’t eat it or hold it in your hands) literally killing us in needless thousands. We need all hands on deck for this — but if you’re going to shit on the deck, throw the deck chairs overboard, berate the staff, and clog the system with meaningless demands and complaints, then we’re better off with you just staying out of it entirely.
We cannot do this without the support of Bernie’s supporters. We can do this without the Chapo Berners.
And only they, as individuals, can decide which route they want to take in the aftermath of the Sanders candidacy. if they want to join the “Blue Tsunami,” they’re welcome. If not, well, their call.
We’ll get it done one way or the other.
I’ll end this with a video of Sean, or someone like him, earnestly explaining how unicorn math means that Bernie won both in 2016 and now.