I voted for Bernie in the 2016 Virginia Primary. Then, by early May of that year, it was clear that Hillary had won the Democratic nomination. I expected that Bernie would pivot from that contest to do all he could to rally everyone he could behind the nominee in order to prevent Donald Trump from becoming President (which he had then, as now, declared to be of utmost importance)
He didn’t. Instead, he continued his battle against the person whom the party had chosen to be its standard bearer. And in the fall, Trump’s victory — narrow but no less disastrous -- plunged the nation into a grotesque and continuing nightmare.
One would have thought that Bernie Sanders would have learned something from that terrible scenario. But as the Washington Post is reporting, Bernie has declared that he’s staying in the race.
The situation is essentially the same. While this time Sanders hasn’t been mathematically eliminated from the race, the verdict of the Democratic electorate has come across with crystal clarity: for three straight primaries, beginning on Super Tuesday, Joe Biden swept the field, and by wide margins. Sanders has had his considerable following, but overwhelmingly the Democratic voters in all sorts of states said unambiguously that they did not want to pin their hopes on Bernie Sanders in an election in which defeating Trump is their over-riding priority.
But once again, Bernie is choosing to continue the intra-party fight — even after the outcome of that fight has been decided by the voters -- rather than rallying for the fight against Trump.
Why?
It’s not because he doesn’t see how beyond terrible it is for this nation to have Donald Trump as President. He declared that the defeat of Trump was absolutely essential back in 2016, and he has been even more emphatic about the necessity of the Democratic candidate winning this time around. One could hardly ask for a more righteous “talk” from Sanders.
Once again, the time has come for him to walk that talk.
But he doesn’t, and all of us who yearn to get the powers of the Presidency out of the hands of this atrocious President are understandably alarmed by Bernie’s apparent determination to repeat the disastrous mistake he made back in 2016— when whatever little bit he achieved by continuing to fight the nominee-to-be was completely outweighed by the price the entire nation has paid since.
As the Washington Post reports: “Democrats are still haunted by the last grueling battle, which didn’t end after it became clear that Clinton would be the nominee, and instead stretched into the summer convention and beyond.” That same Post article reports former Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer as saying that if Sanders is genuine about going all out to defeat Trump, he should get out of the race.
What is it that Sanders is revealing about himself by his choice? Senator Boxer ventures what looks like the beginnings of an answer: “I just think it’s a terrible decision for him to make [to continue his campaign] because he looks very selfish.”
What comes to my mind is that Donald Trump’s is not the only narcissism that’s having a destructive impact on American politics.
