Opinion of the dropouts: Bernie Sanders

[Lyin' Steve]

When he first got in the race, I didn't know who he was.  Ironically, I mixed him up with Barney Frank.  I gave him a chance, listened to a few of his speeches, and thought a lot of his policies sounded naive or dopey, and even the ones that seemed reasonable sounded like they'd be impossible to pay for without massive tax hikes.  I checked his website to see if he had a way of paying for them but all he had was either using one-time revenue sources to pay for ongoing spending or dramatically over-optimistic economic growth figures (wasn't it 5+% growth?) accompanied by policies that were likely to restrict growth.  So up until the first debate or so I thought he was just another Bill Bradley, decent guy promoting unrealistic dream promises to try to add to the discourse but not really trying to hurt the nominee.  He did some things that made me like him, like promising to run a positive campaign and mostly getting out of Hillary Clinton's way.

Around September or October, I think, is when things started to take a turn for the worse, because Sanders started this campaign of shadow slander.  At first it was just insinuations about Hillary Clinton, where he'd do the whole "anybody who does this is a bad person.... Hillary Clinton does this" thing to make it look like he wasn't attacking her when really he was.  Then he starting doing things like demanding to see her speeches and dramatically misrepresenting her policies to try to imply very negative things about her.  I started to notice that his supporters online were going sharply negative on Clinton instead of talking about his policies.  Sometimes it seemed like they were going negative on her over issues that he hadn't even mentioned yet, and then he'd mention them, or that as soon as he mentioned some issue to attack Hillary that had never been brought up before there'd be a whole slew of articles ready to go.  Made me pretty suspicious (turns out he spent $25MM on a social media marketing, a.k.a. astroturfing, firm).  In November he started doing the whole "I am the only real progressive" thing, made himself the gatekeeper of progressivism.  Said (although he would never straight up say things, so he could still pretend he was running a positive campaign, so it was all artful smears) that anyone who'd ever raised money on Wall Street was a corrupt shill.  Things were headed south fast, and you could tell Clinton was getting worried because she slammed him on guns, health care and Obama.

The frustrating thing about it to me wasn't so much that Hillary was under attack but that she was being held to a completely different standard than Bernie.  Bernie would say "Hillary isn't progressive enough on health care like me" and people would start nitpicking through details of her health care proposals.  But when asked about foreign policy, Bernie literally had nothing other than "I didn't vote for the Iraq War, she did, so I have better judgment and am the better foreign policy candidate."  Bernie would level all these sneaky attacks at Hillary and get a free pass for being the candidate of positivity and optimism from everyone, but Hillary called him out on it one time and suddenly it was "the gloves come off!  Hillary goes negative on Sanders!"  It seemed like Bernie was never pressed on the details of his proposals, or how he would pay for them, or how he would get them passed.

Once the primaries started, things went from just being aggravating to being ludicrous, like they were out of some sort of parody.  Hillary won in Iowa and Sanders supporters started promoting all these conspiracy theories (ironically, the major one was that she had rigged the coin flips, but it later turned out that it was Bernie supporters who were buying double-sided coins to rig coin flips!) and Sanders himself went hard negative on her.  When he won, it was a revolution.  When he lost, it wasn't his fault, the election was undemocratic anyway because the superdelegates were voting for Hillary, and his supporters online would find some sort of conspiracy theory about how they'd really won but the election had been stolen from them.  Then two days later he'd be out with another slew of attack lines on Hillary.  Scandals started popping up about Bernie -- his campaign had stolen Hillary's data, they were straight up lying or using extremely dishonest campaign tactics, his wife had bankrupted a college apparently for personal profit, he refused to release his tax returns, he had a bunch of FEC violations and was receiving much of his donations from overseas.  We started to learn more about his history -- he'd been thrown out of a commune for not wanting to do his fair share of work, he'd supported left-wing South American movements in the 70s and 80s and praised Fidel Castro, his colleagues in Congress thought he was ineffective and impossible to work with.  But none of this seemed to matter.  Yet even though she was running a remarkably clean campaign, every little story about Hillary's e-mails was front page news and automatically made her the most corrupt candidate ever.

After the Michigan primary, I was worried.  It seemed like Bernie's campaign tactics were starting to work.  March 15 was widely seen in the media as judgment day for both candidates.  Bernie would win Missouri and Illinois, Hillary would win North Carolina and Florida, but if Bernie could take Ohio then maybe he had a chance after all.  As we all know, Hillary crushed him in all five states.  I expected him to drop out.  Instead he dug in deeper and went twice as negative on her.  A whole month went by where Sanders won a bunch of little open caucus states -- Hawaii, Alaska, Idaho, Utah -- by huge margins, and the narrative started to set in that the Democrats didn't want Clinton.  Suddenly New York was again seen as do-or-die.  Bernie lashed Clinton as hard as he could, going around and saying her Iraq War vote disqualified her for president and allowing a surrogate to call her a "corporate whore" on stage at his event.  His supporters began cheering "Bernie or Bust!" and polls were showing that they wouldn't vote for Hillary.  What had begun as a positive, issues-oriented campaign was quickly spinning out of his control into a left-wing anti-Hillary movement that threatened the democrats in November.  But he did nothing to stop it.  We also had the absurd episode of Bernie inviting himself to a vatican conference to give his stump speech during a coffee break and then waiting around outside the pope's residence at 4 AM to ambush him, and we had the utterly damning New York Daily News interview where it was revealed that when it came to his economic proposals, he had no idea what he was talking about.

Once again, in a series of contests that were seen as do-or-die for her, Hillary annihilated Bernie, and people started wondering why Bernie wasn't ending his campaign.  But he insisted on pressing right on to the end, going even more negative on Clinton, talking about her e-mails and the Clinton foundation and refusing to condemn a surrogate for making an allusion to the Lewinsky scandal.  Moreso, he said the whole process was corrupt, strongly implied that elections had been rigged and the nomination had been stolen from him, and launched attacks on the Democratic Party.  His supporters spun wildly out of control, sending death threats to superdelegates and party officials and throwing temper tantrums at state conventions, and instead of refusing to condemn them he said they were right, which led to a condemnation from Harry Reid.  After Hillary won California, he refused to recognize her as the victor and insisted he would press straight on to the convention and contest it.  He demanded concessions from the DNC in the unusual form of platform committee nominees and then when given that concession selected Cornel West and James Zogby.  When he was given an unusual number of concessions in the platform he complained that it didn't go far enough.  Even now that he's endorsed Clinton he still says he's campaigning and will take it to the convention.

This is the last negative post I'll write about Bernie Sanders.  I've had to put up with him for well over a year but with the endorsement today it seems like his time is finally done, the insane online movement he gave birth to will move over to Jill Stein, and he'll do a couple begrudging events for Hillary and never be heard from again.  But please don't whitewash history and erase all the harm he did, much of which is permanent.  The man took the left-wing tea party movement, whose most notable accomplishment so far was giving Zephyr Teachout 1/3 of the vote in her gubernatorial primary, and brought it mainstream.  He ran a sneaky, dishonest campaign built on astroturfing, double standards, and absurd policies even he didn't understand.  He refused to take responsibility for his losses and built up a false victim narrative that poisoned hundreds of thousands of young people against Hillary and the democratic party.  He also refuses to this day to take responsibility for the actions of his campaign and the effect they've had on a large number of liberals, allowing the H.A. Goodmans of the world to run amok in his name without lifting a finger to fight back against their hatred, paranoia and delusions and bring them back into the fold.  He selfishly continued to conduct a reckless negative campaign long after it was clear he wouldn't win, completely disregarding the consequences it would have for the democrats, for young people, and for the progressive movement in general.

He seems to have thought, perhaps he still thinks, that his campaign created a permanent movement to achieve his progressive goals of health care and college for all and reduce income inequality.  The actual long-term effect of his campaign will be the activation and legitimization of an anti-intellectual, conspiracy-theory-obsessed, victimization-obsessed, paranoid, poorly-informed, selfish, anti-establishment movement on the left to match the tea party on the right, a movement that will unfortunately be driven by jaded, misinformed young people.  A movement that rejected the endorsement of virtually every democratic politician, intellectual or celebrity in favor of the likes of Alan Grayson, H.A. Goodman and Susan Sarandon.  A movement that rejected the advice of virtually every economist and foreign policy expert that Bernie Sanders was a dangerously clueless candidate in favor of fringe left-wing blogs.  The type of movement that the left used to mock the right for falling victim to, and now finds itself fallen victim to.  Let there be no doubt about it, when history looks back at 2016, that will be his legacy.

HP

Steve McQueen out.

[Virginiá]

When you ask Sanders to defend any of his policies, he just goes back to whatever canned talking point he began with. Why should the minimum wage be $15? Because it should. His arguments are the kind Sarah Palin uses, and now he has Clinton doing the same. At least Republicans hide behind the Constitution or supply-side economics to at least provide a veneer of respectability. When is the last time you heard a Democrat stand for the Constitution on a debate stage?

Okay, besides the fact that a minimum wage figure like that is his attempt to balance out inequality for the poorest regardless of how much businesses bitch and whine (they whine about anything that takes even a penny away from their bottom line), there is justification for plenty of other policies. And why is Bernie, the loser of the Democratic primary, somehow now painting the image of the entire Democratic party? Judging by his base, Bernie is basically the leader of a large majority of Millennials. It just seems very convenient for your argument to ignore Clinton, the winner of the primary, who is a noted wonk and is very detailed in her positions.

[egalitt]

You support Donald Trump.  You have no reason to speak about "principle."

A very convincing argument that demonstrates xenophobia, arrogance,  and narrow-mindness of Clinton supporters and of Clinton herself.

[Dr. Arch]

Steve McQueen out.

Hey Steve. Thanks for the detailed response to this post. It really made me think things through, and when I look in retrospect, I am forced to agree on almost everything you posted.

My main concern is exactly that arising of the left-wing conspiracy dealing tea party that was given space by Bernie's campaign. I fully believe he didn't intend for it to turn out this way, but I have so many friends in my social networks, young like myself, and most of them EDUCATED (at least BA) that have joined these ranks. They peddle ideas of civil disobedience, rigged elections, and establishment vilification in almost all of their politically-related posts.

Most of them think Hillary is just as bad as Trump and, when confronted with tough questions, they concede that I'm just being conformist with my political views. Some, although most don't, concede that they understand why I support her.

Their posts railing against the status quo and Hillary/Obama are extremely aggressive--cursing at her and other politicians with a proverbial foaming at the mouth tone. It is all too possible that a permanent green tea party, so to say, has been formed as a result of how Bernie campaigned, and that has me concerned in many ways. They don't understand compromise, deal-making, or negotiations. All they want is immediate change exactly as they want it and even attempting to advocate for moderation makes you a "blind sheep."

I identify as a social libertarian (center-left), but I feel like a moderate or even center-right around them. It has made me extremely uncomfortable around my online social circles, and this wasn't a feeling that I felt exposed to until the "political revolution" mentality took hold of their political rhetoric.

[Young Conservative]

He sold out for Clinton. Before he endorsed her my opinion was fairly positive (of course I would've never voted for him though). Now my opinion is strongly negative as his only calling card was his principle and his willingness to combat corruption.

You support Donald Trump.  You have no reason to speak about "principle."

Donald Trump> Hillary Clinton. The level of corruption undergone by the Clinton's is unsurpassed.

[pppolitics]

HP.

Should have dropped out when he knew he lost.

[Flake]

FF

Someone who really created a new generation of future representatives. I can't say enough good things about his policies and his candidacy.

[Mr. Smith]

Still FF, though much bigger now that the campaign is over

Anyone bringing things back to a time before Reaganomics is this by default.

[Kingpoleon]

Tilt HP.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Still FF, though much bigger now that the campaign is over

Anyone bringing things back to a time before Reaganomics is this by default.

So 14% inflation 25% interest rates 9+% unemployment, America enemies gaining at an unchecked speed is better then what we have now lol

[egalitt]

Sanders endorsed Clinton right after Comey nailed the latter's lies to the counter. Clinton was exposed as a liar, careless, incompetent, and unreasonable person. And Sanders decided to endorse this person as crooked as a dog's hind leg. It's obvious that he was promised some position in future Clinton administration or some other privileges. Actually he sold himself.

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This generation representatives have been now well taught how to sell themselves most profitably at the most appropriate moment.

[IceSpear]

stuff

I agree with some of this. For sure, he should've done a lot more to to keep the deranged cult in check. Way more. That's my main issue with him. Things looked promising here at first, when he denounced the Berniebros and said he didn't want support from misogynist bullies. But this eventually fell by the wayside as the primary began to heat up and there was no benefit to attempting to stave off the crazy, as it would just dampen "enthusiasm" (ugh) and cause negative headlines. It was a political calculation for sure. This toxic negative atmosphere then began to fester even more, when suddenly every Hillary win (seriously, like nearly every one) was denounced by the cult as election fraud. They really jumped the shark when they accused Hillary of "suppressing the vote in Arizona" when the Republican government is the one that cut polling stations. Still nothing from Bernie. He talked about the "system being rigged" in terms of superdelegates, wealthy contributors, etc. but his supporters took it as proof that Hillary was rigging the vote and was a reptilian or whatever, and he never fought against these conspiracies, at least not sufficiently.  His response to the NV convention was inexcusable. "Bernie or Bust?" Still nothing. I also agree he should've dropped out once it became obvious he couldn't win, as it only fed the delusion and Frankenstein monster of the cult even more. I get that he wanted to influence the platform and direction of the party, but you can easily make it clear that is your goal, rather than feeding the delusion by pretending you're still going to win.

However, I think you're overestimating the extent to which he had iron fist control over his deranged cult. I mean, this is the same group that is now calling him sellout traitorous corporatist filth and sending him death threats. I kind of doubt that was part of his "master plan." As for Bernie taking advantage of the media's Hillary hatred, well, that's politics for you. Obama admitted to doing the same thing. Hillary is not exactly an angel politically either. I don't really hold that against him. As "negative" as the primary supposedly was, neither of them ran a single negative ad, which actually makes it historically positive in the grand scheme of things. It was mostly social media creating a toxic atmosphere, which wasn't present as much in 2008. But I bet, sadly, that it is the new normal. I highly doubt it will be exclusive to Bernie. In addition to that, I think the deranged cult springing up was inevitable to some extent. He could've done a lot more to stem the crazy as I said above, but I don't think he had the ability to stop it altogether. And I'm highly skeptical the entire thing was an astroturf campaign by the Sanders campaign as you seem to claim, for obvious reasons.

So although I'd say overall his campaign was in HP territory, I did have a lot of respect for him beforehand for fighting for progressive goals in Congress for decades. As an independent (and presumably a centrist) I can see why you wouldn't necessarily feel that way, but it's why a lot of progressive Hillary supporters still have respect for him even after this primary.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

Clear HP. His campaign was an insurgency and his long-term contributions are akin to rhetorical terrorism.

[emailking]

FF but he should have admitted defeat sooner.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Appropriate now.

FF.  Outperformed the expectations of so many, myself included.  He's an asset to the party and he will continue to be.

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

Socialist = clear hp

Cause reasons.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

FF, with some awful supporters (as my personal experience tells me).

[Californiadreaming]

FF, of course.

Appropriate now.

FF.  Outperformed the expectations of so many, myself included.  He's an asset to the party and he will continue to be.

Out of curiosity--how well did you previously expect Bernie to fare?