Bernie still sees himself as a 60's revolutionary

[Haveadream]

Perhaps that is why he is encouraging protests and why he wants a contested convention. The 1968 convention riots were part of a high ideological point in his life and in some important ways he has never been able to move on from that era. That would make sense since so much of his rhetoric replays the nostalgic themes from that period over and over.

In 1968, MLK and candidate Bobby Kennedy had just been assassinated, there were massive student protests against the war and the "establishment" and the Dem nomination was in shambles. Humphrey, who never competed in a primary was ahead in delegates because of Dem party controlled caucuses. He was leading McCarthy, the anti war candidate, who had won the Dem people's votes in the Primaries. Protests were intense outside the Convention and the Chicago police took violent measures to contain it.

The problem with this nostalgia, despite Bernie constant references, is that we do not have a political climate similar to what we had in 1968. The largest similarity is the "establishment's" oppression of the civil rights of PoC, the current manifestations of which Bernie seems to be unable to champion. The fact is, we are not engaged in a huge war for which we draft thousands the way we did in VietNam. This is inconsequential to him though he is trying, hard as he might, to create a parallel. The fact is, it is Hillary who has won the popular vote in the primaries by a massive amount and it is Bernie who has a smaller margin in the decidedly undemocratic open caucuses. This reality is something he has to distort to make it appear he is the people's choice because otherwise his delusions of 1968 McCathyesque grandeur do not work.

I have to wonder, as Bernie keeps encouraging protests and a contested convention, if he doesn't on some level, want a replay of those dramatic events of 1968. I suspect in the 2016 version, he would be cast as the McCarthy martyr for whom people are willing to shed blood on the streets to see the causes of peace and justice prevail. For myself, I am unwilling to indulge his adolescent fantasies of greatness at the expense of the true voice of the people, especially those of women and minorities for whom justice is still out of reach, so he can relive a time in his life that had so much meaning.

[FarPoint]

1. Geriatric memory pattern...

Remember the past, forget current events.. Sanders NEVER did make any revolution plans, just a dreamer without substance.

[misterhighwasted]

5. THIS Precisely

[pandr32]

13. OMGawd you nailed it!

[Thinkingabout]

2. Yes, some desire to relive their younger lives, me, I just want to move on and handle today's

problems, things have changed, there was not a lot of success in those protests. There was a saying during this time some protesters would stop at bus stops because they thought it was a protest line rather than people waiting for the bus to arrive.

[IamMab]

3. Sanders doesn't live in a little place I like to call Reality.

And this is a perfect summation of what appears to be driving him. It's his last best chance to relive his "radical" youth, after his 3-decade career of mediocrity.

I don't see why the Democratic Party or America should have to pay the price for one ineffectual hippie from an 96%-white state to replay the "good old days." Especially since his good old days were so not-good for minorities and women.

Bernie wants to make Democrats the party of the "white working class" at the expense of all of it's other major constituencies. Fortunately, the other constituencies have been strong enough, and smart enough, to tell him "NO!"

[yallerdawg]

4. Lessons.

The Democratic divisiveness of '68 gave us the much reviled and despised Richard Nixon.

4 years later, the left doubled down with McGovern and Nixon took 49 out of 50 states.

Bernie doesn't remember that, does he?

[misterhighwasted]

6. He doesn't remember A LOT of things

Just an observation, ya know.

[puffy socks]

20. I think he likes the fight. nt

[SharonClark]

21. Maybe he thought that electing Nixon would bring voters to their senses and

trigger the revolution. How did that work for all of us?

[KittyWampus]

7. You hit squarely, IMO. Sanders never developed further intellectually than his teen years.

He read some Marx as a teen when his brother brought home some "books" and never developed further from that intellectually.

Heck, I was a Marxist at one point and grew out of that phase in about a year.

We all think we've got the answers in our teens and early twenties, but most of us grow out of that and start expanding our intellectual horizons.

Sanders never bothered to grow any further. He learned all the answers and stuck there. It's why he pivots back to economic justice constantly.

His pathetic attempts to sound intellectual in his perverted essays he wrote in his 30's are so sophomoric. Like a preteen trying hard to fit in with the big kids.

He never held a steady job until he was 40+.

Now all he does is spout slogans and empty rhetoric, stoking anger and resorting to demagoguery because he doesn't have actual detailed knowledge of how to implement any of his grandiose schemes.

He's shown no ability to correct course when necessary.

None of that speaks to someone with either a sense of maturity or pragmatism.

[Lucinda]

9. +1

[Surya Gayatri]

10. So many parallels between him and the Donald. Clear cases of arrested character development.

Adolescents in adult bodies, both of them, not to mention Janey, the latter-day hippie-chick.

Here are a couple of Bernie and Jane doubles during some R & R in the big city:

[KittyWampus]

11. #1. I love those two, if they want to wear cool clothing from the early 70's good for them.

#2. Sanders was NEVER a hippy in any way, shape or form. His associates from those days attest to that.

#3. His wife Jane's tenure at two colleges where she showed a highly authoritarian streak indicates she was probably never a hippy either.

[Surya Gayatri]

12. 100% agree that anyone's choice of dress is their own to make.

I consider people like the Sanders to be "self-styled hippies", i.e. they want the Vermont "cool" cred. that comes with the label.

But, you're right in saying that their hunger for power and authority gives the lie to their supposed "alternate", simple life-style.

[Koinos]

23. All true.

[Her Sister]

8. Superficial Dreams plus a very unexamined life!

No real depth! No there there!

[NurseJackie]

14. Fantastic post and observations.

[charlyvi]

15. Senator Sanders, you are no Eugene McCarthy.

Says this old white lady who lived in Chicago in the 60's. If he wants a repeat of the 68 Dem Convention, he's not a revolutionary, he's an anarchist. That mindset kept Democrats out of the White House from LBJ to Carter. It enabled Nixon and Reagan. I remember the Grant Park riots, the Chicago 7 trial (where judge Julius Hoffman bound and gagged Bobby Seal in the courtroom) the Weather Underground. It was an exciting time, yes, but the backlash was way too high a price to pay. It landed us right where we are today.

I took part in it; the principles were noble ones. But it's also when I learned that any means to an end is usually self defeating and very destructive. And Bernie KNOWS this. He was there.

[uponit7771]

16. It looks like that's where his social politics are at too... spent only 975k in SC

[MSMITH33156]

17. I actually don't even

know if he cares. I think he's an attention seeker.

What stuck with me was at the Correspondents' Dinner last weekend...Obama called out several people in the audience, no one reacted. When he calls out Bernie, Bernie stands up and starts waving to the crowd. It was so awkward.

I think this is a man who has been in Congress for 25 years, and never really received any attention, certainly not on a national scale. And now he's got a taste of it, but his star is fading. He went from off the radar, to a huge national figure, to now staring a return to irrelevance in the face.

That's why he keeps coming up with new reasons to stay in the race. I don't think he's actually trying to incite a riot. I think he is just desperately trying to stay in the news, and the only way he can do that is by threatening to create a mess. If he was just calmly saying, "we'll let everyone vote, and then if Hillary has the votes, I'll throw my support behind her," then he would be completely marginalized.

His only remaining relevance now comes from how he ends his campaign, so he threatens to cause all sorts of messes and it keeps him in the headlines. If he actually cared about his revolution, or the issues he espouses, he would have done SOMETHING about it in 25 years in Congress.

Much like his complaints about closed voting systems (that surfaced when she won several states with them but were absent when he was running through several closed caucuses), or the changing role of superdelegates (from disgusting because they subvert democracy to completely necessary and encouraged TO subvert democracy), to the numerous states that he said he was going to and must win (like Ohio, NY, etc) that suddenly became irrelevant post-losses...this is just an extension of that.

All of his positions about this race have been evolving over time to continue to justify his existence in a race in which he is being defeated by a wide margin (he has lost by 14 points nationally in states that have voted so far). The threats to contest the convention (which, btw, would simply mean that rather than like in 2008 where Hillary ceded her delegates to Obama so there was no real vote, there would be a real vote, Hillary would win easily, and it would be done. It's a formality, much like the electoral college voting is a formality after the electoral votes are already awarded) and now to cause some unspecified kerfuffle are his last bastion. He'll soon lose that leg to stand on, particularly when the voting is done. Then he'll slink away. There will be no defending him soon.

[SharonClark]

22. Excellent post

[brer cat]

18. Good post, Haveadream.

K&R

[liberal N proud]

19. That's all we need someone stuck with 50 year old mentality