It’s Not Bernie Sanders’s Job to Unify the Democratic Party

[portlander23]

It’s Not Bernie Sanders’s Job to Unify the Democratic Party
ALEX SHEPHARD
New Republic

Characterizing Sanders’s supporters as a mob intent on revolting against the party ignores these voters’ genuine grievances and the political and economic changes they want to enact. It’s also a lousy argument, one that relies on conflation—that the trolls and Sanders’s base are one and the same—and a series of counterfactuals and half-baked historical allusions. Criticism of Sanders is based on what might happen if he stays in the race and never considers that an energized youth wing could have positive effects in November.

The idea that Sanders should drop out because some of his supporters did terrible things is absurd—and it’s more absurd when you remember that a Clinton-affiliated Super PAC has devoted $1 million to paying online trolls to “correct the record.” More importantly, it’s not his role to unify the party. His time to exit will come, sometime between the end of the primary season and the end of the party convention. To create change, he has to stay in the race. Doing otherwise would cede the platform to the party establishment.

Instead, it’s Clinton’s responsibility to unify the party. She should call off her dogs—those whom she can control, anyway—and acknowledge that the abhorrent behavior of a handful of Sanders supporters isn’t reflective of his entire base. She should also begin to make overtures to primary reform, as the existing process—from delegate allocation to esoteric procedural rules—are partly responsible for this mayhem. She can do so even as she continues to treat Sanders as a legitimate contender, and she should start now if she wants to prevent the fractious convention that so many of her allies are forewarning.

It is up to Clinton to offer an olive branch to progressives. Whether she will or not remains to be seen, as does the extent to which she will have the movement's support in the general election.

[tonyt53]

1. No, no it is not, because he has never been a Democrat.

BUT, a word that Bernie likes to throw around, it is very clear that he no longer cares about winning the nomination. He only wants to remain relevant. He is failing miserably at that.

[pmorlan1]

5. Silly argument

Sanders ran on the Democratic ticket so he is a Democrat whether you want to recognize it or not and by the way so are a lot of his supporters. This registered Democrat since the 1970s included.

[tonyt53]

11. 1971 here, and you are entitled to your opinion.

[pmorlan1]

12. LOL

You beat me by a couple of years. I was registered in '74. First presidential in '76. I've been a Democrat ever since then.

[October]

29. Fact, not opinion

[MADem]

2. Hillary Clinton, in 2008, unified the Democratic Party.

Obama didn't "offer an olive branch" to her supporters. She told her supporters to suck it up, have a good cry, get over it, get in line, support the nominee wholeheartedly, and defeat the GOP.

She brought her people to the party. That's what a LEADER does.

It IS Bernie's job to do what she did--if he wants a role in the party.

If he doesn't, he'll show us by his actions.

[Arkansas Granny]

4. This!

[pmorlan1]

7. It's not Sanders supporters

fault because Hillary supporters in 2008 fell in lockstep because she told you to suck it up. That's on you.

This reminds me of that old saying...it's not the dog in the fight but the fight in the dog.

[MADem]

17. Go on and do the PUMA--they didn't get any respect (or have any clout) either. nt

[pmorlan1]

18. Touchy

aren't you? By the way, I don't see much respect for any Sanders supporter here and haven't for quite some time.

[MADem]

22. Not at all! We'll do it with or without 'em.

They're welcome to help, but if they want to play the spoiler game, we will thwart them.

This doesn't cover the losing candidate with glory at all:

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/05/19/face-bernie-over/Bc7S0zENpazJEGeEInQtsJ/story.html?event=event25

[Ash_F]

13. Oh yes he did. The Secretary of State position

That kind of offer would not work on Sanders though.

[MADem]

16. You don't make those offers before November. They might be implied but they

are not overt.

Sanders can't find Iran on a map. He's not SECSTATE material.

He'd be a very credible Secretary of Labor, though.

No one's going to offer him anything, though, if he doesn't start pivoting. He might want to start by telling Donald Trump to stop quoting him.

[Ash_F]

19. Sanders has already said what he wants in interviews, and it is nothing for himself

$15 minimum wage for one.

[MADem]

21. This man has served in the House and the Senate.

Surely he knows how that happens, and "Hillary" isn't going to dispense it like a favor. She does not have that power.

If Congress sent her a $15 minimum wage bill, she'd sign it. If he really wants it, he needs to start lobbying his former peers in the House (all appropriations begin in the House) and once they pass it, he needs to start lobbying his peers in the Senate.

This will be a new thing for him, because he has never done this kind of thing before. He doesn't schmooze, he doesn't work an issue, he has never participated in any effort to galvanize support for a bill. It's why he couldn't get his own peers/former peers to gather round him and offer their support to him as super delegates. In order to get help, you have to give it, and he never could be bothered to help his peers before--he's kind of known for that.

But it ain't up to the POTUS to do that hard work--he'll have to get his behind in gear and find some allies and work the issue from the ground up. Since he has a much higher profile now, I'm sure it will be easy to arrange those meetings. He might want to take a few meals in the Senate dining room with his fellow "D" caucus members--a lot of work gets done over lunch.

If he can shepherd the process, find allies in the House to work it and not have it get tabled/die in committee, and vote it up and out, and he can drag it through the Senate and get his peers to upvote it and then present POTUS with a bill, she'll sign it, I'm sure. To great fanfare--and he'll get the 1st pen. They might even name it the (Insert name of House Honcho)-Sanders Mimimum Wage Act. But he has to do the work.

[Tavarious Jackson]

28. He is not loyal to the party

and he is guiding his supporters to hate the party as much as he does. Why would we think he will help unify the party? He is in my opinion being dishonest and making the party look evil, corrupt and unfair. He wants people to think he lost because the democratic party is rigged. He wants to be seen as a victim.

[MADem]

32. They're dropping like flies, though, his supporters.

That's why he's down to his last six million bucks. His own supporters are walking away, turning their backs on him.

He's lost Wonkette! He's lost The Rude Pundit! Everywhere you look, you see articles of disapprobation.

He's the last one to understand that this tactic is going over like a lead balloon.

I wouldn't be surprised if he gets primaried in 2018.

[Tavarious Jackson]

33. Yes. If he does not campaign like hell for Hillary

he will be the one who will look bad. There will be some die hard supporters who will never wake up but.. I say let him keep going. His anger and disdain will be what unifies us. I am a former BS supporter.

[Autumn]

3. No. it's not his job. Hill and company can step up and try to do it.

[99Forever]

6. Bernie should do so exactly as...

.... the corrupt establishment neoliberal Dems fought to make it a honest and fair primary with a level playing field.

[pmorlan1]

8. All I can Say

is that when a campaign has to attack the supporters of their opponent, they've already lost.

[Joob]

9. Hillary is campaigning against Bernie supporters not Bernie

[eastwestdem]

10. There is a difference between not working for unity, and actively working against it.

It is working against it that is bringing Sanders down. I, for one, want him to continue...it is the best way this could possibly end. He will fritter away any chance of having a say in the Democratic party, and likely make so many Democratic enemies that his political future will have no influence whatsoever. Not to mention the image that the public is getting. For the first time, I am seeing people seriously rethink their support of him in large numbers.

A very powerful example came from talking to folks outside the grocery store (in No. Cal.) this morning. The thing that made the former Sanders supporters the most upset was that he continued to strongly tell them that he could win, when they knew that the best he could hope for was to keep his agenda in the spotlight. They felt that he was using this rhetoric to continue to raise money, and to incite his supporters to garner more media attention. (Which they thought was only negative attention.)

This particular group discounted the recent angry demonstrations in NV, but those videos have been useful for me when tabling or canvassing with other people. Anecdotal, yes...but in CA, where I feel I have been talking to a brick wall for a month, this is a big difference.

[seabeyond]

14. Just a user then?

[Waiting For Everyman]

15. If it doesn't want to be reformed, it doesn't need to be unified.

Who wants to unite with a bunch of stanky thieves?

[Jester Messiah]

20. She could offer an olive tree and it wouldn't be sufficient. n/t

[Ferd Berfel]

23. I guess if I hear how Clinton and DWS don't need my vote a few more times

I'll see the error of my ways and come crawling back to camp weathervane

[barrow-wight]

24. It also shouldn't be his job to destroy it either.

[joshcryer]

25. The double standard is unbelievable.

[passiveporcupine]

26. She doesn't want to unify us

She's already said as much. She doesn't need us. She doesn't want us in her party (nor do her supporters). And it's to her advantage to keep this Violent BernieBro Meme going so that the final convention is run under strict rules that can be manipulated to her favor.

[Tavarious Jackson]

30. The phone calls to the NV chair were not violent?

It should not be ignored

[passiveporcupine]

35. Those phone calls did not come from people at/from the Nevada convention

and most of them were not even "threats". They were just anger. I have not seen them, but I read that there were a few actual threats. Those that were threats need to be followed up on. This is what happens when you screw someone over. They get mad and lash out. If Lange had not run the convention like a dictator, there would never have been this boiling rage out there. In this world of social media, a lot of people vent anonymously and think they can get away with it. But those few people who made those threats do not represent Bernie's base any more than Wendell Pierce represents Hillary's base. So what do we have. Some phone threats (that usually are just intimidation, not a real threat to be followed up on) compared to a guy who actually grabbed a woman by her hair and hit her in the head. Which one was violence?

According to the law:

violence is the unlawful exercise of physical force or intimidation by the exhibition of such force.

So the head hitting was exercise of physical force. Lifting a chair was not and making a phone call is not. If the calls are followed up with a real attack, THAT would be violence. Right now you only have "intimidation".

You have a choice...you can tell the truth or try to push the lie/meme.

And as Jillan just posted in another thread:

People of all political persuasions should denounce death threats and violence in any form that seeks to achieve a political goal. But they should also denounce mob-mentality journalism that seeks to persuade an audience to believe what he or she believes without a cloud of evidence to back it up.

Or else, collectively, there’s no longer a difference between Fox News and the rest of us.

http://www.mediaite.com/online/the-week-the-entire-media-became-fox-news/
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12512019447

[Tavarious Jackson]

31. What a loving remark.

[Trust Buster]

34. We just want him to go away.

[Autumn]

36. The idea that he has to unify the democratic party is absurd. Bernie's not a democrat, ask

any hillary supporter. Democrats can heal their own fucking breach.

[CobaltBlue]

37. portlander23—The general-election nominee is the No. 1 person responsible for the outcome.