Sanders Backs Out of Interview After Failing to Dictate Conditions

[Ken Burch]

109. You're misreading me. It's not necessarily about including Bernie

Last edited Wed Jan 31, 2018, 05:42 PM - Edit history (1)

His supporters("acolytes" is kind of an insulting way to describe them btw-they aren't a cult or anything) are a different matter.

We're not going to build a long-standing progressive majority with truly progressive policies by anathemizing his supporters AND the ideas they back.

The way to close the divide is to accept that the agenda his campaign and the movement which succeeds it are pushing should be PART(not all, but part)of where we go next. I've been arguing NOT that we should nominate the man-we shouldn't-but we SHOULD accept that the agenda associated with his campaign, so long as it is adjusted to account for the effects of historic oppression-is a natural component of any Democratic platform. We SHOULD be a party that stands with the poor(working and kept-from-working)against the rich, or at least MOST of the rich.

To exclude the supporters and the ideas, as I suspect our party bureaucracy would prefer, means going back to being a party fixated with appeasing the non-existent "center" of the political spectrum, and it's hard to see how that leaves us any better off than we were in the fall of 2015...when we were at 49% support in head-to-heads with any GOP candidate. As you may recall, that was not enough support.

The only votes we can add to our total are going to be those who want us to be more pro-worker and more distant from corporate control of the political process. If we become a party that rejects everything the Sanders movement stands for, we'll have no chance of gaining those votes, and I for one would LIKE us to gain the votes, whoever we nominate, needed to retake the White House, Congress, and state governments-and this time, to hold onto the votes we've gained.

I've said nothing in defense of Bernie's decision to schedule his address to compete with Kennedy's. I agree with you that he shouldn't have done that. I'm not an apologist for the guy-it's just that I think it harms us as a party to treat him as the enemy and it costs us the support we need. Have I finally made the distinction clear on that?