"Wait, did you think nobody would notice the obnoxious double standard?"

[Ken Burch]

2. The only issue I had with the book was her section going after Bernie.

And I didn't object to that because I thought it was too harsh on him.

Bern is a tough old bastard who can take care of himself-he made mistakes in 2016, but it's clearly not his fault personally that Trump is president.

I said what I said because I felt that, at a time when we need unity, the comments in that one small part of the book-not anything in the REST of the book-could cause at least some of his voters to stay away from the polls in 2018 AND 2020, without bringing in any other groups to even match their voting strength, let alone exceed it enough to allow us to make gains.

As 2016 taught us, we can't ever get those voters to the polls(and we can't win without getting them to the polls)by dissing them and then following that up with a DEMAND that they vote to stop the bad guy. I learned that the hard way last fall, spending countless hours on social media, when I wasn't doorbelling/canvassing for Hillary during the day, begging unreconciled young people who'd backed Bernie to vote HRC on antifascist grounds AND going beyond that to argue that they should back her because I thought her platform deserved their support on the merits.

My comments were never an attempt to control her-I would never even WANT to control HRC and have too much respect for her to believe anyone even could control her-or about trying to control women-whom I also respect deeply enough never to want to control. It was about simply a respectful observation that senior people in the party should be working positively now rather than negatively. And I'd have said the exact same thing if it was a male former Democratic nominee writing the exact same thing.

And I've said it before in various forms but I will say it again: I wish Bernie would also find a more positive way to make his arguments for change in the party-to frame them as the path to improvement, not always as a jeremiad. We need radical change, but there is a way to argue for that that is hopeful and inclusive rather than just scolding.

We need to pull together if choice is to be defended, if social oppression is to be defeated, if we're to do any of that or to achieve anything else any of us want to achieve.

And I say all of that as a person who wants our next nominee to be from the next generation-and is as likely to support Kamala Harris in the primaries as anyone else from that generation, though I support no one at the moment.