Giordano stuns with this insightful wrap up today [View all]

[Rose Siding]

This wisdom came in a series of tweets I love too much to wait for a storified version...

1. I was thinking this morning that the divide on the electoral left between Sanders & Clinton is determined by some key factors. Here goes:

2. While there are exceptions, overall people who have organized and won battles - John Lewis, Dolores Huerta, etc. - went with Clinton.

3. Whereas the high profile lefties with Sanders are overwhelmingly defined by a history of failed activist ventures. "Beautiful losers."

4. The latter group generally feels that their activism fails not because of anything they're doing wrong, but "the system is rigged."

5. That's always been the cop-out excuse. "I don't need to improve, or train, or change my approach because it's all rigged anyway."

6. Sanders' message of economic determinism - that all of life is about money - appeals to the loser part of the left, confirms its biases.

7. And it lets them off the hook, allows activists to take zero responsibility for going about activism in such an ineffective way.

8. This divide on the electoral left sharpens the racial divide, because organizers of color don't have the luxury of always losing.

9. Americans of color, in general, aren't duped or deluded into thinking "we are the majority already." That's plainly obvious.

10. The idea that there is some super woke majority out there waiting to lay siege to the palace is an overwhelmingly white delusion.

11. This imaginary unicorn majority, in their heads, gives them permission to think "we're not doing anything wrong, it's the system."

12. When people think that way, years of frustration and anger build into an impotent rage, and they berate instead of persuade.

13. Since berating is a behavior especially satisfying for men, the Sanders crusade grants them permission to be jerks, & call it politics.

14. It is thus the perfect cocktail for the emergence of the "Bernie Bro," who, again, is not a millennial but the aging white male activist

15. And the whole episode is only going to further reinforce their embittered worldview as the Sanders campaign now sinks into ignominy.

16. They will look back upon it and grumble to each other, "See? We were right! The system is rigged. It's not us, but THEM!"

17. That's why whenever they lose a primary they scream so loudly to invent "fraud" and "voter suppression." Things external to them.

18. They can't ever look in the mirror and say, "My god, we lost because of ME! We didn't train ourselves. We have no social skills!"

19. My central mission in the coming months will be to rescue the idealistic millennials from the "beautiful loser" left, because they're ok

20. What a shame the Sanders campaign didn't repeat the Obama model of training its troops. But to have done so would have been anathema.

21. Because training & organizing are about "agency." They teach "we win or lose based on what WE do." That's the lesson of Sanders' failure

https://twitter.com/AlGiordano

Agency, control of ones self, organizing. There's the power.