Greg Sargent, The Plum Line: Give Bernie Sanders some time [View all]

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In his speech to supporters last night, Bernie Sanders declared that “in a very short period of time,” he would begin devoting himself to making sure Donald Trump is “defeated very badly,” a task he cast as urgent. But he stopped short of endorsing Hillary Clinton, said the next stop for his revolution’s quest to transform America is the Democratic convention, and added that he looks forward to discussions “in the coming weeks” between the two campaigns to ensure that the party’s platform is truly progressive.

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I’m having a lot of trouble getting worked up over this.

It is true, as Matthew Yglesias says, that Sanders’s speech did contain some elements that legitimately annoyed Democratic leaders. Sanders did suggest that only he and his movement can ensure that the Democratic Party becomes a “party of working people” and “not just wealthy campaign contributors,” and a party with the “courage” to take on special interests, as if lots and lots of Democrats have not been working incredibly hard for years to pass things like Obamacare and Dodd-Frank, and to defend Obama’s actions on climate change. This is of a piece with Sanders’ broader tendency to be too dismissive of the gains of the Obama years, and too simplistic in his accounting for why Democrats did not accomplish more than they did.

On the other hand, Sanders did accomplish a great deal in the last year. If he wants a little time to try to translate that achievement into some form of lasting influence, well, so what?

This is a 74-year-old socialist from Vermont who launched a campaign in a manner that was so impromptu — he actually said he had to hurry it up because he had other stuff to do — that reporters practically laughed in his face. He started at low single digits in the polls and went on to win 12 million votes, 22 states, and 45 percent of the pledged delegates against one of the most formidable figures in the last generation of Democratic politics, a global icon who has been First Lady, Senator and Secretary of State. He outraised Clinton with a focus on small-dollar donations that set a standard for grassroots engagement that will probably be studied by future campaigns.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/06/17/give-bernie-sanders-some-time/