My Thanks to Bernie Sanders

[NanceGreggs]

29. This is a beautifully written piece …

… and I don’t for a moment doubt its sincerity.

However, I would point out that hindsight, despite the old adage, is not necessarily 20/20.

“Many of us were surprised that someone like Bernie would show up carrying high the banner of a true Democrat.”

By his own admission, Bernie “became” a Democrat because it would get him the media attention he needed to run for the presidency. His “carrying the banner” mostly consisted of disparaging the very party that he used to advance his own political ambitions.

Bernie stood by in silence while his supporters posted vile comments on the FB pages/websites of long revered and respected Democrats simply because they endorsed HRC over him. He passed up no opportunity to cast the Democratic Party as corrupt, nor to cast himself as the “saviour” of a Party he’d denigrated – and refused to be a part of – for decades.

If this is your idea of a “true Democrat”, so be it. But be aware that “true Democrats” do not spend a year-long campaign demeaning the party they are allegedly running for.

“I could have sworn that the reflection in the mirror was closer than it appeared. In reality, it was Bernie’s “last hurrah.” And perhaps America’s last hurrah.”

Bernie’s “last hurrah” is by no means the country’s last hurrah – and the fact that far more Democrats see HRC as the means of moving towards what all Democrats want is the proof thereof. You can tell yourself that Bernie was the be-all and end-all, but that doesn’t change the fact that in the end, the voters decided that he was neither.

“All that I came to believe that America was about was in Bernie Sanders. It was about reason and compassion. It was about optimism and justice.”

I fail to see the “optimism” in Bernie’s message – and apparently, I am not alone in that assessment. Bernie was good at telling us how bad things are, with little substance behind his vision of how things could be – other than touting things like tuition-free college and single-payer healthcare while KNOWING he could never make those things a reality.

I understand your sense of loss. But what you need to recognize is that the things Bernie promised were never really there – they were just a reflection in a mirror, and were never as close as some people continue to insist they were.