Democratic Primaries
In reply to the discussion: Ex- Clinton Staffers Slam Sanders Over Private Jets [View all]Tom Rinaldo
(22,920 posts)I am reposting below something I once wrote on another thread:
Hillary in 2008 set the gold standard for efforts to unify our party after the primaries. Or maybe I should say the platinum standard. She deserves great praise for that; in defeat it was one of her truly finest (among many fine) hours. But there is a built in limitation to using the platinum standard as the pass/fail mark. It is almost never achieved. Of course is is to be honored and acknowledged, but a lot of good to decent efforts fall short of that. Hillary did the best by far.
In 2004 Kerry chose the runner up for the Democratic nomination as his running mate, so that year is not informative. Gore obviously lost a very close election though in 2000. Bill Bradley was the Democratic Party nomination runner up, and he didn't particularly knock himself out helping Gore in the General. Jerry Brown came in second to Bill Clinton in 1992, and there wasn't a whole lot of help flowing to Clinton from Brown in 1992's General election. Relations between the two remained fairly chilly. And a Clinton win that year was far from a forgone conclusion.
Jackson and Gore came in second and third to Dukakis in 1988, and, if my memory serves me right, they of course endorsed Dukakis but were not major national surrogates for him. Gary Hart was second to Mondale in 1984, but he self destructed so no info gleaned from that example. And that brings us to 1980:
"1980 Democratic National Convention was one of the nastiest on record. On the penultimate day, Kennedy conceded the nomination and called for a more liberal party platform in what many saw as the best speech of his career. On the stage on the final day, Kennedy for the most part ignored Carter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries
Sanders endorsed Clinton before the Democratic Convention. He held a unity rally with her not that long after she was the nominee. He asked his supporters to vote for Clinton. He did some (yes limited) campaigning for her. Agreed that he did not do nearly as much for Clinton as Clinton did for Obama. But he did a hell of a lot more than Brown did for Bill Clinton, or than Kennedy did for Jimmy Carter for example. And essentially at least as much as the likes of Bradley and Gore and Jackson did in support of Democratic nominees in the years when they were the winner's major competitors. Democratic unity was also pretty thin in both 1968 and 1972.
I don't think Sanders earned great praise for his efforts on behalf of Clinton in 2016, but neither did he earn great scorn.
primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden