Fred Guttenberg won't back Sanders because Sanders is running against the Democratic Party

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105. I noted that article was from November 2016.

Last edited Tue Feb 18, 2020, 03:42 AM - Edit history (1)

There’s this, too, from May 2019...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/05/30/politics/bernie-sanders-umbrage-clinton-2016/index.html?client=safari

Sanders in 2020 speaks frequently about 2016, but only to highlight the ascent of his policies within the Democratic party. The hard feelings -- among both his and Clinton's supporters -- that escalated during that primary and hardened after Donald Trump's victory are rarely discussed, but never too far from the surface. When questioned, Sanders, like he did on Thursday, is quick to note his considerable travel on the nominee's behalf. By his campaign's count, Sanders did 39 rallies for Clinton in 13 states over the final three months of the 2016 general election.

Still, Sanders occasionally runs into criticism from voters and party operatives who believe that his candidacy -- in particular his decision to continue his 2016 primary campaign even after the contest was effectively over -- ended up hurting Clinton that November.

Clinton herself accused Sanders of damaging her electoral chances in her book "What Happened," which was published after she lost the election.

"His attacks caused lasting damage, making it harder to unify progressives in the general election and paving the way for Trump's 'Crooked Hillary' campaign," Clinton wrote in 2017.

This one seems to support both of our positions, yours up top, mine at its closing.

Yes. Bernie got with the program AFTER the convention. But Hillary clinched the nomination rather decisively in June. We didn’t hear from Bernie til after the convention - a convention in which his supporters continued to boo and heckle to the point where even former Bernie supporter Sarah Silverman spoke out from on stage during her own speech, scolding them and telling them basically to grow up and get with the reality that he didn’t have enough delegates to win the nomination. While Hillary did.

They attempted to disrupt throughout the convention anyway. I watched all week, and I remember getting angry about that.

And Bernie sat things out during some really valuable run-up time between the last primaries in June and the end of the convention.

Okay though. AFTER the convention he did come aboard. And I watched that, too. And, gotta tell ya, I watched, hoping to see Bernie our there. Onstage with her. Making speeches and appearances in rallies AND on TV. Urging everybody to unite behind her. I watch both MSNBC and CNN religiously. And maybe I missed the coverage him doing lots of that.

And as the article notes: “39 rallies in the last three months.” That works out to an average of 13 per month. Okay, good, assuming those three months were each 15-20 days long. And, um, to look at any calendar, the last three months (August, September, and October), had 31, 30, and 31 days in them. And that was AFTER the convention’s last night (nomination night). The months between the end of primary season, mid-June til the convention, were valuable time for urging party unity - that he deliberately ignored and didn’t make use of, except to stay silent while his more aggressive supporters had a field day trashing Hillary AND those of us who supported her. And he uttered not a peep.

The time to push for party unity behind the one single nominee was lost. Squandered. Left unused. When that time was needed most. By convention time, the “sore loserman” effect was solidly baked in and all the more difficult to dislodge.

On edit - all that said, I took the Indivisible Pledge, Vowng to vote for The Democratic Nominee, whoever he or she may be. And if that winds up being Bernie, he’s got my vote.