2016 All Over Again

With Bernie Sanders surging in the polls and possibly edging out Joe Biden at a crucial moment in the 2020 Democratic presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton, right on cue, is attacking Sanders in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter about a new documentary abut her debuting at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.  She says that nobody likes Sanders, no one ever tried to work with him in Congress, and he has a pattern of being misogynistic toward female presidential candidates by questioning their experience of electability.  For those reasons, she refused to promise to campaign for him if he is the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, despite the fact that he campaigned for her in the 2016 general election season.  She cited Sanders' alleged statement to Elizabeth Warren that a woman can't be elected President - even though he encouraged Warren to run for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination and only ran himself after she did not, and had once told young girls back in 1988 that he believed a woman could be elected President one day.  

Hillary, of course, chose to ignore all that.  She said that what Sanders is reported to have said to Warren is part of a pattern of misogynistic behavior.

"If it were a one-off, you might say, 'OK, fine.'" she said.  "But he said I was unqualified. I had a lot more experience than he did, and got a lot more done than he had, but that was his attack on me . . ..  I just think people need to pay attention because we want, hopefully, to elect a President who's going to try to bring us together, and not either turn a blind eye, or actually reward the kind of insulting, attacking, demeaning, degrading behavior that we've seen from this current administration."

Really?  She got things done?  What did she get done? I honestly can't answer that question.  As for Bernie Sanders, he may caucus with the Democrats, but having an agenda more in tune with that of the Danish Parliament than the U.S. Congress has ensured that he's in a minority of one regarding most of his pet issues, such as free college tuition and Medicare for all.  Of course he hasn't gotten anything done in the House or in the Senate.  Though, Hillary and her handlers past and present - especially her past handlers, the political commentators on MSNBC identified as veterans of her 2016 presidential campaign - would be correct to point out that he couldn't get much done as President with a Congress unlikely to implement his agenda without strings attached.

I'll come right out and say it again:  Now is not the time to nominate someone as far to the left as Bernie Sanders because no one in Middle America is ready for a 180-degree turn to his agenda after four years of Donald Trump's reactionary administration.  As for Hillary's critique, it doesn't do anyone any favors, and it's more of a self-serving posture than a warning to Democrats that Sanders can't win.  It's simply Hillary wanting to rerun 2016 and nursing a grudge against everyone who voted against her and wanted nothing to do with her.  And since so many Bernie Sanders supporters - whom she painted with a broad brush and dismissed as mostly young male sexists who create the culture of the movement around the Vermont senator - find her so repugnant, this is only going to help Bernie rather than hurt him.  Hillary, please - shut the hell up and get off the goddamned stage!

I watch this Hillary-versus-Bernie fracas with utter disgust as a former Martin O'Malley supporter who, seeing the media become obsessed with the feud between the two, got pissed off every time they ignored or ridiculed my candidate.  I felt like the president of a neutral country during the Cold War watching the American President and the Soviet General Secretary going after each other and wanting to point out that both sides were equally ridiculous and unworthy of being taken seriously.  We had a third candidate that offered a choice of productive liberalism, an alternative to squishy moderation and radical change.  But you all laughed in my face.  So it doesn't matter to me whether Hillary or Bernie comes out ahead.  They should both be left behind.

And one final thing . . .