The amount of opposition he saw should tell you how seriously the owning class took his candidacy.
This is also his greatest failure. This outcome was inevitable, and Bernie should have seen this coming and been able to co-opt it. Turning hate from the elites into a wave of populism is obvious, but he was blindsided by the centrists coalescing and the reaction from the party elites and donors to his candidacy.
He couldn't full commit to plunging the knife into his co-workers. At the end of the day he just wasn't willing to do what it took to win, and we know centrists will pull out all the stops to beat anyone to their ideological left.
He's fine. The best chance we will get for a long time. I wouldn't be here without him.
This is why, at the end of the day, he's done far more good than harm. He played an enormous role in (1) catalyzing the re-growth of a legitimate leftist movement in America and (2) outlining a set of policies on crucial issues that the left can use to present a realistic alternative to whatever lib shit Democrats are offering.
Oh, he said Biden's his friend? Cancel him, then. What politicians say about one another in public matters more than materially advancing leftist politics, right?
There isn't a single actual leftist org in the US that would have been in a better place today had he not run for president. Say what you will about his lib tendencies and the criticism he rightly deserves, but a timeline where Hillary Clinton in unchallenged is 2016, and Warren is the face of "progressives" in 2020 is a way darker timeline IMO.
sure he might be hella cringe succdem, but he has a special place in my heart :stalin-heart:
His attempt at overthrowing the party revealed the contradictions of the Dem Party. He was necessary to show the futilism of electoralism in a dual-party system dominated by capital.
He also revealed that anyone will be corrupted by the institutions they claim to want to reform. He couldn't close the circle on his 'millionaires and billionaires' rhetoric. He should have pointed at Biden, Hillary, Obama, ect and said 'They're the problem. The party donors are the problem.' His friendships in the Senate and Dem Party made it impossible for him to fully crush the party. Which is really what he wanted. He wanted to take the party completely off the wealthy donor pipeline. The response from the donors is totally clear in retrospect, Sanders should have guessed that in the face of existential threat these people would circle the wagons and do anything to stop him.
He never made clear why the establishment and media despised him so much. Trump was much better at this. At a debate the RNC donors booed him, and he turned to the camera and said 'They boo me because they can't buy me. I'm not like the others.' But Sanders doesn't have the same gut-level instinct/animal cunning Trump possesses.
Because I'm a little older than average here (39), I feel I have more positive thoughts about Bernie than most. Because I remember the 90s. The idea of even a social democrat being given a platform and even a remote chance at the presidency... it's so far from where we came from just in very recent history. In the 90s, the absolute furthest left edge in the conscious of 99% of Americans was Michael Moore and Jesse Jackson (also why I have a lot of sympathy for those guys even if they're kinda libby - they took hella grief from conservatives and liberals and still hung in there)
37 here. If you told 90's teenaged me someone who identified as a demsoc would run twice and do significantly well in the primaries I'd freak the fuck out.
he's a lib, but feel like pure shit just want him back.
but oh well, guess we have to actually build a left in this country now
Fuck Bernie Sanders he made me into a communist and now everything’s wrong with the world
I want to go back to thinking markets fixed everything
I think he's great. I think he got screwed over.
I think people here can be a little hard on the guy, considering what he had to deal with.
He's not some superhuman, he's just a guy trying to do what he can with what he has available. Seems ultimately good even when there are bad choices that he's gotta make.
he did more to advance the american left than anyone else in the past 40 years and i think that's pretty admirable.
It’s foolish to think he’s anything other than a Soc Dem but I’ll appreciate him for sending many including myself down the path of leftism.
I mean, critical support, but the libs were right.
He threw his whole hearted support behind a rapist, racist, war criminal, sex creep. So he is a bit misogynist tbh
The thing is... that's just not how it works if you're a Democrat politician. If Bernie lost, he was always going to be paraded around and forced to kneel, like a barbarian king captured by the Romans. Those were the stakes for him personally.
Funny coincidence, I had to abstain for v/*ting for B/*den because he was end/*rsed by someone whose rabid base of B/*rnie br/*s was so incredibly toxic /*nline to me. 😔
