It Comes From the Very Top

[RandySF]

Over the last several weeks I've had a series of conversations with multiple highly knowledgable, highly placed people. Perhaps it's coming from Weaver too. The two guys have been together for decades. But the 'burn it down' attitude, the upping the ante, everything we saw in that statement released today by the campaign seems to be coming from Sanders himself. Right from the top.

This should have been obvious to me. The tone and tenor of a campaign always come from the top. It wasn't obvious to me until now.

This might be because he's temperamentally like that. There's some evidence for that. It may also be that, like many other presidential contenders, once you get close it is simply impossible to let go. I don't know which it is. That would only be my speculation. But this is coming from Bernie Sanders. It's not Weaver. It's not driven by people around him. It's right from him. And what I understand from knowledgable sources is that in the last few weeks anyone who was trying to rein it in has basically stopped trying and just decided to let Bernie be Bernie.

Sanders speech tonight was right in line with his statement out this afternoon. He identified the Democratic party as an essentially corrupt, moribund institution which is now on notice that it must let 'the people' in. What about the coalitions Barack Obama built in 2008 and 2012, the biggest and most diverse presidential coalitions ever constructed?

Sanders narrative today has essentially been that he is political legitimacy. The Democratic party needs to realize that. This, as I said earlier, is the problem with lying to your supporters. Sanders is telling his supporters that he can still win, which he can't. He's suggesting that the win is being stolen by a corrupt establishment, an impression which will be validated when his phony prediction turns out not to be true. Lying like this sets you up for stuff like happened over the weekend in Nevada.

As I said, it all comes from the very top.


http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/it-comes-from-the-very-top

[metroins]

1. I just hate the money raising aspect

It feels like fraud for him to ask for money from poor people and say he has a path, when in reality there is no path.

That's the part that makes me sick. It's straight up lying and taking advantage of people's trust.

[chwaliszewski]

4. I just hate the hope raising aspect

It feels like fraud for her to ask for the vote of poor people and say she has a plan, when in reality there is no plan for them.

That's the part that makes me sick. It's straight up lying and taking advantage of people's trust.

[Hortensis]

28. Yes, Sanders not only should not be lying to his

supporters but arranging for them to disrupt the process believing they are serving The One True Legitimate Democratic leader.

RandySF, thank you for posting this. Events in the past couple of months have lead me to the same conclusions, but tentative as I only strongly suspected Sanders must be running everything and revealing strong unprincipled and ruthless sides. It's nice to have someone with good information sources reporting that same conclusion, including verifying the authoritarian streak I also suspected.

I'll give one of my own after what he did in Nevada on top of what has come before: Bernie is a radical by personality and prone to radical, extreme behaviors. I won't credit him with new ideas since they are not his, just adopted from society. He has moved the national dialogue left, and that can still be a wonderful contribution -- if his barn-burning tendencies don't put the nuclear codes in Trump's hands and the next few SCOTUS appointments in the Heritage Foundation's.

Way past time to pull yourself in, including any delusions of grandiosity that might be driving your decisions, Senator Sanders.

[Garrett78]

7. A path to the nomination?

There hasn't been a viable path to the nomination for Sanders since Super Tuesday. That's probably why nobody, as far as I can tell, ever demonstrated a realistic path via delegate math. In fact, the only attempt I ever saw was something dubbed the "Bern Path," which was utterly unrealistic.

[Hortensis]

32. Theoretically possible, though, and the media

have also been severely to blame for weighting their coverage to make it sound really possible.
They used that theoretical possibility as an excuse for reporting a close race that simply didn't exist. "It's Sanders coming up on the outside, he seems to be passing heading into the home stretch," when actually he was always laboring far behind.

The kind of people who believe only Bernie can save America from "the abyss" could always find plenty of articles by "respectable" journalists in "respectable" journals to keep them excited and hopeful, or just turn on the TV and soak the 24/7/365 in.

[dchill]

2. So does all the Brockshit.

All of it.

[chwaliszewski]

3. Go Bernie!

I applaud his diligence and perseverance!

[anotherproletariat]

6. I hope that the DNC is waking up to his bullshit. They need to put a stop to this now.

No more playing nice, and offering him a place on the platform committee. If he doesn't drop now, they should immediately strip him of his senatorial committee memberships, and stop any and all support they give him.

[Hortensis]

34. The Sanders Campaign may be coming apart. Given the

information in the article, it seems probable that the plans his staff were trying to rein in, before they gave in and "let Bernie be Bernie," were a big part of why those top people left. And now other high-level people are passing information to the press, letting them know "it" (as in Nevada and what it's supposed to presage) is not their doing but Sanders'. NOT a good sign.

As for the DNC, I'm sure they had Sanders' number long, long before we did, and that they have a number of stories they've kept to themselves. Their power is far less than some people imagine, though. And Sanders has real power that comes from his supporters. He never even came close to the revolutionary swell he called for, but millions of Democrat supporters, who still believe he is a good man and, notably, believe in what he wants to achieve, are a power block whose wishes must be considered.

The power Sanders gets from them could vanish like a chimera, of course, if they became disillusioned with him, but they and their wishes would remain. I'm wondering if his relatively weak showing in Oregon could already reflect disapproval of his increasingly hostile and adversarial relationship with the party. His large block of liberal supporters are mostly guaranteed not to like that.

[riderinthestorm]

8. TPM has been HRC central for months. This must be the latest TPM

Destroy Bernie!!11!!elevens1!

Oregon and Kentucky must have been an earthquake for Team Hillary.

[brush]

10. How so? She won Kentucky, he won Oregon, and netted a delegate gain of maybe 3.

The hill he has to climb is even steeper.

He has to win California 75% to 25% to win and we know with the proportional system, that ain't gonna happen.

He's digging in his heels but he's digging a hole for himself when he's back in the Senate.

[riderinthestorm]

13. He's still standing. That was never part of Hillary's plan

Onwards CA!



Oh.his Senate seniority and committee positions are already gone.

The Clintons are viciously notoriously vindictive.

He's under no illusions anymore about his future. May as well get his message out there loud and clear to the convention. He cant be bought off by a lucrative Big Pharma lobbying gig (*cough Howard Dean).

[Txbluedog]

11. Newsflash: the Democratic Party never was Bernies and the primaries have prove it never will be

[auntpurl]

20. "Anything that stands in the way of the revolution must be annihilated."

Wow. That's some...STRONG rhetoric you've got there.

[auntpurl]

22. Sure, man.

*backs away slowly*

[NutmegYankee]

24. It trolled...poorly.

[auntpurl]

25. Yeah, I didn't think that one would be around for long.

Better luck tomorrow, buddy!

[betsuni]

26. LOL

[Txbluedog]

12. That is the reason I think the gloves need to come off...

the media and the Clinton campaign needs to hold his feet to the fire about everything. See how soon he unravels.

[ContinentalOp]

14. The very very top?

You mean Clinton herself? Since she controls the media, the state parties, the board of elections in every state red or blue, the talking points of millions of random internet commenters, and the weather, I can only assume she's also secretly pulling the strings over at Bernie HQ.

[chwaliszewski]

15. I don't understand why Hillary doesn't have enough pledged delegates as of yet to wrap this up?

She is the chosen one. This should already be over by now. I hope this doesn't carry over into the general election.

[msongs]

17. bernie waited 73 yrs to run for prez and now he is angry about losing. the universe is cheating

himi n every way possible. that's life for ya

[jillan]

19. Yes when he was 1 year old he wanted to be President.

[nadinbrzezinski]

18. The only thing they got right is legitimacy in that piece

and elections are now transparent...

[lamp_shade]

23. Kick for exposure

[MariaThinks]

27. Good analysis

[AgerolanAmerican]

30. Sanders isn't the "top" of anything

he's a vessel for a broad-based grassroots movement

Anyone with sufficient integrity could take his place and nothing would change.

[BeyondGeography]

31. Yup...everything is rigged, rigged, rigged

So his more impressionable supporters feel screwed and get angry. The petulance does come from Bernie, who pretty much claimed ownership with his pathetic someone-took-a-potshot-at-my-campaign-office-so-there statement. Anyone who has been through this process before knew the outcome was set as soon as Bernie showed himself to be non-competitive in the South, which was months ago. Now he's bitching about the rules in Nevada, where he lost the caucus fair-and-square. Whatever...the joy ride has a few more weeks to go and then it will be time for acceptance.

[aikoaiko]

33. People like this were saying the same thing in July.

It'd just partisan support for the Clinton machine.