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Another, less overheated analysis of the current state of the party:
Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein have a point, up to a point: Sanders is using the threat of a discordant and contentious convention to try to break down the walls of the Democratic Party fortress they have constructed, and bring an end to their power. But when they shriek and throw up their hands and say that if we don’t have immediate and unquestioned “party unity” we will get 1968 and President Donald Trump and the opening of the Seventh Seal, that’s disingenuous in the extreme.
As has been widely observed during this race, the 2008 contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama was at least as bitter and vitriolic as the Clinton-Sanders race, although there was considerably less ideological distance between the candidates. I have previously observed that there is no historical correlation between a bitterly disputed primary contest and what happens in November; citing 1968 is no more than fearmongering. Consider 1992, when former (and present) California governor Jerry Brown — perhaps the closest Sanders-cognate of all recent Democratic dissidents — ran clear to the end against Bill Clinton and went to the New York convention with almost 600 delegates, ensuring himself a speaking spot. Brown hated Clinton’s guts and viewed him as a shameless phony (and should get some credit for getting that right). He never endorsed Clinton — not at the convention, not during the fall campaign and not at any other time. Remind me how the absence of “party unity” destroyed those Democratic nominees?
Every general-election campaign is its own animal, largely determined by its own internal dynamics and by unpredictable news memes or twists of fate. Think of Richard Nixon sweating unpleasantly or Michael Dukakis in that tank (looking, observed David Brinkley, like Rocket J. Squirrel); think of the Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry, or the fallout from Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” remarks. This year’s Clinton-Trump campaign will also pivot on unknowable unknowns, but one thing I feel sure about is that they’ll have nothing to do with how a few enraged Sanders supporters misbehaved in May.
If the Democratic establishment is increasingly anxious about its prospective nominee, who appears headed for a perilous, nail-biting and shockingly tight race against the most ignorant and least qualified major-party nominee in political history, that’s for good reason. But Bernie Sanders did not create the Democrats’ current dilemma, and cannot solve it.
As has been widely observed during this race, the 2008 contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama was at least as bitter and vitriolic as the Clinton-Sanders race, although there was considerably less ideological distance between the candidates. I have previously observed that there is no historical correlation between a bitterly disputed primary contest and what happens in November; citing 1968 is no more than fearmongering. Consider 1992, when former (and present) California governor Jerry Brown — perhaps the closest Sanders-cognate of all recent Democratic dissidents — ran clear to the end against Bill Clinton and went to the New York convention with almost 600 delegates, ensuring himself a speaking spot. Brown hated Clinton’s guts and viewed him as a shameless phony (and should get some credit for getting that right). He never endorsed Clinton — not at the convention, not during the fall campaign and not at any other time. Remind me how the absence of “party unity” destroyed those Democratic nominees?
Every general-election campaign is its own animal, largely determined by its own internal dynamics and by unpredictable news memes or twists of fate. Think of Richard Nixon sweating unpleasantly or Michael Dukakis in that tank (looking, observed David Brinkley, like Rocket J. Squirrel); think of the Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry, or the fallout from Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” remarks. This year’s Clinton-Trump campaign will also pivot on unknowable unknowns, but one thing I feel sure about is that they’ll have nothing to do with how a few enraged Sanders supporters misbehaved in May.
If the Democratic establishment is increasingly anxious about its prospective nominee, who appears headed for a perilous, nail-biting and shockingly tight race against the most ignorant and least qualified major-party nominee in political history, that’s for good reason. But Bernie Sanders did not create the Democrats’ current dilemma, and cannot solve it.
Read the whole article here:
http://www.salon.com/2016/05/18/yes_bernies_waging_war_on_the_democratic_party_but_if_hillary_loses_it_wont_be_his_fault/
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