2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Poll: For Sanders Supporters ONLY: What should Bernie do now? [View all]RufusTFirefly
(8,812 posts)It is important for Bernie and his supporters to continue a positive, aggressive fight for the goals that he stressed during the campaign.
I think the best that Bernie can do is to encourage everyone to keep fighting and striving to reach those goals in whatever way they think is best.
To endorse someone whose views are absolutely antithetical to his own would be a great shame. I hope he won't abandon a lifetime of fighting for social and economic justice in a single speech. But he's a politician and is in a very tricky spot. I think that Bernie's up to the rhetorical challenge, although I'm almost certain that whatever he says will be deliberately twisted or inadvertently misinterpreted by people who lack an aptitude for nuance.
One of my favorite examples was the speech that Mario Cuomo gave in 1992, where it might at first have appeared as though he was celebrating the dubious victory of Gulf War I, when in fact in a stunning piece of rhetorical jujitsu, he transformed the image of military parades into a call for social justice. It was masterful!