Democratic Primaries

Already his most devoted followers on social media are denouncing him as a sell-out who betrayed the 'Bernie' movement. Not for nothing is it said revolutions eat their own.

My guess is that about one in seven of his followers will not vote for Mr. Biden come November, and these are mostly people who would not normally vote for a Democrat in the first place place --- they would vote Green or Libertarian, or not at all. Sanders has not really led them, merely accumulated them by erecting himself as a figurehead for their varied discontents. He has no control over them. The rest of his followers will come to Mr. Biden, with varying degrees of regret, because they recognize the importance of turfing out the cheap thug Trump, and they will do so on their own. Sanders has no especial guiding influence over them either. The man just has nothing he could deliver, and a politician who cannot deliver a voting bloc cuts a very poor figure indeed. There is not even any point in attempting to court the dead-enders who comprise the one in seven faction, for anything they might respond to would repel many among the middle of the road types who have grown disgusted with the cheap thug Trump, and the latter are by far the larger group.

Attempts to 'influence' the Party platform are simply laughable, and it is hard to believe the man takes the matter seriously enough to threaten disruption over it. In campus Marxist cliques, and meetings of the more outre far left parties, platforms and manifestos matter, because they mark who is on top in the organization, and who must accept being on the bottom or else leave to form a new clique. But nowadays the platform of a major national party is meaningless, it neither guides the campaign nor directs any action of people who are elected to office once they are sworn in.

By August the reality of the situation may well have sunk into even so impervious a mind as that of Sanders....





"When things are not called by their right names, what is said cannot make sense. When what is said does not make sense, what is planned cannot succeed. When plans do not succeed, people become uneasy. When people are uneasy, punishments do not fit crimes. When punishments do not fit crimes, people cannot know where to put hand or foot."