Wednesday, May 23, 2018

"Our Revolution" Mess

I'm very not surprised that "Our Revolution" is a bit of a mess.  The Sanders campaign was a bit of an odd duck.  In advance of the 2016 primaries the Democratic party (DNC) effectively cleared the field for Clinton.  There was some token opposition, either there to nudge the party or to get a platform for themselves for future [potential] runs or whatever, but the script was basically that Hillary would be the nominee.  Bernie really had no obvious chance, but the problem is that lots of Democrats have not been very happy with the party (or the Clintons) and Sanders was a way for them to give the finger to the establishment (not unlike Trump, though in a more aware-of-reality way).

Bernie probably would not have been as successful if the DNC hadn't tried to make Hillary the nominee in advance of anyone actually voting.  The very nature of the coalition that supported Bernie is a bit of a mess, and so trying to form a group out of that is, at best, going to be a challenge.  There are a handful of things that kinda unite them (Medicare for all, maybe free college, probably more generous social security...) but they got a boost from the large number of anti-[Hillary] Clinton people that exist within the Democratic party.  To the extent that those people are anti-Clinton because of her positions (Iraq war vote, big business/bank support) they probably fit well into a post 2016 progressive activist group, but even in the Democratic party a lot of anti-Clinton is really irrational anti-Hillary Clinton, in a similar vein to the Republican anti-Clinton idiocy. 

Without Hillary Clinton on the ballot, even with the DCCC being horrible, there's not as much anger to harness for primary battles as there was in 2016--there's a LOT of anger, but it's pretty much all directed against President Fucking Moron.

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