“Bernie lost 22 States and 45 percent of delegates”
No, he won those. While the nomination outcome of a primary is binary, win / lose, the overall election data, gauging support, and all sorts of other metrics are not binary.
What we Progressives and like minded friends all did on the Sanders campaign is a YUGE win!
Knocked it out of the park, to be frank. Not only did that campaign outraise Clinton regularly, but it was competitive, on PEOPLE MONEY, and on an unabashedly socialist, left platform too!
Yet we read, he lost…
We are going to come to realize that campaign will have changed politics. New game, new people coming in, lots of good stuff, all needed very badly by Progressives. Unlike most candidates, Sanders didn’t just run for POTUS, but ran to start an enduring movement for change. Truth is, we are just getting started!
Ellison is just one piece of that. All over the country, delegates are organizing, getting into party business, looking to get ready for more movement politics.
Flat out, Progressives aren’t asking anymore. So many of us can’t afford to do that anymore. We need a firm place at the policy table, and to get it, we are going to pool our money, win elections and fund people differently than we see going on right now.
Our people aren’t gonna be in that call center dialing for dollars. They will be out among the people who elected them, holding town halls, and doing what it takes to actually practice representative government. You guys all saw this right:
That, right there, is why our party has failed a majority of Americans economically.
While the old guard is out there butt hurt over losing their asses huge, the new guard is moving, building, messaging, planning, organizing as you read this.
Sanders tapped into what we now understand is an establishment referendum time. New Democrat and Third Way ideas just didn’t work. Now, I know, there was obstruction, there was this, there was that, but know what there wasn’t much of?
Fight.
Hell, Obama put Social Security on the chopping block, among other things!
That shit is not OK!
Say what you want about the GOP, but you can’t say they don’t mean business. We don’t need to take it to the extreme of defaulting on the full faith and credit of the United States, but anything short of that would have been good.
Example: Are you bitching about the Supreme Court? Wouldn’t it have been nice to avoid Roberts as chief justice? Dems didn’t fight on that one. Could have. Could have done a whole lot more than they did. And that’s just one thing. Tons of other examples out there. Where is the fight?
Instead we read pages and pages on how compromise gets us this and that, but the truth is all it did do was devalue the party and validate economics that have crushed the middle class and labor. Some people got help, but others, all of whom really can’t afford it, tend to pay, while the top percent gets a little more every year.
That shit is not OK either.
When Sanders fired up his run, he started with basically zero, easy ups, balloons, some black tape and a “get the word out” boom box.
To go from that to regularly filling stadiums? On people money, and with a well distributed campaign involving tons of people all over the place?
Bet your ass that’s a win. It’s a huge win.
Before you go tossing “lose” around, remember Clinton was the most experienced at losing Presidential Bids. Remember that shit? She’s more qualified now too. Better experience.
That game ends up ugly all around.
And if we want to play that ugly “lost” game some more, look who is who today.
Clinton, and the establishment team backing her gets full credit for a mega loss over a considerable time. We are down what? Roughly 1K seats?
More than half the nation is living in poverty. 40 percent of workers are not even making $15 per hour, income inequality is at an all time high, as is the markets, enjoying record profits a lot more than a majority of Americans are enjoying lives, able to get what they need out of honest labor and their government.
On social fronts, we’ve got some big wins. On economics, it’s a FAIL. Not good enough.
And here’s another dose of reality for you:
People just don’t want to hear it. Call it a result oriented Democracy, and that’s the norm going forward too. Global trend, not just us. See all those nice policy papers filled with stats, charts and graphs all labeled “Recovery?”
Know that way too many Americans might just have to be burning them for home heat, metaphorically of course. Some real Perspective, isn’t it?
Finally, what did Clinton run? A campaign. Well, she lost now, and it’s over big time, her and a bunch of other people are gonna get tagged old news. Which they are now.
What did Sanders run?
A Presidential campaign that was also to build a movement. A movement that endures and is building right now, because Sanders was smart enough to link it right to the ideas needed to address economic issues that don’t end when an election does.
This isn’t over. Can’t be, until the economics really do improve. We aren’t going away, because we can’t afford to anymore.
Result oriented democracy in action!
So, we’ve got the old guard holding galas, while the new guard is hitting the streets, building, giving people hope, positioning themselves, the party, the ideas in ways that resonate, and all of that is important.
Important because we simply cannot check out for the mid-terms.
All that organizing going on while we trusted with this are spending huge amounts of time trying to figure out what blame and shame story and excuse will stick to cover their own asses.
I don’t think a lot of us really understand what just happened, nor where people are at.
A majority of Americans don’t want the past failures as a go forward plan. Establishment Referendum Time.
And that is why we are in an establishment referendum time. People realize most of what they say and what they need simply doesn’t matter. That is also why we can’t win against income inequality when we are running on the same money driving income inequality!
And the people on that Sanders campaign aren’t losers. They were kicked aside and everybody knows it too. That one action right there differentiates everyone nicely.
If you are on the Clinton camp, you get to deal with this ugly record and poor performance. Sanders doesn’t own that. He tried to contribute and bring the necessary support, message and all that into play.
Clinton told us TWICE we were not needed. Lost her ass too. I’m mad about that, because we could have won. Now we have a mad carnival barker as President Elect.
Maybe we were needed. Just maybe trying to tell voters who they are and what to think doesn’t work very well. Maybe fear and shame just isn’t how we rally the people for change.
Just maybe...
Now the nation is gonna find out about all of this, because the Sanders and soon Ellison team isn’t fucking around trying to CYA. They are out there doing what Sanders started and continues to do, which is build an enduring movement for real economic change. That’s being a Democrat through and through. Hard to get better actually.
Losers my ass. Yeah, this is a rant. I’m not gonna apologize for it. From where I stand, I see a seriously potent, well aligned, winning team in the making, and it sure as hell isn’t gonna perform on the same money and politics that got us here.
That’s the old guard. We can thank them for good that got done, and awesome social issue progress! Kudos well deserved.
Now it is time for new blood.
Time to change things up economically, pool our money to fund better politics directly, compete and win elections to secure a real, meaningful place for the people who need it the most at the policy table.
On a very basic level, after this election mess, nobody is going to get excited about the same old same old. It won’t be enough, and mid terms are coming too. This year, of all years, we need excitement heading into the mid-terms or we are going to lose AGAIN, and set our ideas and all those people in need back at least a generation, if not more.
It’s time for Progressives to quit being nice. We simply can’t afford it anymore.