It seems to be in full force not only on blogs like Palmer Report, for example, but also on my local 5 PM news tonight! It needs to be called out, because it is either irrational or an aspect of Dem establishment corruption (along with some help from Russian bots, etc.), but of course we may never know all the details. What we do know is that the establishment punditocracy and celebupunditocracy (such as the women on "The View"), for whatever reason, can't seem to find any reasonable way to attack Bernie (see my last DK post on that subject), so this is their new tactic, apparently.
The tactic is to act outraged that there is a "Bernie Bro" who has said something they deem unacceptable (perhaps like Biden's "dog face pony boy?"), even in the case of anonymous online people. In the case of actual people who have some sort of standing, Bernie has taken action, for example, retracting an endorsement of Cenk Uygur (formerly of MSNBC and lead pundit on The Young Turks, which is on Youtube, Pluto TV, etc.), simply because some anonymous person claimed that Cenk is a racist and "zoophile." The reality is that Cenk was being sarcastic in an interview with David Duke (all one needs to be is to watch the interview and see for yourself, as it couldn't be more obvious how anti-Duke Cenk is). The bestiality claim was related to a joke, where Cenk said he would take the "pro-bestiality" side for the sake of argument, and again, one can watch that and see for oneself. That didn't stop the NYT from running with the story, until they had to retract it after all the backlash. Clearly, if Bernie were to disavow every anonymous "Bernie Bro" comment, that would open the floodgates to troll farms and establishment operatives, which would then bog down his campaign in a large number of unnecessary apologies, make him "look weak," and possibly alienate him from actual supporters.
If Bernie had the background of say someone who told his supporters to attack jouralists and he would then pay for their legal bills (guess who has done that?), then I would have no interest in supporting him, but that is not the case, as his decades-long record is there for all to see. Because of that, those who want to "take him down" can't seem to find a way to assail him. Thus, in recent days, we see ludicrous attacks against Bernie by major pundits, with Mimi Rocah of MSNBC saying he "makes my skin crawl" and Chris Matthews saying that he doesn't think Bernie would stop and help if he saw Chris on the side of the road and in need of help (but he did think the other Dem candidates would help). The other day, actually, Bernie went into the audience at a rally to help someone who had fainted.
So, we are supposed to be enraged by anonymous online people who might be working for Vlad Putin, but we are supposed to applaud people like Rocach and Matthews? Some pundits are saying things like, "this is out of control, Bernie needs to step in and do something about his thuggish followers immediately," while in fact they are the ones who are enanged in an outrageous act against Bernie (and this is at the same time they are arguing for "party unity"). My guess? They think Bernie will get the most delegates but not enough for the nomination, so they are trying to figure out how to justify giving the nomination to someone like Bloomberg. Do that, and I think I'm done with both parties!
My background: I'm no Bernie Bro, as I supported HRC in 2016. Bernie did a great job for HRC, who didn't seem all that interested in campaigning for herself! We went the "moderate" route and lost, then there's Obama, who campaigned as at least a semi-progressive with "hope and change," giving us an old GOP health care plan while bailing out Wall Street (not Main Street, though) for the "banksters." And while I was critical of Susan Sarandon's reasoning in 2016, I now think that that her reasoning back then is applicable now. If you disagree and believe that Bloomberg is something other than a 1990s Republican, at best, for example, that's fine, and I would vote for him even if he essentially buys the nomination, but not if Bernie gets the most delegates. If he does and is not the nominee, I am not sure I will vote GOP or Dem ever again! And I wouldn’t be surprised if the establishment Dems don’t care, though, as they may be more interested in keeping control of the DNC and the direction of the party, as well as avoiding irritating their rich donors, than in anything else.
UPDATE: I just saw this and it made me feel sick. I can’t support this guy:
www.theyeshivaworld.com/…
Remember the GOP debate where people in the audience said, “let them die?” Now we have one of those “bros” running as a Dem! And I then learned there are about 60 sexual harrassment claims against him too!
Also, note all the attacks against my position because it’s possible there are some real “unhinged Bernie Bros.” What does that change? How is that Bernie’s responsibility? He is being blamed for things that are beyond his control while we have Biden calling young ladies horrible things and Bloomberg’s record comes across as what I’d expect of a terrible Republican politician! But I guess there are no good responses to this, and so deflection is the only avenue remaining...