So. Last Friday, 7 members of the House of Representatives opposed Donald Trump’s investiture as President. Some cited the Russian hacking, some cited the fact that some of the R electors were not validly appointed, due to laws preventing them from holding two offices at once. These are allegations of rigging and corruption in relation to our electoral processes. They needed one Senator to join them to trigger at least an investigation. Not one did.
Where was Bernie?
Bernie Sanders, the person who made a crusade of accusations of rigging and corruption in the electoral process. He shouted about it for months, accusing the DNC and Hillary Clinton of collusion, rigging, corruption. Surely you all remember that. (Whether it was true or not is another question, and not what I am addressing here). But last Friday, faced with hard evidence of real corruption and real rigging, what did Bernie do? Nada. Zero. Zilch.
Yes, Democrats also did nothing. But they have not touted themselves as the one true progressive voice, as the only person willing to stand up and tell it like it is, take on rigging and corruption, take on the establishment. That was Bernie’s line, and the standard to which we should hold him.
Here was his opportunity to stand up against actual rigging and corruption, and take on the establishment. And he did nothing.
I have my theory as to why Bernie did nothing on Friday. But it doesn’t include any practical analysis that it wouldn’t have led to any different outcome. That is clearly not what Bernie was selling before. He castigated Hillary Clinton for not being pure enough, not being progressive enough, and to hell with practicality. Don’t he and his followers consider “pragmatic progressivism” a sellout?
Now, let’s forget some facts. Let’s forget that while he was calling Hillary (and the DNC) corrupt for raising campaign funds, he has happily taken money from the Hillary Fund (and the DNC) for his own Senate races. Let’s forget that he used campaign funds to pay for a $650,000 junket to Rome, while claiming that it wasn’t a campaign event. Let’s forget that he castigated Hillary for trading on her political fame for money, the proceeds of which went to help HIV patients in Africa, then turned around and traded on his political fame for money, the proceeds of which went to buy himself a $600,000 holiday house. Let’s forget how violent and nasty his supporters were, and what weak tea was his excuse for it. Let’s forget how he hated superdelegates, then loved them, then was silent while his followers threatened things like cutting their tongues out if they didn’t support him.
Let’s not watch while he tries to take sole credit for an initiative sponsored by himself and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. Let’s ignore that he is now trying to take credit for Hillary’s policy on raising the cap on Social Security contributions, or happily sits on stage, by implication taking credit, while Governor Cuomo announces introduction of Hillary’s plan for college tuition.
Let’s just look at what he did, or rather didn’t do, on Friday, and how that stacks up against what he has been saying all these many months.
Doesn’t look good.
Why am I bringing all this up? Why now? We all have to pull together, no? Well, I agree with that, and I agreed with that back in late March 2016. The folks who didn’t seem to get that message were Bernie himself, and his followers. He is now striving mightily to position himself as a leader of our resistance, and using the same tactics – taking credit for others’ ideas, smearing people who’ve worked on this stuff for decades, and suggesting that folks like me should be purged.
I happen to disagree with all of those tactics. I will go further. I think he has done great damage, both in the race just lost and also for the future, by fostering a sense of grievance and a cult of personality; rather than getting people involved in the electoral process, he has gotten them involved in Bernie Sanders.
And I would like them to take a closer look. I am tired of his divisive tactics. I am tired of the entire holier-than-thou approach: being called a shill, an elite (as a pejorative; I am elite in that I am educated and I think, and happy to be so), and “not progressive,” because I happened to see through Bernie a while ago.
And what did I see, and still see?
A man who is happy to take credit for others’ ideas. News flash, support for universal health care is not new, and not invented by him. As always, it’s about the “how,” for which he had no solution.
A man who is willing to lie about and smear others to elevate himself.
A hypocrite – she’s corrupt to raise campaign funds, but he’s OK to spend them, eh?
A man who is willing to lie to his followers in order to foster in them a sense of grievance, again to the benefit of himself.
A man who is comfortable with nastiness and violence in his followers, and in fact encourages their sense of rage, grievance, and unfairness, so long as it works to his advantage.
A man who decries pragmatism in others, but is in fact ruthlessly pragmatic. He does everything, so far as I can see, with an eye toward aggrandising or benefitting himself. If an action doesn’t serve that end, then he won’t do it; if it does serve that end, then he will do it.
That is the only explanation I can come up with for him not speaking out on Friday. It wouldn’t benefit himself, so he got pragmatic in his own service and decided it was not, in fact, worth the risk of standing up to the establishment.
Now, go ahead and smear me, leap thrillingly to his defense, and compare him and excuse him …. But I can’t see, for all you progressive purists out there, how you can overlook his inaction on Friday. He falls far short of the pedestal you and he have constructed. He looks like just another jobbing politician to me, milking his time in the sun for all it’s worth ($600,000 and counting), just a little nastier than most on our side of the aisle.