Y’all know who you are. You’re the folks who don’t hate Sen. Sanders. Who don’t blame him or his supporters for our failure in 2016. Who aren’t interested in continuously revisiting and raking up the poisonous atmosphere of that misbegotten year. Who actually agree with much of what Sen. Sanders says and proposes, yet nevertheless voted for Joe Biden.
You’re the folks the pundits, observers and analyst are talking about when they describe Bidens’ support as being based on the overwhelming necessity of defeating Trump and the calculation that Biden can do it but Sanders can’t.
Now I’m a Sanders supporter, make no mistake about that. I disagree with the calculation above but I can certainly understand how others might make it. I can respect that choice, even while disagreeing, because it is a disagreement about tactics rather than strategic goals.
Unfortunately it is becoming increasingly evident, in my opinion, that not everyone shares this view. It seems apparent, again in my opinion, that there is a certain faction here and elsewhere that would put an entirely different reading on your vote. One that argues that your vote was not only explicitly anti-Sanders, but explicitly a rejection of the Left Progressive agenda that he champions.
Rather than seeing your vote as a mandate for a unified push to defeat Trump, such folks seemingly see it as a mandate for a campaign against Left Progressives in the Democratic Party and Left Progressivism generally.
I don’t know what else to make of the gratuitous, distorted, duplicitous and frankly bizarre attacks that I’ve seen being launched against some of Sen. Sanders Congressional supporters. They clearly have nothing to do with uniting the Democratic Party against Trump in November. I can only conclude that those making them are more interested in defeating Left Progressives than they are in defeating Trump.
One has to wonder why?
I can’t tell you or anyone else what to do. I only know what I would do if I were in your shoes. I sure wouldn’t remain silent while my vote was exploited to condemn the values that have mobilized millions in the political process, shifting our national political debate substantially to the Left over the past 4 years. I’d be raising the roof to make it plain that my vote wasn’t something to be appropriated by others for their own purposes.
Certainly not to promote an agenda of political bloodletting among Democrats.
Yrs,
Walt