Events are moving fast and it is hard to document and comment on them. We’re starting Day Two of the DNC and I am not a happy camper.
Let me tell you why I have a bad feeling:
(1) I think the Hillary people continue to underestimate the diehard Bernie people. It should be clear to everyone by now that Bernie Sanders created a monster that he can no longer control. My friend on the DNC floor last night informed me that the strategy was to let the Bernie people vent, and then it will all be over. Well, not from what I’ve seen. The news was full of Bernie delegates being interviewed saying one of two things (a) I’m going to Dr. Jill Stein or (b) The Clinton campaign is going to have to give up something.
Can’t do much about (a), so let’s look at (b). Already, the Bernie people have succeeded in:
- removing Wasserman-Schulz as the DNC chair
- gotten most of their platform approved, including major reforms for future elections
- a very public apology
- prime speaking spots
And now they want… more? What more is there to give?
All of Bernie’s Sighted supporters understood this. Virtually every one of his endorsers who has a track record in the give-and-take of real politics—union activists, elected officials, environmentalist leaders—has proclaimed, as Bernie has, that the revolution succeeded in moving the party and its nominee to the left, and that a Hillary Clinton presidency, whatever it shortcomings, would create the possibility of significant progressive organizing and victories, while a Trump presidency would be a reign of repression.
The drama of Monday was to see how many of the Blinkered Bernie backers—who saw only that revolutionary nirvana had yet to descend from the heavens, and who believed that Hillary and the Democrats were merely play-acting in their move leftward—could be persuaded by Bernie himself and his leading supporters to see the light. In an early afternoon meeting with his delegates, Sanders detailed all that they’d won on the primary trail and in the platform, and told them that electing Clinton was both essential for the nation and a prerequisite for further progressive advances. At which point, some of his supporters began booing.
We’re told not to panic — that 90% of the Bernie people, according to a Pew poll, will vote for Hillary. But the problem with that poll is that the respondents were only given a choice of Bernie or Hillary as a second choice. It didn’t give any third party candidates, or staying home. Nate Silver thinks (and I agree) that only 70% will vote for Hillary. In fact, I think it might be lower.
Conventional wisdom is that they will come around, just like Hillary’s people came around for Obama in 2008. Well, this isn’t 2008. Not even close. The rules are out the window. Conventional wisdom has been completely wrong this year. I don’t think they going to come to Hillary because I don’t think a lot of them are Democrats. They are a lefty version of Ron or Rand Paul. Insurgents who are fed up with “the system”, which they see as “rigged” (although it is becoming less and less clear to me what that means to them). I would almost venture to say they are anarchists. Some of them, particularly the millennials, are so obsessed with the idea of “revolution” that I seriously doubt they have any idea what they would do if it ever came.
Now, to be sure, they comprise a minority of the Sanders supporters, but it is a significant enough minority to make a difference in some swing states. And that worries me.
Talk to me, Rude Pundit:
Fuck you for not knowing your history and not wanting to do everything you can to stop someone like Trump from ascending to the White House and appointing Supreme Court justices, which will fuck us all for the rest of our lives. You know who agrees with us and disagrees with you? Bernie Sanders. Elizabeth Warren. Michael Moore. President Obama. And a fuck-ton of liberal writers (and a shitload of conservative writers, but fuck them where they stand anyways).
Do you think we’re all just lying to you? Do you think people across the left are liars or shills, including the dude you worshipped all this time? Or maybe, just maybe, we are sounding a warning bell, telling you that this shit is real. A Trump presidency is realer in its consequences than a Clinton one, however bad you think a Clinton presidency might be. Fuck, the Washington Post took the really unusual step to say, “Yeah, fuck this. Trump is a psychopath. Stop him.” That’s unheard of.
Don’t damn us to be Cassandras. Don’t let us stand there in 2017 and forward and say, “Told you so.” Probably from our cells in the gulag.
(2) I think support for Trump is stronger than people imagine. People are (and should be) ashamed to say they are part of the white bigot revolution. But when people pull the curtain behind them in the voting booth, there is no pollster there. They can pull any lever they want. It’s just them… alone.
In other words, I think polls are underestimating Trump’s appeal by 2-3 points. I think for Hillary to consider a state comfortably in her column, she would have to be up by 7 points at least.
Never underestimate the power of white rage in its death throes.
(3) Mother Russia, Well, clearly they are trying to influence the elections. You think the hacking is going to stop at the DNC? Why not election results?