Bernie Sanders, Put that Wagging Finger Back in Your Pocket

Want the Dems to win? Going on MSNBC with your old stump speech isn’t the way to do it. You have advice for Kamala? Call her on the phone and then take a nap.

Two admissions:

One, Kamala has dazzled me ever since I watched her brilliant interrogation of William Barr (and later, Brett Kavanaugh.) She was my pick for POTUS during the 2019 primaries until she was forced to drop out after pundits declared her campaign was “unravelling” and “sinking,” (demonstrated by “sliding” poll numbers, mostly from the very white early primary states.) I’ve been thrilled to see how both the playfulness and warmth that early supporters saw in her (largely in her social media presence; the corporate media didn’t follow her around the way they did Beto and Biden) and her power, courage, and dead-on aim in standing up to bullies (which didn’t play as well in 2019) has met its time.

Two—and this will come as no surprise to those familiar with my books and articles—I’ve wanted Bernie Sanders to go away for a long, long time. I appreciate the work he does inside the halls of the Senate. I just want him to stay there.

“Let it go!” I’ve been told, many times (referring to the part he played in sinking Hillary Clinton.) And maybe I could—if he didn’t keep sticking his wagging finger into the same wound.

Kamala Harris was everything this week, performing the almost impossible task of exposing how unstable and dangerous Trump is while at the same time outlining (concretely, not just as “concept”) how she plans to make people’s lives better AND projecting her signature “joy.”

(It was no surprise when some male commentator “wondered” out loud whether she’d had that one in her pocket, saved for the right occasion. Who cares? Can’t you just enjoy the quip the way you do with Obama?)

There was her terrific interview with Charlamagne Tha God which definitively answered the question of whether her outreach to Black men was an election tactic rather than part of the career-long passion for social justice that it’s actually been.

And then there was the unprecedented exposure of Fox’s slimy tactics. MSNBC anchors have been blasting Fox for years, while they stay cozy and sequestered in their own world, priding themselves on their own (often rather shaky) journalistic integrity. “We reached out to Fox for comment, but they haven’t returned our call” is as far as they ever go into enemy territory. Kamala, though, went right in there, and not only avoided every trap but—without anything saved “in her pocket”—caught Fox in one they’d unwittingly set for themselves.

How many times have we heard liberal male commentators bemoan the fact that Dems suck at “controlling the narrative”?

“Not anymore, baby,” I wrote on Facebook.

Bret Baier tried but couldn’t force her into the “deplorable” pothole.

She wouldn’t let him get away with constant interruption.

She put out there FACTS that Fox viewers have probably never heard before.

And..wow, I love you Kamala!!…She called him out for using the wrong clip! (Sorry, I couldn’t adjust this clip. If you know how, let me know!!)

Here’s the Fox snippet side by side with the full clip:

Teachers of writing often advise their students to “show” rather than “tell”: to bring readers into the world that the author is trying to create for them rather than explain it to them. MSNBC has been “telling” us about Right-Wing tactics for years. Kamala showed us. In real time. It was so devastating that Bret Baier himself was forced to issue an apology.

Kamala Harris has been magnificent.

I don’t think we need any more lefty male commentators telling her what she “needs to do,” do you?

But Bernie Sanders just can’t resist. He went on Alex Wagner’s show this week to advise Kamala that if she wants to win the election, she needs to do much more for the “working class.” (I put that in quotes because if you scratch at Bernie’s notion of “working class,” you usually find a white man with his sleeves rolled up, not a Honduran woman cleaning houses, wondering what she’s going to do now that she’s discovered she’s pregnant—and she lives in Texas.)

At the risk of losing half my “audience,” I’’m shortly going to play the whole clip of his appearance because I want you to see exactly what Bernie does in it. But first, I want to recall for you a comment Bernie made in December of 2019 to CNN reporter Annie Grayer. Hillary Clinton has spoken to Howard Stern the Wednesday before, saying that she believed the Democratic Party didn’t do enough to come together during the 2016 election cycle. Sanders, defensively, said that he “worked as hard as humanly possible” once Clinton was the Democratic nominee.

Well, no. Hardly. True, Sanders never said to “lock her up.” But he made no attempt to correct “Bernie or Busters” when they said things like: “If we don’t get Bernie, we’re not just going to automatically vote for the demon.” Nor did he dispute Susan Sarandon when she described Hillary Clinton as “more dangerous” than Donald Trump.

For weeks after Clinton had officially secured the majority of pledged delegates (on June 7), Sanders was still delivering his stump speech, broadcast on national television, saying his “political revolution” was just beginning, while Clinton supporters waited in vain for his endorsement. There had been rumors that it would be coming on June 17, but they proved wrong. Instead, Bernie delivered a speech in which while he described “the major political task that we face” as defeating Donald Trump, he did not endorse Clinton. Most of the speech was devoted to his standard critiques of economic, racial, and environmental inequalities in the country. He emphasized “the significant difference between him and Hillary on VERY, VERY important issues” (emphasis Bernie’s) and called on his supporters to continue his “revolution”: “We need new blood in the political process, and you are that new blood.”

When he spoke of taking the party back for “working people” and young people and out of the hands of rich donors, I wondered — not for the first time — how did the hundreds of thousands of Black Americans who supported Clinton fit in. Did he think they all owned Bentleys, were simply too old to count, or did he not notice the Black women among them?

In the days that followed his June 17 speech, those Sanders followers who had come round to accepting the fact that Clinton was the nominee invariably prefaced their reluctant support with phrases like “I don’t really like Mrs. Clinton, but . . .” Many remained who were actually hoping Trump would win: “[He’s] an asshole,” said one, “but I feel like he’s full of hot air. HRC is calculating, she’s conniving . . . If [she] wins in November, I feel like she will do whatever she can to squash the progressive movement. That movement dies.”

As the Democratic National Convention approached, “Bernie or Busters” began to organize protests. Bernie did nothing to tamp down their fury or their sexism. When the first night of the convention was disrupted by anti-Hillary hecklers in Bernie shirts handing out posters that said “War Hawk” and “Goldman Girl” and “Monsanto Mama” on them, he was silent. “If Bernie Sanders does not walk out of that thing as the nominee, we can guarantee you from that point on we’ll start the de-registration of the Democratic Party,” said one of the protestors. Bernie made no attempt to argue with such views.

When Sanders finally endorsed Hillary on July 12, speaking to a crowd in which many of his supporters jeered her name and held signs saying “Won’t Vote Hillary,” he looked grumpy and grudging and devoted most of his speech to congratulating himself and his followers for the “fight to create a government which represents all of us, and not just the one percent — a government based on the principles of economic, social, racial, and environmental justice.” He boasted of the races he had won, and was unable to resist a jab at party leaders by citing Clinton’s abundance of super delegates (read, in Sanders’s code: party hacks). He conceded that she “will be the Democratic nominee for president,” and then went on to formally endorse Hillary Clinton — finally.

It was not exactly a rousing call, designed to energize his supporters and redirect their passion toward Clinton. When Obama was nominated, Clinton had focused her endorsement for him on his accomplishments and abilities. But in his “endorsement,” Sanders returned once again to his own campaign, citing the impressive attendance at his rallies, and emphasizing that “this campaign is not really about Hillary Clinton, or Donald Trump, or Bernie Sanders, or any other candidate who sought the presidency. This campaign is about the needs of the American people and addressing the very serious crises that we face.” He conceded that “as we head into November, Hillary Clinton is far and away the best candidate to do that,” but as to her qualifications, he mentioned just two accomplishments: “as a great first lady who broke precedent in terms of the role that a first lady was supposed to play as she helped lead the fight for universal health care” and “as a fierce advocate for the rights of children.” Stellar accomplishments, yes, but rather gender typed, and hardly doing justice to the myriad ways in which Clinton had served the country.

My point? “Endorsing” is one thing. Stirring up enthusiasm is another. And planting seeds that discourage voters, even while you are officially “endorsing” is yet another. Bernie Sanders has never been able to subordinate his own need to be recognized as the champion of the “working class” to full-throated excitement over another candidate—particularly, it seems, if the candidate is a woman. (You did notice, didn’t you, how—after saying repeatedly that he’d love to see” the right kind of woman” as POTUS—he ran again himself in 2019 rather than support Elizabeth Warren’s primary campaign? He had every right to do so, of course. I’m just saying, there was a choice there, and he chose Bernie.)

And even with everything that’s now at stake, he’s still choosing Bernie:

A few things to note:

First and foremost, instead of highlighting a “missing message,” this could have been an opportunity for Bernie to correct any impressions that may be developing among union workers that Kamala is “not strong enough” when it comes to “working-class” problems. Presumably, he considers her much better than Trump, and late in the interview, he concedes the “enormous importance” of “a number of good ideas” that she’s put forth. But somehow, those don’t add up to “standing up for working families.”

Why not? First, it’s because Kamala’s proposals don’t include a position on the minimum wage. “It’s hard to understand why Kamala has not come out on that issue” he says. (Why not give her a call, Bernie, and ask her?)

Then, she hasn’t been “strong enough” on labor issues. Not like Biden, who Bernie considers the one “exception” to the Democrat’s weakness on working-class issues. When Alex points out that the Biden (unlike Hillary, who did much better) also got only 50% of the union vote, Bernie disputes her numbers (“The polling I’ve seen suggests Kamala is not doing as well”) and—although I don’t know who is correct about the numbers—one can discern a rising level of upset (louder voice, waging finger, etc.) in Sanders. Does he have an investment in Kamala being the “worst”?

When Alex points out that billionaires own the Republican Party and isn’t that a good enough contrast to get workers on Kamala’s side, Bernie points out that billionaires fund the Democrats, too. Well, that’s pretty darn helpful to a campaign that’s trying to present a “clear choice” to voters!

Finally, after Bernie has conceded that Kamala has those “good ideas” for helping working families, the problem becomes that she hasn’t been “emotional” enough about it. “People are hurting and need to know someone is standing up and fighting for them.” People need to be able to say: “Hey, see that lady there, she’s on my side. If she does that, she’ll win a whole lot more working people.”

If??

Here’s UAW President Shawn Fain:

Do I know why Kamala isn’t doing as well with labor unions as Hillary Clinton did? I’d have to do some serious research in order to even begin to speculate about that. I do know that Kamala is up against a whole lot of Trumpian mythology about how “real men” are supposed to behave that wasn’t as cultivated by MAGA in the 2016 election as it is now. And I’d want to do a more finely-tuned breakdown by gender, occupation, and age. “Working-class” is a huge tent. There are women in it, Bernie. Women whose control over their reproductive lives—and therefore their “income equality” (among other things)—is a “working-class” issue.

Maybe some in the “working-class” have been too busy working to sort things out in this extremely chaotic election.

But If the problem is people’s perceptions or lack of information (rather than something Kamala’s “not doing”) then what self-aggrandizing soapbox can Bernie stand on?

Michael Moore is another one “advising” Kamala Harris what she has to do. I’ll have to save him for a different time. When it came to criticisms of Hillary, they were twins. This time around their issues are different. But the hubris of these guys is cut from the same cloth. They either don’t realize that their “advice” is neither wanted or needed. Or—if they actually do care about helping Kamala win, why not communicate their superior thinking to her or her campaign directly and privately, rather than broadcast your “concerns” on national television?

Can their egos just lay low for a few weeks and let Harris show them that she knows what she’s doing?

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