Tag Archives: Bernie Sanders

Bernie, Biden and the Billionaire

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Democratic presidential candidates are dropping faster than the hairs in Donald Trump’s comb-over.  In the past 24 hours alone, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar both folded their tents and departed the battlefield…and despite a recent comeback, there is speculation that money problems will soon force Elizabeth Warren to join them in retreat.  

So much for the great diversity that once distinguished our Democratic roster.

After South Carolina, middle-of-the-road Democrats are putting all of their eggs in Joe Biden’s basket, rather conspicuously empty before S.C.  Now, it’s an unveiled rush to stop Bernie.

Warren will hang-on through Super Tuesday, picking up some delegates here and there, and should have some serious clout in negotiating the platform, come convention time, regardless of whether Bernie manages to weather the anti-Bernie scrum to secure the nomination.  If the Biden Bunch freeze out both popular progressives, they do so, not just at their own peril, but at the risk of ensuring Trump’s hate agenda gets another four years.

…And, what if Biden stumbles again and they push Bloomberg into the breach?

It’s easy enough for us old-timers to see how essential it is that we hold our noses and vote for the party’s pick, regardless of whom that might be; but it is shear self-delusion to expect such sangfroid from young voters who represent our best hope of decisively defeating Donald Trump this year.

Will the successful nominee have the presence of mind to choose Kamala Harris for VP?  I wouldn’t count on it.  

Our hallowed “two party system” and the imperial presidency it has engendered, seems to be careening toward its inevitable end.                                                                                                                                  ……………………………………………………………………………….

Imagine what four more years of Trump will look like.  I have. 

Trump will adopt some kind of goofy uniform to hide his shame at being a known draft-dodger. 

Using coronavirus as a lame-brained reason to exclude non-white immigrants,  he will, by ’emergency’ decree, finally close the border with Mexico. 

He’ll print a new denomination of paper money with his picture on it. It will have to be a HUGE denomination… a billion dollar bill has a nice ring to it.   That billion dollar bill will have roughly the value of a $100. bill after he finishes manipulating the currency. That way, plenty of billion dollar bills, with his picture on them, will be in circulation.  Free advertising!

After appointing a replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsberg, he’ll finally be able to do away with Obamacare, once and for all.  Instead we will be treated to his own personal product:“Great Care,”  from the newly formed entity, “Trump Insurance.”  It will replace Medicare, eliminate Medicaid and, of course, be mandatory…for a “nominal” fee.  No prior conditions need apply.

Rape, sexual harassment and discriminatory practices will be decriminalized, because “Boys will be boys.”  Punishment for violations of what few prohibitions remain will be meted out in community service sentences, to be served by clearing trash and weeds at a ‘needy’ Trump property.

Ivanka will finally get to chair the Fed and Don Jr. can hunt freely, after hours at the National Zoo…or any other place that takes his fancy.

Liberated at last from the need to smile frozenly to ‘sell’ her husband’s humanity to the unwashed masses, Melania will ditch the White House, take a lover and move to a castle in Transylvania.

The editorial staffs of the NY Times and the Washington Post will be arrested and detained without trial, as will anyone who ever dared speak ill of the Orange Emperor. This should come as no surprise to Bill Maher!  

Finally created “Attorney General For Life”, William Barr will abandon all pretense and give his liege the “Roy Cohn” he has always pined for.

The super rich will get richer and the poor will get lots more children (after birth control and abortion are outlawed);  and minimum wage will be a thing of the past.

There will be no standards for anything.  Food safety will no longer be monitored,  infrastructure projects, housing and commercial developments will proceed without inspections or permits.  Instead, people will be encouraged to buy a whole lot of accident and injury insurance, just in case. The Trump Insurance Co. LLC. will create a product  called “Accidental Living,” for the new marketplace. 

Life will be short and brutal, but the stock market will never again have a down day.

“Bernie Bros?” I Think NOT.

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Seventy-year old cash-poor female weighing-in here, (for what it’s worth):

Please don’t perpetuate the myth that Bernie Sanders supporters are mostly young, male and angry. For all we know, you may be guilty of disseminating Russian misinformation .  

Sanders supporters are representative of voters across the age and gender spectrum.  Their loyalty to the candidate is a reflection of Bernie’s own consistency throughout forty years of public service.  Smart voters have learned to distinguish authenticity from pandering, and trust Bernie to be true to his principles.  

He does not claim that he can deliver Medicare For All on his own, but charges American voters with holding Congress’ feet to the fire until they find a way to make it happen here, just as similar programs have been adopted across the advanced world. That’s good enough for me.  The presidency was never intended to be a platform from which to arbitrarily impose a single person’s will, nor should it be the special instrument of any lobby or industry.   

A  president should provide vision and leadership, but bend to the will of the voters who have the absolute power to replace underperforming congresspersons.  If, as polling suggests, we truly want Medicare For All, or any other form of universal healthcare, we must insist that our representatives make that their priority. 

As a long-time Sanders supporter, I am getting pretty tired of hearing non-supporters characterize our thoughts and inclinations.  

“Mr. Sanders followers have no affinity for anyone other than him.” (Emerson Lynn, St. Albans Messenger)

Not true.  Most supporters whom I know have had to struggle with the choice between Bernie and Elizabeth Warren.  I certainly did and will be more than glad of either candidate as the nominee.

I would have added Kamala Harris to that roster had she stayed in the race.  

Those are just my top choices, beyond which I can readily get behind Amy Klobuchar for her level-headed people skills and Pete Buttigieg for his Obama-like statesmanship.

I can, in fact, willingly support any of the viable Democratic candidates.  They all have different ideas as to how we can achieve it, but share the conviction that we must find a way to provide universal healthcare.

We will have a single very strong ticket coming out of the convention, no matter which two people are chosen to run, and this is not just because any alternative to Donald Trump would represent a vast improvement.  They would each, individually, bring a different and valuable set of talents to the office while restoring some of the ethics and gravitas that have been stripped from government in the Trump administration.

I suspect that tales of the so-called “Bernie Bros” may be largely the product of disinformation campaigns generated from the right (or Russian cyber sneaks?) to divide voters on the left.   From my experience of decades of Vermont campaigns, the abusive behaviors attributed to these supporters simply do not ring true.  I have no doubt that there are individuals of every stripe who behave badly, but I simply can’t give credence to the idea that this is at all common among Bernie’s supporters.  

Quite the contrary, in fact.  I have attended numerous local “town halls” over the years, where Bernie shared pizza with all and sundry and fielded questions from constituents, friend and foe. ‘No sign of those “Bernie Bros,” leaving me to wonder from whence they materialized in national politics.

His authenticity may be one of the reasons why, throughout the decades, he has enjoyed consistent support even in Franklin County, still a Republican stronghold.

Now that Bernie appears to be the “front-runner” (whatever that means), there seems to be a drive toward hysteria in the center-left political class over what they are certain is his “unelectability.”  Rather than attempting to draw Bernie and his supporters out with informed discussions of the true meaning of Democratic Socialism, the media seems to be joining the panic parade.  That Bernie refuses to lie to voters with a comfortingly pat narrative about how we get to Medicare for all, should reassure anyone with common sense, but we have become so accustomed to political lies that we are suspicious when a candidate doesn’t play that game.

As harsh as it is, I’ve pretty much abandoned hope for the long-term future of American democracy as a whole. The founding fathers made a few huge miscalculations in not better limiting presidential powers and screwing around with “representative” government rather than direct democracy.  Those failures just became exacerbated over the duration by unprincipled gerrymandering and money flooding into the electoral process.  With Citizens United we unlocked the candy store and threw away the key.

There’s little chance Congress will ever plug the giant holes in the democratic dike so we will probably become little more than a cautionary tale for future societies toying with competing models for fair governance.  

We’ve had our shot…and we blew it…bigly. 

Ballad of Bernie and Elizabeth

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It’s happening again.  Media presumptions and lazy polling are hurrying Democrats to put all of  their eggs in one basket,  Last time it was the Hillary basket.  Hillary Clinton was the easily-recognized middle-of-the- road candidate; a sure-fire fund-raiser, linked to a popular past administration.

The same can all be said of Joe Biden.

With the ugly evidence tweeting daily right before our noses, that taking a chance on a charismatic candidate with a transformative message can blow convention right out of the water, the pundits still insist that Biden is our safest bet for 2020.

Nobody seems to believe he is our “best” bet, just the “safest;” and in that i think they are dead wrong.

Authenticity is what the majority of American voters respond to.  With the entire Republican Party hog-tied and submissive to an outrageous lout, that lout remains the only authentic Republican on the national stage.  That he is authentically ignorant uncurious, apparently incapable of telling the truth and incredibly offensive to three-fourths of the population doesn’t matter, he tells his lies with an angry conviction that the Rabid Right continue to confuse with authenticity.

Democrats have many fine and qualified candidates to choose from, but only two have a history of fierce authenticity that represents a true polar opposite to Trump’s populist appeal.

Those candidates are Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders who have both demonstrated consistency and a career- long commitment to the ideas they are championing in this election.

As they must repeatedly remind us, the argument that Medicare-for-all is economically unfeasible is belied by the fact that in every other advanced nation, healthcare is a human right; costs are magnitudes lower than our own; and outcomes are better.  

Those who oppose universal healthcare suggest it would mean “throwing (however many tens of thousands) people off of their plans” without a safety net; but that is a complete mischaracterization.  

The template is here already.  Medicare, as a program, already exists.  There is no question but that it should be improved; but so should the Affordable Care Act, were we to continue with that template.  The only way to take control of healthcare costs is to TAKE CONTROL OF THEM.  That means negotiating costs for the entire country as a buying bloc; and ultimately eliminating the parasitic sick-care “ insurance” and hospital billing industries.  

This is a vision, not for January 2021, but for the very near future.  It will require careful planning and incremental adoption.  Democrats should start singing from the same songbook now, because they are the only party national that has any real commitment to public healthcare.  If they don’t think and articulate boldly, we are doomed to an ever less-inclusive healthcare system.  And that means we are doomed to become a poorer nation.

If Americans truly want to believe themselves better than everyone else, why do they accept a healthcare system that leaves us with cadillac costs and outcomes little better than those of a banana republic? 

We have to replace not just Mad King Donald, but the Senate Republican majority, who will surely be at their most vulnerable by November 2020, since it looks like we’re going to get that recession that’s been threatening. 

I’ll support whomever the Democrats nominate, but I have a very bad feeling about the race to anoint the least objectionable candidate.

Joe Biden is not the answer

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Democrats need to think outside of the box.

Joe Biden is not the answer.

He’s a nice man but he is too old, too encumbered by establishment political history, and slow to admit his own mistakes.  I wish he would take himself out of the running, because we have played this scene before.

We can do better.

If there is any overarching lesson to take away from the perilous state of our union, it is that old assumptions and conventional wisdom can no longer be relied upon.  The same must be said about polls, focus groups, handicapping and other tools of the political trade.

There’s no such thing as a sure thing in topsy turvy Trumpland, where he is still fully capable of criminal election meddling in full sight.

Don’t pick a candidate based on what Pennsylvania might do. If the people of Pennsylvania can’t figure out that ANY candidate is better than Donald Trump, even after two years of his venomous lies and letdowns, the disease has progressed too far and the patient will die.

Democrats are just too polite and rational.  They think that the problem in 2016 was that Hillary wasn’t “relatable.”  The idea is that Biden will dish-out some of his blue collar B.S. and Trump’s base of noble working men will come a-running.

Bullshit. 

Trump’s faithful base is a white supremacist soup of religious haters, woman haters, brown haters  and repressed homophobes.  Democrats should not be offering anything that would  win their votes.  

I grew up in the 1950’s, in a lower middle-class household, in a blue-collar neighborhood.  Both of my parents had to work, because they thought they had to send us to Catholic school and otherwise couldn’t afford to do so.  They scraped and they struggled throughout their lives and never took a nickel in public assistance until the blessed relief of Social Security and Medicare kicked in;  but they NEVER looked down their noses at those who did, and they taught us tolerance and progressive values despite being given every opportunity to be bitter and resentful.

If my parents could be kind of heart and generous of mind, there is no excuse for the poisonous attitude that seems to have possessed the Trump base.

I’m tired of hearing that Democrats have to somehow “win over” those misanthropes, just as I am tired of seeing the outstanding women in the race treated as if they shouldn’t aspire beyond Vice-President, and the one proud Democratic Socialist, relegated to a sidebar, despite the fact that he stubbornly refuses to slip away from the top polling positions and his central ideas spring from the few really good public policies that we all depend upon.

If we don’t strive to be better than this, we deserve what we get.  

Put Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris on the debate platform opposite Donald Trump and be done with it.  Was there ever a more important moment to take a courageous stand?

After the dust clears, if we still have a “United States of America” maybe we’ll finally have the guts to mandate public funding for elections, eliminate special interest funding, put some guardrails on the presidency, and really do something about the environment.

If we can’t do that, what is the bloody point?

A Message from Senator Bernie Sanders

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Green Mountain Daily is grateful for the opportunity  to bring you Bernie Sanders‘ own words on this troubling occasion.

BURLINGTON, Vt., Nov. 9 – U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) issued the following statement Wednesday after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States:

“Donald Trump tapped into the anger of a declining middle class that is sick and tired of establishment economics, establishment politics and the establishment media. People are tired of working longer hours for lower wages, of seeing decent paying jobs go to China and other low-wage countries, of billionaires not paying any federal income taxes and of not being able to afford a college education for their kids – all while the very rich become much richer.

“To the degree that Mr. Trump is serious about pursuing policies that improve the lives of working families in this country, I and other progressives are prepared to work with him. To the degree that he pursues racist, sexist, xenophobic and anti-environment policies, we will vigorously oppose him.”

Will Hell Freeze-Over?

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I came to world awareness by the fluorescent glow of a “Sylvania Silver Screen,” at the tender age of twelve, as the Cuban Missile Crisis unfolded before my very eyes. Never before were children subject to the real-time spectacle of adults playing dangerous war games that tempted Armageddon while they sat powerless in their living rooms.

I was absolutely terrified and vividly remember the nightmare I had one night while convinced I wouldn’t live to see thirteen.

In the dream, I found myself cowering beneath the bay window in our living room, attempting to hide from the sight of Satan and his minions looming large in a battle orange sky of smoke and hellfire through which they sailed triumphant in a “brand new swept-wing Dodge.”

Credit Catholic school and Madison Avenue for that lurid flight of fancy, but it was one of those dreams that used to stay with me for days and made me afraid of going to sleep at night.

Fifty-five years later, on the eve of another historic moment, I feel drawn to that memory like never before.

It is perhaps an appropriate juxtaposition, because as we learned much later, the events we witnessed on TV brought us closer to nuclear oblivion than ever before or since. Only the restraint exercised by President Kennedy at the critical moment prevented an exchange of nuclear warheads that would have most certainly made my worst nightmare come true.  Imagine how Donald Trump might behave under similar circumstances.

This weekend was our last before the final chapter of an election that has seen bigotry, misogyny, boldface lies, saber rattling, threats of revenge and incitement to violence characterize the campaign of the Republican nominee; a man with absolutely no policy experience, no record of public service, no curiosity to learn the basics of our governance, and a personal history of cheating, meanness, childishness and incivility.

Thus described, Donald Trump sounds like he could have only reached this apex in a fevered adolescent dream such as I had so many years ago. Yet, here we are in the grips of a madness that appears to have ensnared upwards of half the nation.

If our democracy survives the next four years, it’s not sufficient to breathe a sigh of relief and go on as we were.
  The Trump response, which has brought us so dangerously close to the precipice this time, is the proverbial canary in a coal mine.

The practice of representative democracy that has worked for us reasonably well throughout the twentieth century is beginning to wear down the fabric of our functional federation in the twenty-first. Gerrymandering has further undermined the “representative” nature of that relationship and heightened the sense of disenfranchisement among significant populations.

Resolved long ago into a two-party system, there was an unspoken agreement that partisan politics must nevertheless adhere to certain rules of pragmatism in order to allow government to function. As the population grew and diversified and economic power became further consolidated in a ruling elite, that unspoken agreement was no longer acceptable to a growing sector of the population whose values and priorities could not be easily be resolved into two competing but cooperative interest groups.

What the Republican party has been experiencing in recent election cycles amounts to a hostile takeover by a coalition of extreme right wing factions and so-called Christian “conservatives.” That take over seems almost guaranteed to formally bifurcate the party following this election.

Hostile even to the rule of constitutional law (apart from the second amendment), the Republican base has come to reward bad governing behavior that does nothing more than prevent business from being conducted in a responsible manner. They have broken the contract with “we the people” to represent the interests of the majority who simply want their government to function smoothly.

It is no accident that the Libertarians have become more and more of a factor in every election cycle.

So far Democrats have managed to contain their friable factions, but many are far from satisfied with the nomination process and the role that corporate wealth has been allowed to play in party priorities.

Democrats, being fundamentally more inclusive and forward thinking than Republicans, seem to have pulled off one more unity drive successfully in 2016; but many in the party’s establishment are blaming Bernie and his supporters for their troubles rather than accepting that his strength is a sign that Democrats are in their own early stages of sclerotic deterioration, relying too heavily on political retreads like the Clintons and assuming that everyone will just fall in line “for the good of the party.”

Personally, I think we will see the two party system weaken more and more in future election cycles as the internet shapes new alternatives into viable “third party” options. I hope that the attraction of the Alt Right to working class white voters will be diminished as saner alternatives allow them to feel more civilly empowered.

Coalitions may be the wave of the future, giving more individuals reason to feel better represented, and quite possibly bridging the two-party gulf that has held twenty-first century American progress in handcuffs.

One can only hope so.

***Meanwhile, get out there and vote for Hillary, for crying out loud!  This is not a drill!!

Endorsement Season!

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Like so many others, I have been spellbound for too long by the train wreck on the national campaign stage.  ‘Time for a cup-half-full moment, as we note some of the great endorsements netted by a few deserving folks.

Since it could be argued that this is the year of Bernie Sanders, perhaps the best endorsements of the 2016 campaign season flow from his celebrated hands.  Of course, Bernie reserves his stamp of approval in state races for the few, the proud:  the Progressives!

He has bestowed this blessing on Dave Zuckerman for Lieutenant Governor; auditor Doug Hoffer for reelection; Senate candidates Anthony Pollina (Washington) and Chris Pearson (Chittenden); and House candidates: Jill Charbonneau (Chittenden 1); Mari Cordes (Addison 4); Celene Colburn (Chittenden 6-4); Diana Gonzalez (Chittenden 6-7); Susan Davis (Orange1); Robin Chestnut-Tangerman (Rutland-Bennington); Mollie Burke (Brattleboro); Sandy Haas (Rochester); and my good friend Cindy Weed, who is once again standing for the House in Franklin 7.

If I missed anyone, please chime in in the comments. I put this list together a little hastily as I wanted to be sure to get it up on GMD in a somewhat more timely manner than has lately been my habit.

Vermont Conservation Voters (VCV) has released their full roster of statewide endorsements, just in time for early voting which began today, and a couple of Bernie’s picks are in that lineup, as well.

Making the VCV “Team” are Sue Minter for Governor, Dave Zuckerman for Lieutenant Governor, Jim Condos for Auditor Secretary of State, T.J. Donovan for Attorney General, and Doug Hoffer for Auditor.

Anyone familiar with the sustainability mission of Vermont Conservation Voters will not be the least bit surprised by their picks.

“Vermont Conservation Voters is pleased to endorse a slate of statewide candidates with strong environmental values, all of whom are committed to ensuring the state continues working toward healthy drinking water for all Vermonters, clean lakes and rivers, climate action, sustainable communities, and other environmental priorities,” said Lauren Hierl, Political Director for Vermont Conservation Voters.

It may surprise some that the VCV has declined to endorse for Treasure, but also consistent with their mission is the obligation to occasionally withhold the ‘carrot’ as well as the ‘stick:”

“VCV is not endorsing a candidate in the Treasurer’s race this year. While VCV appreciates Treasurer Beth Pearce’s work on issues such as water quality funding and energy efficiency investments, the organization is hoping to see more leadership from the Treasurer’s office on divesting the state’s pension investment portfolio from fossil fuels”.

Congratulations to all the above, and good luck in the coming fray.

Peter Welch gets it.

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Apparently, House Democrats actually booed Bernie Sanders today when he didn’t commit to a speedy endorsement of Hillary Clinton, which comes as no surprise to his steadfast supporters.

The notable exception to this establishment fit of pique was Vermont’s own Congressman Peter Welch, a bold Bernie endorser, who today  restated Sanders’ own message, that this is not just about winning a single election:

A lot of members are anxious about when is he going to explicitly support Hillary,” said Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.). “And what he’s saying is that’s an ongoing process. But if we want to win, we’ve got to take the long view that we need a platform that is going to genuinely create excitement for our nominee…What he said very clearly is we’ve got to beat Trump, and the way he believes we’re going to do it is by having a commitment to an agenda that excites people, including the younger people. And he’s working on that.”

Exactly.

Party stalwarts who seek to extinguish the Bernie phenomena, do so at their own risk. The vast crowds that turned out to hear Bernie on the campaign trail are building on a movement that first brought its aspirations to support Barack Obama; then, frustrated by glacial progress, evolved into Occupy Wall Street.

If their demands are callously exploited and swept aside once again for short-term political considerations, the Democratic party will have squandered an entire generation of support.

What better time to move forward with commonsense progressive agenda items that reflect the values of our increasingly diverse youth population, than when the Republican nominee is the most unpopular, even repellant candidate in recent history?

It’s now, or, quite possibly, never.

Campaign dollars to donuts

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Insidegov.com has taken the time to catalog some of the day to day ways the Republican and Democratic presidential primary candidates have spent millions of campaign bucks. Using Federal Election Commission filings they have documented the primary season through the Iowa’s Caucus and New Hampshire primary- from Jan. 1, 2015 to Feb. 29, 2016.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign has a slight lead over Bernie Sander’s on the amount they spent at Dunkin Donuts.  However Clinton’s donut and coffee tab of $2,806.00 only slightly exceeds the $2,577.00 Sander’s campaign spent. Some still maintain Sanders will close this gap.doughnuts

In addition to coffee and donuts the Clinton campaign has spent aggressively on pizza. Clinton campaign staffers around the country were treated to $17,000 worth of pizzas –mostly from Domino’s.

While the Clinton team munched, Sanders’ campaign bought his book. Reportedly they spent almost $455,000 at Verso Books on Outsider in the White House, the book Bernie wrote.

Republicans and Democrats combined spent $111,703 on Uber Rides . And the filings show the Trump campaign loves Trump’s businesses. Trump ran up $665,461 in rent and lodging expenses with Trump owned businesses Trump Tower, Trump Grill and the Trump Payroll Corporation. It is all about what’s good for the Donald, who also spent heavily on security, shelling out almost $200,000 for  “security services” and “security consulting”.

Not sure if this spending explains anything of significance about each candidate — other than the Clinton campaign goes for pizza, Bernie bought his own book and Trump is feeding his campaign money back to his business empire .

But I for one would love to know what exactly losing Republican candidate Dr. Ben Carson got out of more than $6 million he spent on various types of consultants, or what fate has in store for $300,000 worth of Rubio bumper stickers, T-shirts, signs, hats and sweatshirts.

I wonder if Vermont GOP leadership (who cleverly supported Marco Rubio) stocked up on Rubio sweats and T-shirts?

The DNC as Chicken Little

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“The sky is falling! the sky is falling!” “Donald Trump is gaining on Hillary!”

It’s Chicken Little time at the DNC.

Following the dust-up at the Nevada Convention all artifice of civility has been suspended.

No, I’m not talking about the handful of Bernie supporters in Nevada, but the hyperbolic response from the DNC as it closes ranks with what it thinks is the best argument for shutting Bernie down.

This is what it’s come to.

Bernie has been saying since he entered the race that he is in it until the Convention, but apparently the Party elders didn’t believe him.

You don’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs and you don’t mount a revolution spouting nothing but platitudes and  pleasantries from a place of no-contest.

Suddenly, Bernie Sanders is evil incarnate and has to throw in the towel so as not to ‘damage’ Hillary.

Newsflash: she’s already damaged; she was damaged coming into the race.

As intelligent and experienced as she is, she persistently transmits inauthenticity and entitlement in an election year that despises both. Even if there were no Bernie Sanders, these traits would not win the day.

And dragging out her equally damaged husband as her standard bearer in the crisis only makes matters worse. It plays to the worst stereotypes about women; the ones we had hoped the first female presidential candidate would kick to the curb.

This is a teaching moment for the DNC: never assume.

Why was Martin O’Malley the only card-carrying Democrat to challenge Hillary for the nomination? There certainly is plenty of talent out there, from Elizabeth Warren to the Castro Brothers and Joe Biden; but no, this one was for Hillary. It had been earmarked by the Hillary camp since 2008.

O’Malley’s only hope was to conduct himself so well in the campaign that he would become the Vice-Presidential nominee. No one was looking at poor O’Malley; quite a decent guy, at that.

Bernie was supposed to be a blip of comic relief; here today and gone tomorrow. No one would really support a democratic-socialist for president! Maybe if Hillary was not so damaged from the start, Bernie’s revolution wouldn’t have taken hold; but she was, and it did.

Just like the Republicans, who refused to believe that Jeb Bush wasn’t inevitable, the DNC made the same mistake about Hillary; only the RNC got ‘lucky’ and a bona fide arsonist named Trump dispatched Jeb and set the revolutionary tone for his own party long before Hillary even took notice of Bernie. Oh, the humanity!!

Now, the RNC is way ahead of the DNC at restoring itself to at least functional unity.

The DNC is still in denial of its diagnosis while the RNC is already at the acceptance phase in the process. They may not like Donald Trump but it it won’t be the first time they’ve gotten lucky with a feckless idiot, and they know that. Think George W. Bush and the miraculously (and posthumously) rehabilitated Ronald Reagan.

Instead of watching and drawing a valuable lesson from Bernie’s ability to engage a whole new and untapped electorate, easily matching those enlisted by DT on the other side, the Hillary Camp (and the entire Party hierarchy) plucked superficially from the message to garnish Hillary’s presentation, like parsley on potatoes.

Only the parsley proved to be much more appetizing than the potatoes and Bernie began to actually win votes no matter how much the convoluted rules worked against that end.

Even burying the debates in impossible time slots did not protect the presumed nominee from damage.

Bernie was apparently not expected to lay a glove on Hillary, and when he actually raised salient questions about her ties to Wall Street, her judgment on matters of war, and the sacred memory of her husband’s global economic policies, the Party twitched visibly but still plastered a strained smile on its lips.

Bernie, they said, would ‘toughen’ Hillary for her ultimate clash with Trump, and that was ‘a good thing.’ Behind the scenes, the Party of Hillary tightened the screws on the inevitability machine even more. Unfortunately, their collective slip was showing, and some Sanders supporters, new to the rigging process, began to cry ‘foul.

The Nevada DNC’s biased chairing of ‘their’ caucus proved to be the last straw for a a few attendees who became loud and abusive in their language, but not violent.

Despite breathless news reports to the contrary, there is no evidence that a chair was thrown. Video shows one man picking up a chair, then putting it down again. There were nasty phone calls and social media outbursts, but these have not by any means been confined to Sanders supporters.

The Sanders campaign condemned the bad behavior, but also condemned the biased conduct that had prompted it. Apparently Bernie was expected to dress in sackcloth and cover himself with ashes, never mentioning the pattern of bias that has permeated the primaries under Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. He did not, and the floodgates of Democratic establishment figures aching to tell him to F.O. was suddenly opened.

One state, one caucus, a handful of Sanders supporters behaving badly, and everyone is insisting that Sanders should do the ‘decent’ thing and drop out before the convention.

Meanwhile, finally under some impulse control by the RNC, Trump has risen in the polls and Hillary has fallen. Much as the DNC would like us to believe that this has something to do with Bernie’s continued resistance to her inevitability, that is not the case.

Trump is proving to be an armor-clad wrecking ball of nastiness. He needs no help from anyone. It’s what he does.

With her extremely long and checkered political history, Hillary is the softest target imaginable.  Whether or not she can successfully prevail in the general is looking more and more like an open question.

Further alienating that energized Bernie base by going all Head Prefect on their chosen candidate will not help.

Suggestion? Stop insisting that it’s up to Bernie to unify the party ‘because that’s what Hillary did in 2008.’ This isn’t 2008 and Bernie’s revolution won’t be politically disciplined by a promise of support for 2016.

If the Hillary camp values the support of Bernie’s base, they will have to convincingly demonstrate a willingness to include at least some of that base’s priorities in the party platform, not just pay temporary lip-service and claim to be a ‘progressive.’

Dollars to donuts she won’t call herself a ‘progressive’ in the general, and that’s okay because its only a word; but if she continues to beat a path to the right as she has already begun to do with that remark about having Bill balance the country’s checkbook, she will only reinforce Bernie supporters’ conviction that she doesn’t represent our interests.

There’s only so much that Donald Trump (or Hillary) threats can do to blackmail a disenchanted electorate into turning out to hold their noses at the ballot box.

Time to reassess the fairness and efficacy of a two party system.