To Sanders supporters FROM a Sanders supporter: please stop saying Bernie should've got the nom. [View all]

[Ken Burch]

Last edited Tue Jan 10, 2017, 05:04 PM - Edit history (2)

I supported Bernie as strongly as anyone on this board. I was as saddened as anyone else that the primaries didn't go our way. I think the superdelegates are as wrong as any of you.

But this isn't the spring or summer of 2016. It's the winter of 2017.

It's one thing to argue that the party should embrace what we stand for(it should, on economic issues, but without in any way diluting, and if possible while strengthening, the current anti-social oppression message).

But the people who supported the nominee from the start are just as emotionally and politically invested in loyalty to her as we are in loyalty to what the Sanders campaign stood for at its best.

If we were to win the party to our views, we would need to get the support or at least the cooperation of all of those who supported Secretary Clinton(many of whom are essentially in agreement with us on the issues).

Endless threads about Bernie getting robbed or the party being biased or Hillary's campaign being subservient to corporate power sabotage our chances of either winning through for our values(combined with the best values of other Democrats), or of getting their support should someone we prefer be nominated in 2020 or 2024. If, as was the case in the 1972 nomination, someone associated with our insurgent efforts were to be nominated in either of those years, but then have other Dems disown them as nominee, that would be worse than never getting the nomination at all. Learn from history there.

We need to fight for what we want, but we need to do so with wisdom and with respect for people who may not stand with us at the moment, but who could at a future date if we were to correct some of the flaws in our approach in 2016.

And we need to actually listen to what people who didn't support us(I'd recommend the threads of people like forjusticethunders as a good educational source) and correct the errors in communication and tactics that cost us their support.

What matters now is the future, not who the nominee should have been last time.

Let's find a better tone, let's find a way to make a positive case for what we stand for, let's reach out to those we did not manage to connect with last year...And for the love of whatever is or isn't out there in the cosmos, let's STOP doing endless threads that demand that those who didn't support us admit they were wrong to do so.

Posted in the name of creating a better form of argument for what we want as Sanders people.