Progressives repeatedly warned center-right Democrats that Hillary Clinton was more likely to lose to Donald Trump than Bernie Sanders, that abandoning the progressive base to court Republicans (as Hillary did) was electoral suicide, and that the #BernieOrBust contingent would sit home on Election Day unless Hillary made significant concessions to the party’s leftist base. They were ignored and insulted and snubbed. Now, incredibly, center-right Democrats are blaming the progressives whose support they did everything to deride for Trump’s victory. If progressive support was important enough to cost Hillary the campaign, why didn’t she act like it?
Hillaryites Blame Their Victims
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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In addition to their domestic victims, Ted, whose situation you, as is your wont, have portrayed with precision, I note a certain tendency on the part of «Hillaryites» to blame a certain foreign actor. Alas in this, they seem to be joined – Surprise ! Surprise ! – by the whole of the corporate media in North America and Europe. Cf Chris Hedges’ article on «Fake News» in the current number of Truth Dig….
Henri
I didn’t stay home. I voted, both in the primary and in the general elections.
In the primary I voted for Bernie Sanders, and he won… at least in my state!
But the DNC nominated Hillary.
In the general election, I voted for Matthew (None of the Above) Roberts.
Of course, he did not win, but my conscience is clear.
I voted for Sanders in the Democrats Abroad election
(as a resident of Mexico), and he won.
In the general, I voted as an Arkansas resident and the polls showed Trump winning by approximately a 20% margin. Write-ins were not allowed.
I voted for Stein.
I have to say: My conscience is clear as well.
Ted, I love the subtle change of seasons from panel to panel. 🙂
But — to the point, Sanders probably should have run as an Independent, which would have prevented the sabotage from the DNC. 🙁
It’s one of the unfortunate side effects of the duopoly. If he didn’t play by their rules, he would have never gotten as far as he did.
Well, he got to “zero”!
If you are correct, he would have gotten there much more quickly. (But I don’t believe so.)
🙂
I forget the exact number, but Sanders got a significant percentage of the DNC delegates, even if he didn’t get any electors from the college.
He got to play on the national stage, participate in televised debates, etc. How many people recognize the name of this year’s SWP party candidate? (I don’t remember it)
I wasn’t discussing the Socialist Workers Party. Sanders should have run as an Independent. That couldn’t have adversely affected him any more than the path he took.
He got 1865 delegates to the DNC and national name recognition. If he’d run as an independent he would have gotten zero delegates and zero name recognition.
It’s far less than either of us hoped for, but far more than I believed possible when he first started.
Call it a moral victory. (Which is a lot like ‘losing’ but sounds better 😉
There is no way that you can definitively say “what might have been” under different circumstances. His supporters might have carried him to victory. We’ll never know — because it didn’t happen that way
BTW – Alyson Kennedy and Osborne Hart
If Sanders ran as an independent, Hillaryites would now be blaming Sanders instead of Putin for her loss.
Sanders did not want to become known as the “Nader of 2016”.
There are Hillary fans that would not have voted for anyone but Hillary or another Democrat, so an independent Sanders campaign would have spit the vote and Trump would have won anyway, and Sanders’ next position would have been retirement instead of the one he now has within the Democratic Party.
The only campaign Sanders wanted to run was against the Republican Party candidate, and the Hillaryites were not having (by hook or crook) any of that
Sanders did what he said he would do, so anyone who did not take him at his word has no one to blame but themselves for being disappointed by his doing what he actually signaled he would do from the very beginning.
I donated money to Sanders campaign just to see how far his democratic socialism campaign would take him without my having any expectation of heroics from him such as a pointless political self-immolation in an independent campaign against the thick as a brick, absurd Democrats and Republicans, both at the same time.
@ Glenn –
There are a lot of “if” situations, and as I inferred before, it is all speculation at this point. Each of us can have an opinion of what might have been.
What is missing from your analysis is the myriad of Sanders supporters who decided to stay home and refused to vote because Sanders dropped out.
(I am also puzzled by your reference to “… the one [position] he now has within the Democratic Party.)
Mein verehrter Lehrer, here I have to agree with Glenn ; when Mr Sanders back in 2015 decided to campaign for the US presidency, his stated goal was to win the Democratic party’s nomination as candidate for that post. He also pledged to support whoever won that party’s nomination. He did exactly as he said he would do, had he done otherwise, he would have suffered a blow to his credibility (which, along with his programme, was his greatest asset) and, as Glenn points out, most likely have made it easier for Mr Trump to win a majority of the Electors. (It is wise to recall, when the point that Ms Clinton won nearly 2.9 million more popular votes than Mr Trump is raised, that nearly 4.3 million of this plurality were gained in one state alone, California, which means that in the rest of the country, Mr Trump gained some 1,4 million more votes than Ms Clinton)….
Mr Sanders could have decided from the very beginning to run as an independent or third-party candidate ; given his political background, it’s inconceivable that he did not consider that alternative. But that same experience as an independent candidate for many political posts over more than four decades of presenting himself to the electorate seems to have convinced him that his best chance of making it to the presidency was to run for the Democratic nomination. I suspect he was correct in that analysis….
Что дѣелать ? My own suspicion is that the US Democratic Party is finished (and has been for a long time) as a vehicle for progressive aspirations – bomb ’em liberals and necons (can anyone tell the difference ?) don’t cut it any longer. If people in the US don’t manage to force through a voting system which is more responsive to the desires of the voters than that in place today (cf, e g, the US Green Party proposals for electoral reform), then I fear change, while inevitable, is not going to be coming through the ballot box….
Henri
@derlehrer
“Sanders’ next position would have been retirement instead of the one he now has within the Democratic Party.”
Democrats who now blame Putin for their loss would have kicked Sanders around if he split the vote by a third party candidacy. Democrats can be such assholes.
https://democrats.senate.gov/committees/
Sanders’ Democratic Committee Assignments:
Committee on the Budget (Ranking Member)
Committee on Environment and Public Works
Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety
Subcommittee on Green Jobs and the New Economy
Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
Subcommittee on Energy
Subcommittee on National Parks
Subcommittee on Water and Power
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
Subcommittee on Children and Families
Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging, (Ranking Member)
Committee on Veterans’ Affairs (former Chair)
@ mhenriday –
@ Glenn –
And I say again: It’s all speculation at this point and based upon nothing but personal belief and “if” analyses — Sanders consistently ran as an Independent and succeeded in races where nobody gave him any notice…. Until he won.
Conjecture remains worthless in view of the outcome.
Thanks, Glenn. Your list makes me realize the US Congress is really just Animal Farm.
Historians will argue whether Trump won the election, or Hillary lost it.
The New York Times says both views are wrong: Putin won the election.
The New York Times also says the DEC did the right thing, Sanders had no chance (don’t pay attention to those biased polls), and it was the idiots who voted for a mug of beer who gave Trump the election (which was wrong: if every Stein voter decided it was essential to vote for Hillary, she would have won 16 more electoral votes, but still lost).
Trump won 5 states by paper thin margins, and those 5 states gave him the Electoral votes he needed to win. Billary never did anything for the voters Trump managed to convince and to turn just enough of the Rust Belt and Florida from leaning toward Billary to voting for Trump.
***
Has Mr Rall lost another outlet for his work? Gocomics has not run either his 16 Dec or 19 Dec cartoons, and many newspapers get their cartoons from Gocomics, so those newspaper websites have the 15 Dec cartoon as the last one by Mr Rall (I can’t check the print editions).
«The New York Times also says the DEC did the right thing, Sanders had no chance (don’t pay attention to those biased polls), and it was the idiots who voted for a mug of beer who gave Trump the election (which was wrong: if every Stein voter decided it was essential to vote for Hillary, she would have won 16 more electoral votes, but still lost).» Michael, while slow on the uptake, I did manage to get the «mug of beer» = [Jill Ellen] Stein reference, but «DEC» where I should expect «DNC» puzzles me ; may I request some exegesis here ?…
Henri
DNC is Democrat National Committee; DEC is Democrat Executive Committee. I read somewhere it was the DEC that made sure Sanders was not seriously considered by the primary voters. But you’re right, the DNC also did all it could to ensure that St Billary was the 45th.
DEC is “Digital Equipment Corporation” and oh, dog, I am a geek.
«DNC is Democrat National Committee; DEC is Democrat Executive Committee.» My understanding has been that in many US states, at least, the highest executive organ of the Democratic Party at that level is indeed called the «Democratic Executive Committee», while at the national level, it’s called the «Democratic National Committee». But I don’t doubt that much was done at both levels to ensure that the upstart Mr Sanders would not get the brass ring, but that it would instead go, as the gods had led us all to believe was inevitable, to the once and future queen, our beloved Ms Clinton….
Alas, haruspex is a difficult task, and the quality of chicken entrails is not what it used to be. Myself I prefer inscribing glyphs on tortoise shells, heating them up, and then inspecting the cracks….
Henri
I have to defend my vote for “a mug of beer”! Since I’m an Arkansas voter, casting my vote for Hillary (whom I could not support) would have had as much effect on the outcome as my vote for Stein. The latter represented my viewpoint much more than either of the major-party candidates, and I concluded that voting Green would help legitimize the party. My vote was insignificant from the outset. 🙁
I’d say Koch won this election, look at his platform and check off what’s been accomplished.
Charles G. Koch or David H. Koch?
Things are good at GoComics. Just a tech glitch over there.
«Things are good at GoComics.» Good to hear, Ted ! Generally speaking, in the corporate media things seem, as you have previously pointed out, to be getting more and more difficult for cartoonists, especially those who don’t toe the party line. The Guardian, with fewer cartoons published and fewer of those that are open for comments, is a case in point…
Henri
I really must protest this continual renaming of names. Am I liberal? I am by the dictionary definition.
The problem is mainly in trying to communicate with the RW idjits. They think that the dictionary definition of ‘liberal’ is “loves taxes and hates Jesus” while ‘leftist’ means “ruthless dictator”
I hereby proclaim myself to be a ‘play-nice-with-others-ist’
I agree. These labels are thrown around so much that they become utterly worthless. I always thought that a liberal was a leftist and a conservative was a rightist. I thought of myself as a progressive.
I’m totally confused.
Conservatives are wrongest. 😀
«I always thought that a liberal was a leftist and a conservative was a rightist.»
«, Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, .
«The question is>, said Alice, .
, said Humpty Dumpty, .»
Mei verehrter Lehrer, my reading has led me to the conclusion that in the United States, a «liberal» is a Democrat who wants to bomb other countries if attempts to effect «regime change» there in a less overt manner have failed, and a «conservative» is a Republican who espouses the same views….
But that’s only my view from the outside looking in ; you people undoubtedly know far more about this matter than I do….
Henri
@ mhenriday –
Now, if you would only explain to me what the reference to Humpty Dumpty and Alice might mean?
It’s difficult enough for me when plain text English is being used.
😀
«Now, if you would only explain to me what the reference to Humpty Dumpty and Alice might mean?» My most profuse apologies, mein verehrter Lehrer ; I, too, would have had difficulty understanding the transmogrified message to which you referred (not that I’m paranoid or anything, but Ted’s website seems to have something against me) ! The citation from Through the Looking Glass I intendedto use reads as follows :
«, Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, .
, said Alice, .
, said Humpty Dumpty, .»
I think you will agree that it does bear a certain relevance to the issue you raised, i e, the definition of «liberal» and «conservative», respectively….
With regard to speculation on what would have happened had Mr Sanders, subsequent to his defeat in the Democratic primary campaign, decided to run as an Independent, you are quite right ; these are no more than speculations – as I’ve previously noted, alternative or counterfactual history is a difficult genre. Rather than speculating on what might have been, I was more concerned in my post with attempting to understand, as well as one can without having personal access to Mr Sanders, why he made the choices he did….
Henri
Damn ! Let me try again ; here’s the quote :
«’When I use a word’, Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less’.
‘The question is’, said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things’.
‘The question is’, said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all’.»
Hope the third time is indeed charmed !…
Henri
As far as the RWNJs and the neo-Liberals are concerned, ‘play-nice-with-others’ means doing exactly as they say and not asking any awkward questions.
I fear you’ll never qualify.
With regard to whom Hillaryites blame for her losing the election, I suggest Scott Adams has got it pegged….
Henri
Are those the hackers that use their elbows to access the keyboard?
😀