What a difference a few weeks make.
Two weeks ago we were in the throes of a histrionic eruption of bile and vilification of Sanders and Sanders supporters over events at the Nevada Democratic Party Convention. We were treated to a torrent of abuse. Sanders supporters were a violent, misogynistic mob bent on mayhem and Sanders was responsible for them unless he condemned them unequivocally.
Predictably, when Sanders did condemn threats of violence and intimidation but validated the underlying complaints by NV Sanders supporters, this was seized upon as a pretext for further hyperventilating condemnation. Sanders was supposedly endorsing violence even though he explicitly condemned it. His unruly supporters were the equivalent of mobs that brought tyrants to power. He should get out of the race. Etc, etc.
This particularly virulent egestion of anti Sanders bile culminated with Deborah Wasserman Schultz’s public declaration that Sanders statement on the NV debacle was “unacceptable.”
It looked as though we were all set for bloody, knuckle bruising fight in the run up to the California primary.
Then the picture began to change.
First came this statement from Vice President Joe Biden:
"Bernie Sanders is a good guy," Biden said, speaking with the traveling press pool with him in Columbus, Ohio, Wednesday. "Let Bernie run the race. There's nothing wrong with that."
Biden added, "Here we are in May, as was pointed out, Hillary was still in this in May, in June [in 2008.] I'm confident that Bernie will be supportive if Hillary wins, which the numbers indicate will happen. So I'm not worried. There's no fundamental split in the Democratic Party."
Biden also refused to blame Sanders for an outbreak of violence from his supporters at Saturday's Nevada Democrat state convention.
"That's not Bernie, and what Bernie's going to have to do if that happens again -- he's going to have to be more aggressive in speaking out about it," Biden said.
Then Rep. Nancy Pelosi weighed in: "Bernie Sanders is a positive force in the Democratic Party," Pelosi said during a press briefing in the Capitol. "He has awakened in some people an interest in the political process that wasn't there. He has encouraged young people to channel their interest in public service and community leadership into a political place, because this is where decisions are made that'll affect their future and their lives. And I think that's positive."This past Tuesday another Major Democratic Party leader spoke out when Sen. Harry Reid issued this:
On Tuesday Reid had a different message, signaling to fellow Democrats that pressuring Sanders is not the way to go.
"I've had conversations with Bernie, he's a good person, he's doing his best to effectuate what he believes in, and I have no criticism of Bernie at this stage," Reid said.
"I think we should just kinda lay off Bernie Sanders a little bit, OK?"
Soon there was an outpouring of scuttlebutt to the effect that DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Shultz might need to step down in the interest of Party unity.
The message seemed clear; it’s time to stop the infighting and start mending political fences.
All of this seemed to have had a salutary effect. There was almost an immediate lessening of sturm und drang and venom. A perceptible decrease in tension.
Of course there were some notable exceptions.
Still, by and large, the message seemed to be getting through.
At least it did.
This week the temperature shot up again with an egregiously miss-representative report by Rachel Maddow about a leaked letter from the Sanders Campaigns legal team to the DNC saying they were prepared to take a credentials challenge to the floor of the Convention.
This unremarkable and hardly unprecedented bit of pre-convention maneuvering was spun as threatening to “derail the convention” and “grind it to a halt”.
This slant seemed to inspire a new round of attacks by anti Sanders incendiaries. Threads at this site were used as a sounding board for promoting hyperventilated CT that Sanders was out to wreck the Party by wrecking the convention. That this was his intention right along. That the debacle in NV had been a dress rehearsal for fomenting violence at the National Convention, along with recycling the assaults on Sanders and his supporters that have become standard. Talk of coups, violence prone Sanders supporters and caricatures of a 74 year old Grand Papa as a socialist tyrant in waiting all contributing to the toxic stew.
People can and will have differing opinions about such behavior. There is one thing that can be said with certainty about people so engaged though; they are clearly not on the same page as Biden, Pelosi and Reid.
What to make of all this?
Well again opinions will differ. My own view is that it indicates a division of opinion within the party regarding Sanders that isn’t defined by who one’s chosen candidate is.
Obviously Sanders supporters object to the attacks on Sanders but evidently so do an influential section of the party leadership. Against this you have those who seem fixated on waging total war against Sanders, his supporters and the politics they espouse.
Now I recognize that a large number of folks may have been swept up in the passions of the moment and may have said more than they meant. However, I think events point to the existence of a presumably unorganized faction which is ostensibly pro HRC but could be more accurately described as anti Sanders.
Why do I say this? Well it was already difficult to reconcile the repeated assurances of HRC’s unassailable position with the continued attacks on Sanders. If the primary was effectively over, why continue the partisan warfare? Obviously the motive couldn’t be concern over the primary. Concerns about weakening the eventual nominee made a bit more sense, if only because that contest remains in the future.
Now, however, we have the added spectacle of people continuing increasingly “hair on fire” attacks in direct defiance of clear signals from major party leaders that such tactics should be put on ice.
Altogether this suggests that what motivates these Sanders critics has nothing to do with the primary and possibly little to do with concern about the general election.
Fear of the damage internecine attacks on Sanders might do to the Party’s efforts in the Fall being an obvious reason for Biden’s, Pelosi’s and Reid’s public stands, Ignoring them and pressing on displays either a lack of respect for their judgement, a lack of concern over the outcome in November, or perhaps both.
Again, anger could account for much of this, but the fact remains that for some, attacking Sanders and the movement that has grown up around him seems to eclipse other considerations.
How to explain such hostility? I think that we need to recognize that we are not all on the same page. I understand that a person may support a progressive agenda and still choose to vote for HRC. I disagree with that choice but I view it as an honest disagreement over the best way to forward a progressive agenda.
However, when someone attacks the Sanders campaign, it supporters and the progressive agenda they forward, while claiming the nomination is already settled, when they attempt to discredit and delegitimize a movement for progressive social and political reform with outlandish CT and talk of Socialist coups, while weeping crocodile tears over how all this is weakening our position vis a vis the GOP, when they don’t stint at accusations racism that imply that young POC are colluding in such, when they do all this even as the party leadership is signalling them to stop, I conclude that their target isn’t just Sanders or his supporters but any move towards advancing the Progressive Agenda. I can’t think of a more likely reason for such a potential politically suicidal course.
It’s hard to avoid the assessment that a section of the party that has done well over the past eight years has grown comfortable with the status quo. They have developed networks, associations and alliances that have given them access to power that they could never have achieved under GOP governance and stand to lose should the Republicans regain the White House. However, they seem equally fearful, if not more so, of the rise of Sanders and the movement for progressive social and political reform, within as well as outside of the Democratic Party, that he champions. Understandably so, since any success by this movement would entail the disruption of business as usual and imperil their current position.
This isn’t to say that all such folks are motivated by personal advantage. Undoubtedly there are those who fear that upsetting the current relationships of power would injure the interests of particular constituencies. However, it is inevitable that there are also those for whom personal interest has become hopelessly confused with constituent interest. Even to the point that the former trumps the latter. For such people defeating the movement for reform within the party seems to be the overwhelming priority.
Others may disagree but I think those of us who support advancing the Progressive Agenda, regardless of which candidate we support, need to come to grips with the fact that, for some, it appears that factionalism and turf battles are more important than party unity or how we fare in the fall election. If they continue, which looks likely, to pour kerosene on the flames party discord, to vilify and demonize nearly half of the party’s base, to do everything they can to blunt and thwart the drive for progressive reform, I believe they will be digging our political grave for November.