“It’s a hard rain that’s gonna fall.” -Dylan
The Democratic party will give Bernie Sanders a stand-offish comfort hug this summer. They will praise him for his long tenure of loyalty and activism and accomplished leadership. They will invite him to stand in the blue-hued lights of the convention and wag his grand old finger at middle class America one last time.
There will be a mixed roar of courtesy applause and, obviously, unscheduled outbursts of anger. The mainstream core of the party, the vilified majority of lifelong D.s who defeated him by every measure of democratic process, will wait politely for his graceful exit. The awful mainstream Democrats will remain civil, if tight lipped as the disruptive tumult and fervor he seems to bask in rises to a clamor and fades one last time. He will exit the field as the left’s “Reagan who n’er was”.
They will give him all of that.
But no more.
They won’t stand in the frame with him when the camera’s roll live. They will leave him and perhaps his spouse alone in that great dance hall of history where every clap condenses into a single tear until the applause settles a hammering rhythm that fades away like windless rain at dusk.
They won’t say that since going to Washington the year Ronald Reagan was elected he was one of the longest serving and least heralded representatives in recent American history. They won’t chortle that despite this long congressional cotyledony he rose up, like a small wave crossing a broad shallow bar, on the sole premise that he was an outsider to Washington politics.
They won’t say that in a forty year political career his only interest in the Democratic party was as a box overflowing with the product of other people’s labor. They won’t rebuke that to Bernie Sanders the forty year machine built by the Clintons and President Obama was a lootable feast from which he could acquire national media legitimacy and organizational infrastructure. Nor that he treated the party as a tool chest belonging to the people he proclaimed the greatest hatred for. Tools he used in earnest to destroy the house from within.
They won't mention what the old man has now left steaming in the box.
They will allow him to perform at his leisure in all of his red faced “passion”. He will rogueishly blame an unnamed core constituency of the party for stealing his political capital. Capital that he earned, not by being the most active progressive but by being the most old. Unlike his own followers Bernie Sander’s Democratic party rivals will not interrupt their rival’s speech.
They won’t mention bitterly that the singular catalyst for the longest and most ruthless campaign of paid hatred in American politics started when Hillary Clinton rallied an effort to reform America’s shameful health care system. They won’t mention that joining in such hatred is, above all other considerations, a show of solidarity with the founding legacy of Fox News.
They will imply and intone by context that he has pulled them to the left. And that this might even be politically productive. Of course they will slip in a few code words to remind broader American audiences that while being as equally far from perfect as any campaign in the field, they are uniquely far from crazy. They will softly employ terms like “practical” and “reality-based” and “patience”. Maybe even “fiduciary”. They won’t point out that the “mainstream” core of the Democratic Party which Bernie Sanders has tried to hatefully destroy remains the only politically realistic organization that stands between the Koch Brothers and simultaneous ownership of all three branches of government.
Alas, They won’t change the delegate system. But they won’t be mean enough to say that Bernie Sanders came within three or four million votes of proving that a buffered delegate system works exactly as intended. (They certainly won’t point out as an aside that if the GOP had a super delegate air bag system on their bus they wouldn’t be watching themselves go through the windshield right now.)
A comparison with McGovern is unlikely to pop up. This, not because Bernie Sander’s zealous supporters do not yet understand the depth of hyperbole that would entail but because his “mainstream” rivals in the party still do.
With Bernie Sanders it was not a case of too little too late, it was rather a cause that was too small minded and too impulsive. The proof of this is in his lack of realistic political acumen at the end game not only of his campaign but of his entire career. He had a moment that offered him serious political capital but he tempestuously refused to cash in his chips and now the game has closed out. The mainstream he railed against is the pan itself and they have no reason to fear what has quickly become just another flash. They were the Democratic party before he arrived and they will be the Democratic party after he is gone. But his followers, maybe even some of You, their efforts and rise has been thrown away by a lately mean spirited old man.
The brutal but simply obvious truth now is that while the Democratic party welcomes the support and participation of Bernie’s Kids it doesn't need them. The GOP has become their own defeat. The mainstream of the Democratic party exists for a reason and that reason is called the real world of politics. In the real world of politics you always leave room for a second place showing (and in Democracy you force yourself to take defeat like a grown up).
Professionals never wager everything on the little patch of green felt that reads: “Victory or Bust”. Bernie Sanders rejected this adage. He extended his defeat until he lost so much he had nothing left to offer the winner. He has a gentle stink about him now. He is an old man, so it makes sense that he saved none of his heart for the future. And yet, even as he made his supporters relevant by their anger he has made them irrelevant by his own. He squandered their moment. Maybe it was Your moment. I myself genuinely salute everyone who joined that fray. But the old man slammed their money on an “all-in” stab at the big league. He put twenty two million supporter’s entire net worth of political capital on “Bernie or Bust”. There’s only two sprockets on that wheel.
They won't rub it in at the convention but they also won't pretend that he carried the wager.