Salon: Bernie must drop notion that everyone who disagrees with him is corrupt or a dupe [View all]

[TomCADem]

Right is left and left is right again.

The Wall Street Journal, Fox News and even Donald Trump have been quick to jump to the defense of Bernie, offer him a forum to air his grievances against the Democratic Party, or argue that Bernie, not Hillary, would be the stronger candidate in the general election. Conversely, some traditionally liberal publications have called on Bernie to discontinue arguments that the nomination process is rigged or corrupt, which could lead voters in the end to simply abandon the party or the process. For example, here is one Bernie supporter on Vox explaining why in response to Bernie's rhetoric, he will be leaving the Democratic party forever:

http://www.vox.com/2016/5/26/11778158/shaun-king-democratic-party

The result of Bernie's revolution could very well be that it backfire as it causes folks like Shaun King to become disenchanted with the political process and decline to vote, or to simply cast Nader-like protest votes, which allow the radical right to consolidate power. Indeed, rather than focusing on the issues, Bernie's increasing willingness to make personal attacks against Hillary, and adopt right wing arguments on the ground "Donald Trump and other Republicans will seize on it,” suggests that in the end, Bernie's revolution is remarkable in how conventional it has ultimately become.

Of course, the downside of arguments that the political process is corrupt or that votes do not count is that the logical inference of such arguments is that one should not vote. Indeed, it creates this strange dynamic that losses are not legitimate and the only legitimate voters are Bernie votes.

http://www.salon.com/2016/05/23/bernie_insults_voters_he_must_drop_notion_that_everyone_who_disagrees_with_him_is_corrupt_or_a_dupe/

Unfortunately, Sanders is also injecting one of the most wrong-headed and frankly embarrassing aspects of lefty thought into our discourse: The tendency to dismiss people who disagree with you as dupes who have been misled by a shadowy cabal of evil masterminds who brainwash the masses in order to perpetuate economic injustice.

This is the premise of Sanders’ “political revolution” argument: That the only reason voters hadn’t backed a socialist in the past is they never really had a chance to. But once they heard the good news about democratic socialism, they will throw off their shackles, embrace the truth, and usher in our socialist paradise.

That sort of rhetoric is harmless enough when it’s a pitch to win over voters. But now Sanders is losing the nomination. Rather than accepting the possibility that the voters heard his pitch and disagreed with him, however, Sanders has started to dismiss his loss as inauthentic, the product of shadowy forces misleading the easily duped voters rather an an authentic rejection, by the voters, of his ideas.

“I don’t want to see the American people voting for the lesser of two evils,” Sanders told George Stephanopoulos of ABC News on Sunday. “I want the American people to be voting for a vision of economic justice, of social justice, of environmental justice, of racial justice.”