Comments

1
This is the normal process any campaign or organization goes through after defeat. Nothing special here.
3
Frustrating but predictable. For all the great ideas and goals in his campaign, a huge part of his popularity was tied to him running as an outsider against "THEM." But people that show up to run against "THEM" don't do well when it comes time to form a movement. They don't compromise, don't make deals, don't accept anything less than exactly what they want, and so their movements either collapse from infighting or are so impotent at decision making they cannot operate effectively.
4
But I want my revolution noooooowwwwwwww!!!!!
And it has to be done exactly as I say, no compromise, even with people who mostly agree with me but might have a slightly different way of doing things.
And I won't work with that guy. Or that one. Or those people over there. They think they had some part in this revolution but it was all me, only me!
And we can only take money from poor people. No rich people are allowed to donate to the cause, even if they agree with it.
5
I can't wait for all the measured, thoughful, and insightful comments we're about to get here!
6
Agree with @1. The other thing is that you can't really compare this to what would have happened had Bernie won the nomination. As long as he was a candidate it provided a disciplined focus. That's why you never saw these kinds of things happen during the campaign. Now that the campaign is over, it's easier for these kinds of struggles to surface.
7
Where to start with all the problems with this post? Neolibs such as Frizzelle like to pretend that Bernie Sanders only appeals to old white men (thus the "Bernie Bros" title), when he has much more appeal to young men and women than Clinton. Polls show that Sanders also would easily beat Trump, as Bernie has credibility in fighting for economic justice (unlike Clinton and other neoliberals, who want to keep Wall Street donors happy). Most Americans are hurting financially, and Frizzelle doesn't give a rip about them.

If Clinton loses to Trump, people like Frizzelle will blame Bernie Sanders supporters for not blindly voting for Clinton, but the fault will be Clinton's. She's out of touch with most Americans, especially those who can't afford four more years of economic malaise for all Americans (except the wealthy).
9
The word that comes to mind is clusterfuck. Thank god this guy didn't win the nomination.
10
Here's a good article on a representative election on this debate, Tim Canova (endorsed by Sanders) v Debbie Wasserman Schultz (endorsed by Clinton).

I'm sure Mr. Frizzelle agrees with the incremental progress that Ms. Schultz is advocating for, where marijuana is still a gate-way drug that leads to heroin addiction, but perhaps medical marijuana might be okay.

http://www.marijuana.com/blog/news/2016/…
11
Ive read comments on Reddit from volunteers who worked for both Obama in 2008/2012, and for Sanders in 2016. And most of these volunteers will say the local campaigns were dysfunctional as fuck. When you go canvasing door to door, you spend 2-3 minutes per house, you dont spend 20 minutes arguing with the home owner as to why Hillary is going to prison. Also had volunteers waste countless hours arguing with others at the campaign office about everything and nothing. Sometimes they would ignore their duties just to go protest a Trump rally going on nearby. Even if they collected pages worth of data, they didnt feel the need to add it to the data base (data entry is for nerds!!) and theres lots more that went on and it wasnt some odd office that it occurred in, it was going on nationwide. This went on for months and none of the higher up campaign managers did anything about this dysfunction, they ignored it. So it doesn't surprise me that people would rather quit than be led by Weaver.
12
Your use of "Bernie Bros" shows you are still ignoring that the Bernie voter base was actually quite diverse in almost all respects - its primary demographic was people under 40. By continuing this smear you are suppressing the voices of those that are not white males. Sure, that is the loudest most obnoxious group, but that's not something unique that magically happened amongst Bernie supporters (who have the stranger's loudest, most insufferable Hillary supporters been? Hint: look at who endorsed Hillary in the primary).

That out of the way, can't say I'm shocked that the movement would struggle after the race ended. Hopefully it will be able to get its shit together and provide some much needed progressive pressure on our political system... or maybe you would rather just gloat and say "she wins!", then pat yourselves on the back, and keep on bombing brown people, get that TPP signed, melt those ice caps, frack everything, and rake in that Wall Street $$$!!!
13
@2 - I can introduce you to at least a dozen Sanders supporters who believe(d) "revolution" meant exactly that; nothing more and nothing less. That bonehead Sarandon was a spokesperson for "let's blow it all up and start from the wreckage."

@7 - Um, "bro" is almost universally understood to refer to young males. Christopher was spot on in using that term, based on your own argument about Bernie's core supporter demographics.
14
#StillSanders
15
Vote for the third party candidate folks. There is no way Hillary can lose.
16
@11, I read that post as well, and I thought it was a very good look into the organization of a campaign. Yes, most of the people were newbies who had been either turned off or uninterested in politics. It also shows that a campaign must begin years in advance, getting the infrastructure in place. This is what Obama did in the years before the '08 election, and what the DNC had done for Clinton in the previous two years. Sanders' campaign began as a trickle, with almost no support whatsoever.

And while it may be that the point of your post was to dismiss all of Sanders' supporters, and certainly the goal of Mr. Frizzelle to make them all go away, there is a big lesson that the Dems must take heed or they will soon die like their Republican counterparts. In spite of all that, Sanders nearly won. (And while there are claims of cheating, equally poo-poo'ed by the Clinton campaign, the truth is there that for almost 35% of votes, there is no proof either way. We can't know the truth, and will never know it, because the electronic voting machines have no paper trail. That in itself should cause anyone who believes in America pause. That it doesn't displays either gross cynicism or support for corruption.)

So if the disorganization couldn't prevent Sanders' from being a substantial threat, if the various low-level antagonism from the DNC (not necessarily illegal, of course, but certainly against their commitment to fairness) couldn't prevent it, then the logical conclusion is that there is a deep support for his issues and goals that Hillary won't or can't provide. The kind of support that would win a presidential landslide even if it was against a sane Republican candidate.

Hillary will be our next president, but the movement that Sanders represented will continue. And I doubt very seriously that it will be guided by those who see it in limited terms, or fear it because of what it means to Hillary, or choose to call it names because they have a personal ax to grind.
17
The Sanders 'movement' was not that different than what we're seeing from Trump right now - hagiographic pep rallies where the poorly informed and disaffected come to worship 'the great man' who will save them from whatever real or imagined bogeyman drove them there. And like true believers throughout history, the details don't matter. It's all about, as Dennis Hoppers character said in Apocalypse Now, "the mans mind." And like movie, the inevitable end product of "Our Revolution" (a laughably arrogant name) appears to be chaos and betrayal, like nearly every simplistic and poorly thought out charismatic movement before it.
18
"I'm so relieved these folks are not organizing the campaign to prevent Donald Trump from the White House." Such an enthusiastic endorsement of Clinton there. Surely democracy and the American people are being well served by an establishment that gives us a candidate who inspires her most ardent supporters to declare "She's not Donald Trump!"

@13- "bro" is a pejorative. As @12 points out, Sanders was extremely popular with younger women, definitely more so than Hillary. The petty insults doled out by Ms. Clinton's supporters towards the future of the party is not helping anyone.
19
Most of us Sanders supporters have gotten over his loss, Frizzelle-bear. Why haven't you?
20
From what I read, Bernie promised Weaver wouldn't be part of this thing, and then brought the highly unpopular abusive abrasive Weaver to lord it over the young guns anyway.

Bernie's so honest! The only politician who speaketh the truth!

Yada Yada Yada. . .

And the Bernie Bros are still slagging the Hillary they said could never beat Trump, the same Hillary they predicted no Bernie supporter would ever vote for...

I guess they're still hoping for a meteor to hit the front runner in the presidential race, who is not only racking up the Blue states, but turning Red states Purple AND Blue.

Thank the Pasta Monster, Bernie didn't get the nomination!

21
From what I read, Bernie promised Weaver wouldn't be part of this thing, and then brought in the highly unpopular abusive abrasive Weaver to lord it over the young guns anyway.

Bernie's so honest! The only politician who speaketh the truth!

Yada Yada Yada. . .

And the Bernie Bros are still slagging the Hillary they said could never beat Trump, the same Hillary they predicted no Bernie supporter would ever vote for...

I guess they're still hoping for a meteor to hit the front runner in the presidential race, who is not only racking up the Blue states, but turning Red states Purple AND Blue.

Thank the Pasta Monster, Bernie didn't get the nomination!

22
Sorry for the double post, and despite the number of online bernie bros who sneered that I was voting my vagina, and other cute misogynies theye slimed Clinton with, I was hoping the so called Bernie Revolution would grow up and help us take back Congress.

So we could get working on what they said was their agenda, once they got over their snit.

But snits it is, still.
23
@22- Don't know where you hang out online, but I've seen forty "Bernie Bros are so horrible" and "Bernie supporters are clueless children" for every sexist comment made by a Bernie supporter. You'd better hope Bernie supporters bother coming to the polls, because while Trump looks like he's going to lose I don't see a big Democratic landslide coming on the undercard. Insulting Senator Sander's supporters isn't your smartest move, especially given that whatever your experience with a few trolls was, the vast majority of them are more progressive on every issue (including feminism and abortion rights) than Hillary Clinton herself.
24
What a fucked up year. Before 2016, would anyone have imagined that an "alternative" weekly would regularly attack an anti-corporate, anti-racist, anti-War-on-Drugs, pro-gay rights, pro-womens rights, pro-union political movement? Could anyone have imagined spend so much time cheering the antithetical policies of a Wall Street sponsored candidate?

As others have already mentioned, the Sanders campaign didn't have the steady, produced feel of the Clinton campaign because real people were involved at the local level, not seasoned PR professionals. And the whole "disorganized" smear? Let's turn to that revolutionary haven, The New York Times, for a completely biased explanation of its origin:

Released Emails Suggest the D.N.C. Derid…

Then, there's this: "The Sanders diehards always emphasized revolution and righteousness, which made a lot of people familiar with their history books (cf. the Reign of Terror in France, Cuba after 1960, the Iran after 1979, Egypt after Arab Spring, etc., etc.) skeptical."

That is probably the most ignorant sentence I've ever read on this blog. I doubt that we'll be gifted with anything so beautiful, but I nonetheless await Frizzelle's attempt - hell, anyone's attempt - to draw together that roulette of disparate events in a cogent critique of the Sanders campaign.

25
Frizzelle is being totally fair and honest. I mean, The Clinton Foundation is going through a bunch of criticism. We can't distract by looking at Trump's Foundation...so let's look at the birth pangs of a Sanders PAC and try to disrupt any further liberal notions the far left might still have.

This will surely get them to ignore The Clinton Foundation and line up behind the conservative Queen, right?
26
dwight: Do you have any idea how childish that comment is? If the non-Bernies say mean things you'll try to make sure the Republicans keep control of congress and prevent any progress at all? That's progressive? And you wonder why the adults who are actually trying to accomplish something are rolling our eyes at people like you? Like parents do when their kid threatens to hold their breath until they pass out if the don't get what they want. And we take your rediculous threat just about as seriously as they do.
27
@13 - no, that's not what I said. Why did you lie about that? It's clear you don't have any scruples. The polling showed overwhelming that young women preferred Sanders much more than Clinton. What's so hard for you to understand about that?
28
@26 - nice job of avoiding the question! Perhaps neoliberals like yourself, that don't care at all about working Americans, could wake up to the fact that most people are hurting in this country. Electing Clinton isn't going to make things better if she continues kissing up to Wall Street instead of fighting for economic justice. If you think Trump is bad in 2016, see what they come up with in 2020, as corporate D's keep ignoring the distress of all but the wealthy Americans.
29
@27 "overwhelmingly," apologies.
30
@25: If you want to try and hoke up a scandal out of the Clinton Foundation, you can go ahead and do that yourself.
What exactly is it with mooks on the internet and their trembling outrage that [MEDIA OUTLET] isn't publishing the hit pieces they demand to see?
31
None of this matters now, and you won't hear a word about "our revolution" after the election. Bernie will be back to being a Senator for life. (Actually, he is already.)
32
Ebenezer: I'm a working class guy who lives in Ballard. And frankly, I'm fed up with self righteous twits like you telling me that some Che wanna be buffoon like Sanders, who's been delivering the same warmed over college senior paper clap trap for half a century, while sitting on his rumpled faux wobbly chic ass, collecting a fat government paycheck and not doing one fucking thing to make it happen, other than basking in the adoration of nitwits like you, is my savior. What a joke. Good riddance, Bernie. Enjoy your lakeside (four bedroom) 'cabin'. Those of us who actually work for a living won't miss your pompous and laughably sophomoric schtick one damn bit. "Get off my lawn!" And take the rest of the smug and righteous dipshits you drug along with you while you're at it. They, and you, are wasting our time.
33
The "Bernie Bros" meme is bullshit and a creation of the Clinton campaign. Look back to the primaries and see the high percentage of women under 35 supported Sanders. The writer of this post is either lazy or knowingly spouting Clinton propaganda.


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