The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

On Bernie Sanders

Sanders-021507-18335- 0004

Sanders-021507-18335- 0004

I am not upset by Sanders endorsing Clinton because I never expected anything else.

What is important about Sanders is that he showed how well a self-avowed socialist can do. He won super-majorities of the young. In four years there will be more. In eight, even more.

The demographics are shifting, real left-wing politics are now viable.

That is what matters.

Four years ago, if you’d told me someone with Sanders’ policies would have come this close to Clinton, I’d have been happy with that result. I am today.

Sanders himself is now irrelevant. He’s an old man; he showed there is a constituency for left-wing politics, now his time is done.

Something similar may turn out to be the case with Trump, if he doesn’t win election: He will have proved that right-wing populism is viable and a more disciplined candidate will step in and execute it better.

Chill. Sanders run isn’t a victory, but it did show the tide of history is turning in favor of those who favor a kinder and far better-run world.


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32 Comments

  1. The Clinton supporters have figured out that her lack of lift is not his fault.

  2. Carla

    The left wing has a lot of work to do.

  3. Well said, Ian.

    I see the twitter today is full of, “We told you he’d just be a sheepdog for Hillary!” types.

    But it ain’t that simple, and he could have rolled over months ago if that was all he was about.
    ~

  4. Dan Lynch

    Good point, Ian, though if I were a betting man, I would bet that when change comes to America, it will be from the right. 🙁 The left does not have a good track record of getting stuff done in recent history.

  5. Dan Lynch

    By the way, thanks for including a photo in your article. That helps when I share the article on social media.

  6. highrpm

    i’m not an establishment collectivist “2 party” person. unlike the bern, who i feel misled us “not belongers” by selling out to the party selection candidate — hilly billy — i learned something along the way as i travelled this life to where i am now, at 65. i learned from various “intellectuals”, not the least of which was the great arthur koestler. koestler taught me about something called the collectivist mind, in his tome, “ghost in the machine.” and how vicious and inhuman it is. he suffered its brutalness as he became disillusioned with the german communist party and finally, when he could take no more and still be honest with himself and his fellow sufferers, renounced party membership.

    i was strung out hoping against hope for more from the bern. i liked his compassion for the young generation who deserves affordable university tuitions, especially when the party pols readily print mounds of paper to bail out wall street firms. and readily invade foreign countries and wreak death and destruction on innocent foreign civilians in the fraudulent name of democracy.

    i learned free choice is an inviolate right of life. oh, how wise i consider myself for having learned from experience over the course of life. psychologists label this “working the organizing experience. that’s a helluva lot more than the bern has learned: readily giving up the chase of upright values and instead getting back in line as an establishment party politician. how could he dare say he supports “crooked hillary?” my god, i go with christopher hitchens well before believing some cloaked establishment media website like factcheck.org that disputes the truth/ accuracy of trump’s criticism of hilly billy’s character. come on, more than 30 books on hilly billy’s bad behaviors have been published, and many by hard working and trustworthy authors. and i’m going to take factcheck.org’s word? get real.

    so the bern is nothing more than a “belonger” collectivist, siding with the democrats against the republicans. i wouldn’t give a rats ass for either party.

    the bern should feel ashamed that he has lived a full life and not learned important truths. i suggest he read arthur koestler and get serious about his pursuit of truths.

    i’m sorry i contributed to his campaign. i certainly do not want my money going to support crooked hillary. (and her rapist husband who should be facing similar prosecutions for his violations of non-consenting woman to satisfy his hypersexual appetite.)

    disgusting. ah, the accumulation of wealth and power. hillary will show us the way.

  7. Oaktown Girl

    @Stirling Newberry – you are being very generous. At this juncture I would say *some* of the Clinton supporters have figured out that her lack of lift is not his fault.

    In any event, if she wins and spends her first two years giving the base nothing but lip service (just like Obama), when the Republicans sweep the Midterms it will all go back to being Bernie’s fault.

  8. Some Guy

    Exactly right on this one, Ian – if I was going to nitpick, I’d say that I think it goes slightly too far to say that he is now irrelevant. He’ll still be around for a few years, and the fame and attachment from primary voters will help him do more of what he’s always done, keep pushing for the things in his stump speech.

  9. Bernie Sanders was a one off event. The powers that be did not see him coming, but they will see the next one and will not let it happen again.

  10. Barry Fay

    The idea that some imaginary “needle” has been moved to the left is ludicrous. What Bernie showed was not “how well a a socialist can do” but rather how easily the powers-that-be were able to dispose of him by ignoring and patronizing the “movement”, rigging the primaries, and dominating the airwaves – with Bernie´s announcement of supporting Hillary the final coup-de-gras. Now that the “youth” have found out how badly the game of politics is rigged I predict that, like my generation (baby-boomer), they will turn to trying to make the best of a bad situation by making money and by using or beating the system as best they can. Wanna bet?

  11. XFR

    The goal of the next four years is to lock in neo-liberal policies at a super-national level and put them firmly beyond the reach of democratic accountability.

    If the Left starts winning national governments after that it’ll be winning the booby prize.

  12. Duder

    Yes, whenever a crack is opened against all the odds in the totalitarian US I am given hope, from Occupy to Bernie, even given all of the failings.

    However, this latest move by Bernie shows the similarities with Occupy and the faults of that movement: the unwillingness of US leftists to create their own organizations, designed for broad appeal, with staying power, and longterm strategies.

    While Occupy egotistically chose to guard its own revolutionary authenticity against co-optation (to the point of refusing to make demands!), Bernie has chosen pragmatically to accept minor concessions for inclusion in the establishment rather than mark a longer term rupture and break with establishment politics. Perhaps that is the correct move. Maybe attempting to break the Democratic party with hopes for a leftist alternative is foolhardy at this conjuncture. But I can’t help but suspect that the lead organizers and activists who rose around Bernie saw greater possibilities for professional advancement with Hillary than against her. No long term change will arise from it. I hope I am mistaken.

  13. realitychecker

    Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. A truism that remains true..

    At least, after watching Comey and Lynch perform before Congess, we can all finally be in agreement that the rule of law is dead, defunct, extinct, just gone. The destruction of false mythologies is a necessary prerequisite for any meaningful societal change, so, at least we have that shred to comfort ourselves with.

    AND, watching Bernie jump to support the recently re-proven liar Hillary also helps us to begin to understand that there will be no change without violence. Another myth exploded..

    And so we move, fitfully and painfully, in the direction of some important fundamental truths.

  14. Peter*

    When I see this toothy photo of Bernie I can’t help to remember the ‘ would you buy a used car from this man’ rhetorical question asked about Nixon. Sanders certainly did sell a clunker to his poor followers and now he has voided any warranty that was implied in their contract.

    I hope that some of his followers have learned a lesson about our buyer beware political system and the danger of following a pied piper into the veal pens. His capitulation insures that any progressive movement his supporters worked for will die the death of a thousand cuts inside the belly of the beast.

  15. realitychecker

    @ Peter

    Right you are, and, of course, the exact same thing happened to all of us who believed in and voted for that sack of shit Obummer.

    At this point, belief in anyone who comes up through EITHER of the duopoly parties has got to be the exclusive province of the seriously mentally defective.

  16. Hugh

    2500 years ago, Heraclitus said that character is destiny. I don’t think the Berniestas and Bernie Bros were listening. There were reasons why long before Sanders announced his candidacy back in April 2015 some of us called him a joke and said he folded more easily than a cheap lawnchair. He may have run on Medicare for All but he voted for Obamacare in March 2010. Later that year in December 2010 in the last days of the 111th Congress, he staged an 8 hour filibuster in which he railed against corporate greed and protested the proposed extension of the pro-rich Bush tax cuts. Thing was this was no act of rebellion. He had gotten bipartisan approval for his stunt, and he held it on a Friday when there was no business on the Senate floor and after most of his colleagues had already left for the weekend. So his “filibuster” was designed not to inconvenience anyone. The next week his colleagues come back, pass the bill, and Obama signs it that Friday. That is, was, and always will be Bernie Sanders. It wasn’t like that anything he had to say about the rich and the corporations wasn’t true. It was rather that it was a feature of his protest that nothing was meant to come of it.

    That was essentially the same game plan he had when he kicked off his Presidential bid 5 years later. Give a few speeches and eventually endorse Clinton, the inevitable nominee. To his surprise and Clinton’s fury, he stumbled into a viable campaign. He had, much like Trump, tapped inadvertently into some of the vast anger and discontent that seethes within our society. As a result, his issues, and there was never anything that wrong about them, or his targets, gained a larger audience although they never did really break through nationally. This was because he never had an over-archung vision which tied them together and did not know how to exploit the media, something that Trump was consummate at. The Sanders campaign, as opposed to Sanders himself, accomplished several notable things. The people in it showed that through the internet and social media large numbers of young and independent voters could be energized, that a major campaign could be funded with small donations, and that the Democratic party, its leaders, and its nominating process were hopelessly anti-democratic, rigged and corrupt.

    I suppose we all like to think that, given the right circumstances, we would rise above our limitations, but Bernie didn’t. It wasn’t in him. Given the opportunity, given to so few, between the greater and the lesser, he chose the lesser. Character is destiny.

    If I am angry about the whole Sanders episode, it is because it represents another opportunity squandered by progressives. With what is coming on in our not so distant future, we have neither the time nor the luxury to keep mucking about like this. We need fighters who will fight and keep fighting for us. One of the standard criticisms of Obama has been: Look at what he does, not what he says. If we apply this to Sanders, our judgment of him must be harsh. He talked, for a while, and then left us. Instead of fighting a corrupt and unequal system, he is back campaigning for it and its preferred candidate. How he thinks he can maintain any credibility doing that, I have no idea. But then I have never understood why progressives engage in exercises in self-delusion like the Sanders candidature in the first place. You may have resisted the notion that Sanders was a sheepdog but that is what he has become, campaigning for Clinton. Don’t beat up the Black Agenda Report for having told you that way back when, and don’t blame me for calling him a Trojan horse meant to steal the oxygen from the creation of any real progressive alternative to the two parties. And please spare me about Jill Stein and the Green party. For once, blame yourselves. And for once drop all the self-delusions and the what-ifs and the eleventy-dimensional chess claptrap. If you want a progressive alternative, start building and organizing. And focus. Don’t keep reading into whichever figure of the day throws out a few progressive catchphrases all kinds of things which are not and were never there and don’t turn them into your next hero. We don’t have the time or the resources to keep playing these deadend games.

  17. S Brennan

    Don’t let it go to your head, but well said Hugh.

  18. Mudduck

    I had two emails from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee yesterday celebrating Sanders’ endorsement of Clinton. Today, I had this email from them:

    After Bernie’s call for unity yesterday, we just figured Democrats would…well…unify.

    But instead, everything is falling apart.

    FIRST: We heard barely a peep from grassroots Democrats.
    THEN: A Quinnipiac poll showed Trump and Clinton tied in Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania.
    NOW: We’re questioning whether the Democratic Party can unify at all.

    I’m glad their appeal has fallen flat. The DCCC is notorious for recruiting former Republicans and Republicrats to run for Congress. They oppose actual liberal candidates. Best to support individual liberal candidates.

  19. Sanders has unleashed forces that he can\’t fully control. Unfortunately, he is exerting a degree and type of influence that his \”sheepdog\” accusers believe confirms their pessimism.

    I have argued that \”alpha\” Bernie surrogates need to arise, and quickly, and be willing to steer the movement in a different direction than Bernie would prefer. (See https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/4qv7k2/imnsho_the_bernie_sanders_movement_needs/ ) That hasn\’t happened, and the window for making a huge change in this election cycle appears to be closing rapidly. (Based on what I see in the Bernie Sanders related sub-reddits, a large percentage of Sanders supporters are going to Jill Stein; however, I don\’t see any of the PROMINENT Sanders supporters, who could LEAD with a significant fraction of Sanders\’ \’authority\’, doing so.)

    BTW, Jeff Roby has destroyed what I\’ll call the \’strong sheepdog hypothesis\’. See \”Time to Put the Sheepdog Narrative to Sleep\” at http://lifeinspice.com/?p=2660

  20. “Donations to Jill Stein Explode Nearly 1000% Since Sanders’ Endorsement of Clinton”
    http://tinyurl.com/zpfyv5k

  21. XFR

    Stein is also a sheepdog. If you were following the 2012 Green leadership race on FDL you’d have seen how longstanding Democrat fixers flooded into the Green party in support of Stein and systematically torpedoed Rocky Anderson’s bid for the leadership.

    Anderson was a career politician with a populist track record and a potential dark horse in the 2012 general. The risk of an actual upset in 2012 simply could not be tolerated and so every stop was pulled to railroad the Greens into supporting Stein and her “let’s-lose-but-beautifully” approach.

    American politics is like an onion made of shills.

  22. EmilianoZ

    Hugh: You may have resisted the notion that Sanders was a sheepdog but that is what he has become, campaigning for Clinton. Don’t beat up the Black Agenda Report for having told you that way back when, and don’t blame me for calling him a Trojan horse meant to steal the oxygen from the creation of any real progressive alternative to the two parties.

    Chris Hedges said it too.

    This reminds me of Yeat’s “second coming”:

    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

  23. Peter*

    @XFR

    If Stein is a sheepdog she is not a very good one, the wolves ate all her sheep. Rocky was an interesting character but he had lots of baggage to go with his political career and probably would have failed as miserably as Stein did.

    The belief that a third party can affect our two party duopoly is a fantasy that only keeps people supporting the crooked system by providing an outlet for frustration and anger while keeping the rubes believing, hoping and wishing for some magic Great Leader to save them from the wolves.

  24. different clue

    I agree with Ian Welsh’s assessment of Sanders’s achievement. He always said he would support the DemParty nominee if it wasnt’ him. “Lefter-than-thou” purists who feel “betrayed and let down” by Sanders doing what he always said he would do are just upset because he hasn’t provided them the validation or catharsis or whatever they somehow believe he owed them.

    Thanks to the Sanders effort, millions of people have become aware of eachothers’ existence. They have learned some things about political organizing and social organizing and sustaining an effort through counter-mainstream channels. They have also seem how an ongoing stream of money can be raised through counter-mainstream channels and in defiance of Clintobama Shitocrat oligarch wishes. If they are disappointed in how the Sanders thing worked out, they can remember that they don’t have to let their disappointment encourage them to go limp and go dark. They can stay organized and break up into as few or as many different theory-action groups as they please in order to pursue different political-combat and political-warfighting approaches towards whatever shared or different objectives they set for themselves.

    Sanders will stay a Senator until retirement or defeat. He will make maybe-strong or maybe-weak efforts to obstruct the Obama-Clintonite Free Trade Conspiracy agenda . . . in particular obstructing TPP, TTIP, TISA, etc. He may try to support or obstruct other things.
    If Clinton gets elected, he may try to raise objections to some of her wanna-be appointees . . . such as the pro-war-with-Russia Flournoy, Nuland and other such neo-conservaliberal filth and scum.

    It remains to be seen how many of the Sanders supporters decide to betray themselves and any hope of a survivable future by joining the Klinton Koolaid Kultists. Some will, some won’t.

  25. Sparkylab

    @Bill H. I think you hit the nail on the head.

    I would go as far to say that if HRC gets elected then a Trump will never be allowed to happen ever again, either. Which is (indirectly) a good thing, because I see four distinct viable parties that should exist right now.

  26. XFR

    “Lefter-than-thou” purists who feel “betrayed and let down” by Sanders

    Uhhh…

    Thanks to the Sanders effort, millions of people have become aware of eachothers’ existence. They have learned some things about political organizing and social organizing and sustaining an effort through counter-mainstream channels.

    Thanks to the Obama campaign, millions of people have become aware of each others’ existence. They have learned some things about political organizing and social organizing and sustaining an effort through counter-mainstream channels.

    Thanks to Occupy Wall Street, millions of people have become aware of each others’ existence. They have learned some things about political organizing and social organizing and sustaining an effort through counter-mainstream channels.

    Sanders will stay a Senator until retirement or defeat. He will make maybe-strong or maybe-weak efforts to obstruct the Obama-Clintonite Free Trade Conspiracy agenda . . . in particular obstructing TPP, TTIP, TISA, etc. He may try to support or obstruct other things.

    Be still my heart.

    If Clinton gets elected, he may try to raise objections to some of her wanna-be appointees . . . such as the pro-war-with-Russia Flournoy, Nuland and other such neo-conservaliberal filth and scum.

    I’m sure the very thought has her quailing with fear.

    It remains to be seen how many of the Sanders supporters decide to betray themselves and any hope of a survivable future by joining the Klinton Koolaid Kultists. Some will, some won’t.

    If they won’t, won’t that make them “‘lefter-than-thou’ purists”?

  27. Peter*

    I doubt the Red Queen’s purity pa-trolls will have much effect this election and although they were very active during the last one I don’t think they had much effect even then.

    Bernie has delegated himself to the dustbin of corporate stooge history and along with the other rising faux progressive Liz Warren they may have quisling positions in the new regime but I doubt either will make many public appearances where rotten cabbages, tomatoes and shoes will be waiting for them.

  28. Tom

    Bernie didn’t fight. He let Hillary blatantly steal election after election and illegally disenfranchise millions of voters.

    He wasn’t real and he never was.

    Trump is our next president.

  29. Hugh

    What is funny is how Berniestas are madly spinning that Sanders sold them out, and more than this that it was always in the cards that he was going to sell them out. So rather than look in the mirror they attack those, whom lambert strether used to say were prematurely correct. So Sanders isn’t a sheepdog for taking on the role of sheepdog because he said from the start he was going to be a sheepdog. Seriously, that’s the argument you want to go with?

    The liberal (Obama/Clinton Democratic-type) admonition to progressives is that they should not make the perfect the enemy of the good. This has always rankled many progressives because it’s just another way to get them to accept the lesser of two evils, the Democrats’ shit sandwich as opposed to the Republican shit sandwich. Yet this is the very argument that the Berniestas are using against non-Bernie progressives, even though, or perhaps despite the fact that, those who were skeptical of Sanders got it right.

    As I said above, the watchword for years about Obama has been: Pay attention to what he does, not what he says. This should apply not just to Obama but to any politician. Yet Sanders gets a dispensation from it. For him, we are told: Don’t pay attention to what he does, but what he says. Why?

    Another dodge that I have seen is where Sanders’ supporters flip his endorsement of Clinton into an ethical act. He was just keeping his word. He said he would endorse the Democratic nominee and now he has. The problem is that ethics is seldom so simple. So you tell me whom Sanders should have kept faith with: those who believed in him, worked for him, sent money to him, and voted for him or a corrupt party which used a corrupt process to choose its corrupt nominee, a party and a candidate whose agenda is to stick it to these very same Sanders’ supporters? Explain to me how what Sanders did was ethical. And how it is ethical for him to switch to “pragmatic” (i.e. lesser of two evils) mode and say that now what’s important is not to run against Clinton but against Trump. Or how he couched it in terms of what is important is to look to the future (without Trump) and not the past (corrupt Clinton). I noticed one commenter over at Naked Capitalism saw the same thing I did. This is exactly the same language that Obama used in early 2008 to signal that he was not going to hold those responsible for torture accountable and it became the mantra of his Administration following the financial meltdown.

    This is the fifth election cycle, the third Presidential election cycle, since 2008 when I first made the case that progressives needed their own party because the Democrats didn’t give a shit about them and what they wanted. That was 8 years ago. Each cycle I have heard various rationales for why now is not a good time to begin. Or that just wait until after the election. And you know what? Nothing substantial has changed in any of that time. As past is prologue, I do not see anything changing anytime soon. 8 years was time enough and more to get a progressive party up, running, winning, and even challenging the Democratic-Republican duopoly. But that would require focus, discipline, and sacrifice, and I have seen zero, zip, nada of this from progressives. I will fight where and how I can with my words and ideas, but organizing progressives is like herding cats. There is no core to stay focussed and build on. It’s always the cause or candidate du jour with them. And when it comes to being screwed over as they invariably are, the people they get mad at are not the ones screwing them but the people who tried to warn them. The System, the Establishment, the powers that be, the rich and elites have nothing to fear from us, and they know it, as long as we continue to be so easily conned and had by them, and so easily turned against each other.

  30. highrpm

    hey hugh, tell me something i didn’t already know 10x over. thank you for your deep dark illuminating tidbits. it was obvious that sanders was establishment from the beginning. in fact, when ian mused in the past that sanders may not in the end flip to clinton, i replied that of course he would. so why did i send money to sanders? because unlike you, i know that a progressive party will never happen in these united states. yet the sadness i feel for the next generation drove me to it. and sanders was the only one talking about student loan badness. hope against hope. hey, ian just posted some thoughts on hope. alas, all we boomers have to offer them is more grandma/ grandpa prune skinned oldies. who rely on their sycophant young staffers to set policy. as they, the point men are too old and rickety in brain cells to think clearly for more than one hour daily. sick. sick. sick.

  31. XFR

    If Stein is a sheepdog she is not a very good one, the wolves ate all her sheep.

    “If Wonton gets wind of this, my ass is grass, and he’s got a lawnmower – ya dig?”

    What in blazes are you trying to say?

    Rocky was an interesting character but he had lots of baggage to go with his political career and probably would have failed as miserably as Stein did.

    I don’t agree. 40% of the U.S. electorate is desperate for somewhere to bolt, as this current cycle makes abundantly clear.

  32. Peter*

    @XFR

    Most Amerikans are bolted fast to the status quo and although they whine a lot they are going nowhere. The only voters who have a chance to affect the future are those who reject the system outright and refuse to participate in the sham, don’t vote, boycott.

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