This is not the diary I intended to write. I wanted to write a diary about how good Bernie’s speech was last night.
I was out with my family at a watch party last night. We stayed out later than I would have liked with my young kids because we wanted to see Hillary speak, and she was not on before bedtime even in the Central Time Zone.
It was wonderful. The emotion in the room and evident on Hillary’s face last night was palpable. People were crying, cheering, my three year old daughter was watching Hillary with far more attention span I thought she even had.
And I stayed up after everyone was in bed. I watched the results come in as she shockingly won South Dakota. California looked good, but there wasn’t a call.
And Bernie’s speech came on. And I watched it. And, contrary to some of the other reactions I’ve seen from Hillary supporters, I thought it was pretty great. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a tough night for him.
I thought he hit the right notes. He showed respect for his supporters, their hard work, and the issues that motivate them. He didn’t attack Hillary Clinton. He went after Trump. He said that he wanted to make sure he fought for every vote in the final primary in Washington DC. All wonderful.
He said he was taking the fight to Philly, yes, but if you listen carefully- he didn’t once mention the nomination. He was talking about taking their ideas to Philly, not a contentious floor fight over the nomination.
He talked about change coming from the bottom up, not the top down. He sounded a lot like he was softening his supporters up for another speech in a few days- he won’t be the President but the movement lives on and the issues they care about are still worth fighting for.
The speech was mostly good. There were bad moments, but he was having a pretty bad night electorally, and we now have learned that he heard about the Politco article of his own staff throwing him under the bus shortly before he hit the stage. His crowed booed the mention of Hillary Clinton’s name, and he probably didn’t do enough to stop it, but these kinds of wounds take time to heal.
And then there were the chants of “BERNIE OR BUST!” coming from some in the audience. In the past I’ve seen him smile, wait for the chants to die down, laugh a bit. He didn’t seem to do that last night. From my perspective, I thought he was realizing how much damage he had done by helping foster that sentiment. I thought it seemed like he was preparing to do the right thing.
Apparently I was wrong.
In a press release today, Bernie Sanders’s campaign emphasized the Bernie or Bust chants in the very first line:
To chants of “Bernie or Bust,” U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders told a roaring crowd of supporters on Tuesday that he will carry his White House campaign and their fight for a political revolution to this summer’s Democratic National Convention.
Maybe I saw what I wanted to see in his speech last night. I thought he was turning the corner, was preparing to show some class and integrity. Maybe not.
I hoped he was honest, good, decent man I thought he was before he ran for President. If his campaign is now touting Bernie or Bust on their website and in their press releases, he is none of those things.
If this is the path he chooses, he is the bitter megalomaniac depicted in the Politico article, and he needs to be stopped. I still have hope he does the right thing. The first thing he needs to do is to strongly denounce the pathetic and anti-progressive whiners in the “Bernie or Bust” fringe. Embracing them today is a step in exactly the wrong direction.