I know that you’re not reading this. I’m a long way away and I don’t matter. But I just have to put my question out there. I need to know the answer: Why didn’t you make it clearer to your supporters that you would do *anything* not to be remembered in the way Ralph Nader is remembered?
They’re *really* hurting and disillusioned right now. It’s obvious. I can see it from here.
You’re worried about being ‘Ralph Nadered’ when you should be worried about going down in history as the person who crushed the hopes of American progressives and failed young progressives when they needed you most.
I’m trying to set aside the fact that the Nader story is a Democrat story and that Nader’s treatment is unfair. I’m trying to forget that it’s the Democrats refusing to take responsibility for their loss, as they’ve done since 2016. I’m trying to be generous to you. I’m trying to ignore the possibility that you’re blindly swallowing the tale that has been told to protect the Democrat hierarchy.
Even given all that, I just don’t understand why you didn’t make it clearer that you were prepared to trash the hopes of all those people who believed in you, especially all those young people, if it meant not being remembered as a ‘Ralph Nader.’
You’ve taken their hope from them.
You could have said something along the lines of: “Please give me your support! I will stop campaigning, however, if anyone claims that I’m causing votes that would have gone to *any* Democrat nominee for President, I repeat *any* Democrat nominee for President, not to go to that nominee and I will support her or him.”
Your supporters didn’t know this in the way they needed to know it. They believed in you and now you’re telling them to vote Biden… without any concessions… without reservation… without the Democrats adopting even one of the major policies that you’ve championed.
I accept that it didn’t help that some of them thought you might win the Democrat nomination. I expected that you’d not win the nomination. I just thought you’d be beaten at the (contested) Convention. (That’s what we expect when we’re used to compulsory preferential voting — our person losing at the end.)
Americans are so used to a plurality voting system, however, that your supporters started claiming that you’d won the states where you’d gained the most votes. That’s why the move against you had to come earlier, before the Convention. It snuffed out the possibility that you would win the most votes in too many states and be able to claim that you were the true representative of the Democrats.
I thought you had a slim chance of winning the Democrat nomination. You would have had to run against your own party. Like Trump did in 2016. You would have had to call to Democrats disillusioned with the hierarchy to support you and to bring others into, or back into, the party. Like Trump did.
I didn’t expect that, though. It was the only way you could have won. But it would have been very difficult and have taken a lot of skill. I thought you might be able do it, with a lot of luck!
I have wondered whether you are doing this deliberately. We’re thinking about the Presidential election. You’re thinking that this is a way to truly radicalize people, especially young people. You’re showing young people that there is no hope for reform within the system and that they have to do things for themselves. We’re just reformers worrying about elections. You’re a revolutionary.
But, if you didn’t mean to crush the hopes of all those progressives, all those young progressives (don’t young progressives have enough to be sad about?), I still think there is a way out for you. But only if you forget the Ralph Nader thing.
It’s not about you, Bernie. If doing the right thing means going down in history as a villain, then please do the right thing! It’s not about you the individual. It’s about the collective purpose you serve. Be the socialist you claim to be!
If I’m not completely wrong, and you are not thinking at a higher level, then the only way that you can repair the damage that you have done is to run for President as an Independent.
You’d need to appeal to disillusioned American voters. Tell Trump voters that you will really drain the swamp. Tell them that you really will take them out of foreign wars. Tell them that you will actually protect workers and not protect bosses in the naïve, and false, hope that they will take care of workers. Convince them that the Green New Deal will do this. Make it clear to Trump supporters that you’re really trying to unseat Mitch McConnell because he’s the one who decides what happens. Tell them they voted for Trump but have had four years of McConnell.
A lot of Democrats will want to hear this too. They’ll also want to know that you are running against the conservatives in the Democratic Party who are leading the party to oblivion and the nation to ruin. It’s not an easy route to take. Nobody would suggest otherwise. I’ve watched progressives in the party being brought into line and have been surprised by how quickly and easily they dropped policies that weren’t sufficiently middle-of-the-road for the Democrat hierarchy.
As I wrote earlier, you are in danger of going down in history as the man who destroyed the hopes of American progressives and abandoned young progressives at a crucial moment. Is being remembered as a ‘Ralph Nader’ worse?
Also, and on the basis that I am just spinning my wheels in offering advice to someone who won’t even know it’s been given, you could have been much more careful when you told people that you thought your friend Joe could beat Trump. You could have said that this was because Trump is so terrible and not because your friend Joe is so good. His policies are too meek and his reforms too mild. You could have told them that meek and mild Joe was better than Trump, but not good.
And that you were worried about Joe in a campaign. He was showing signs of the pressure getting to him. He’d always gotten himself tangled in words, but was doing that more often and in worse ways. You’re older than he is, but you had to be worried about his health more than your own.
Joe will be under so much more pressure. Any friend of his has to be worried about him and prefer that he not run against Trump. You could have said that he shouldn’t run — even if he had good policies, which he didn’t, you’d add.
Then there is are the Presidential Debates. He wasn’t under that much pressure, given the number of people on the stage, and he still didn’t impress anyone during the Democrat Debates. Trump will go to work on whoever debates him. You have to be worried about that for anyone, but especially for Joe. Any friend of Joe’s would be worried.
I understand that you can’t ask about what happens if Joe has a breakdown during an event and becomes completely incoherent and all of America sees him losing it.
Leave that question for the rest of us. We’re wondering…
Addendum:
I don’t think that it’s psychoanalyzing Bernie to argue that he is afraid of being Ralph Nadered. I’d hate to be Ralph Nader. After all the great things he did, does anyone talk about Ralph Nader without mentioning or thinking about Gore and Bush and that election?
The Democrats just won’t believe you when you say you’d rather stay home than vote for Biden. Their black and white, we’re good-they’re bad, self-righteous bullshit mentality makes them think they’re not an evil. They can’t see it any other way. Trump must have cheated. If only they can work out how.
My mate Q just told me a joke that sums it all up. It’s about two Italians (Quirino can do Italian jokes). Basically, one Italian is telling the other about how many great things he has done for the people of his village. Laid innumerable bricks, did fantastic stone work, made wonderful cheese, created beautiful gardens… but is that what people say or think when they see him? Bricks? No! Stone work? No! Cheese? No! Gardens? No!
“You fucka one goat…”
