Tuesday, July 26, 2016

If Clinton Loses, It Won’t Be Sanders’ Fault

I’ve been worried that if Clinton loses the general election her supporters would have a ready made scapegoat: the Bernie Bros. This meme has been transparently taking shape throughout the primaries, and I thought it reflected the deep and well-earned insecurities of the Clinton campaign. The primaries weren’t even half over and you could already see Bernie being set up to be the new Nader.

This would conveniently shift blame from the nominees own gargantuan flaws and give the Dems an excuse to move even further right, which is what they want anyway: See, progressives always cost us the general election. America is a center-right country!

(Don’t let last night’s Potemkin populism fool you. The “most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic party” will be luxuriously shat upon and rejected bell, book and candle the second Hillary Clinton is sworn in. The Clintons simply do not agree with it. It is not who they are.)

Anyway, somebody phone up the DNC with the latest: Ninety-percent of “consistent” Sanders supporters “favor Clinton over Trump.” It’s all hers to lose from now on, and I’ve no doubt her insular, lead-footed political team will find plenty of ways to do so between now and November.

Of course, if Clinton loses we’ll have much more important things to do than bicker over who was to blame, like scrambling to find which countries will accept a flood of desperate American refugees (as opposed to those who are simply going to slam their doors in our faces and throw a great big schadenfreude party.

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