A Bernie Supports Optimistic Views Of A Biden Nomination

As a Bernie supporter, here are my thoughts on a Biden nominee.

Biden is clearly going to be the democratic nominee. One thing this election, which I think has to change, is demonizing the field of democratic opponents, as one of them, be it your candidate or the next, will become elected. Attacking policy is okay. Attacking his mental fortitude or personal attributes is probably not a good long term strategy if that candidate eventually wins. Getting a one up on your in-party rival using personal insults, and coming out of an argument on the winning side, is nothing more than a pyrrhic victory for the party at large.

I saw it happen in the Hillary Clinton campaign. I did not like her, but you couldn’t tell with the way I fervently defended her before the general election, because I didn’t believe in the “lesser of two evils” — I saw only one evil: Donald Trump. And to preface every argument with “I don’t like Hillary either, BUT Donald Trump is…” is not a great way to win over the minds of the electorate who are undecided.

The more you attack the character of your allied opponents, their personality, who they are at their core, while ignoring their policies, creates an air of absolute despair when they win, and hands the election to Donald Trump. Again, we saw this with the lack of enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton.

Here’s the real reason Bernie lost, sans conspiracies. He lost because he failed to unite the people of the United States behind him. There’s really no other explanation. There are other factors which hurt him, but all in all, he wasn’t able to shore up the black vote, didn’t perform particularly well with white women, and had nearly no chance to unite his party behind him. If he can’t even unite his party, how can he unite the people at large? You can say this was a party conspiracy, but he also wasn’t interested in shoring their support. Can you blame a party that abandoned their candidate, when he was an anti-establishment candidate anyway? Is that a conspiracy? Or is it a normal way to react when someone rejects you, you reject them? He was Bernie first, Democratic party second. It was an air of us-vs-them in this election, when the ‘them’ was often his own party. And to be fair, I can understand why he did this, because at points in the election it worked for him. But ultimately it didn’t work, and now here we are, with Joe Biden as the democratic nominee.

Why did the anti-establishment tactic work for Trump? It was because he went ALL in on this strategy. Bernie toed the line with the strategy. He didn’t outright call out news networks and his establishment party members for what they were. He was passive aggressive on this point. He needed to either be more aggressive or less aggressive (and I’m not quite sure which is the right answer).

But the fact is, if he can’t even unite his own party, how we do expect him to unite the people against Donald Trump? While I’m not sure the better candidate won (In fact, I’m almost certain the better candidate didn’t win), it’s now time to rally behind Biden without restriction or conditions.