Word: The iron law of institutions vs. Bernie Sanders

Mondoweiss

Donald Johnson - The New York Times publishes an op-ed by a Sanders voter (“Let’s Grow Up, Liberals,” by Kevin Baker) and he repeats exactly the same arguments as Paul Krugman or Andrew Rosenthal or virtually every NYT opinion writer in the past several months.  I haven’t seen a single NYT opinion piece from any Sanders supporter explaining why they will vote for Clinton in November on lesser evil grounds, but would have greatly preferred Sanders.  Instead, the focus has been on Sanders for having the temerity to point out her flaws...

This isn’t about issues or pragmatism or about making the world a better place or even about saving the world from Trump. It’s tribalism pretending to be something better. They don’t want the votes of Sanders supporters who fail to renounce any criticism they ever made of Clinton.  If Clinton loses they want a scapegoat–in fact, they are acting like people who would almost rather have a Clinton loss with Sanders as a scapegoat than a Clinton victory with the help of people who are deeply critical of Clinton.  They can’t really think this if they are that (rightly) fearful of Trump, but on the emotional level their hatred of Sanders and his supporters runs deep. The left wing criticism of the Democrats really bites–they want people who think that way utterly discredited and you can see that if Trump wins they will turn on the left with all the hatred they gave to Nader, even though Sanders did exactly what people had said Nader should have done....