The Political Crimes of Bernie Sanders

Sanders campaign is now a fucking disgrace. The recent events at the Nevada Democratic Convention are the culmination of a long process. Bernie delegates acted the fools. They behaved less like a political movement and more like a drunken mob after their football team lost. The attacks are steeped in misogyny and death threats.

This isn’t new. Ask any female pro-Hillary social media personality. They have been subjected to sexist attacks for months.

The blame lies squarely at the top. Bernie could have told his supporters to cut that shit out a long time ago. Instead we get this utterly pathetic reaction from his campaign manager. The following night, when Bernie had an opportunity to call for an end to the threats and misogyny, we get this utterly pathetic response. Then, we got this disgrace, a few lines in a statement where he claimed he was the REAL victim. I don’t accept apologies that end with “but…”

The Sanders campaign started out well, even nobly. He talked about the issues that he cared about. He engaged and energized the electorate. He was restrained in his critiques.

That all changed as he started losing. The Sanders campaign is engaging in unfounded conspiracy mongering. These attacks go beyond attacking an opponent. They are attacking the basic and fundamental fairness of elections. This is bad for democracy.

Bernie is betraying his own campaign and movement. He ran to get new people involved in politics. Yet, every time he plays the victim and dabbles in conspiracy theories, he turns off his supporters to politics. There is a segment of Bernie supporters who will not accept his defeat even though Hillary won fair and square. They will stay home in November. Bernie started out wanting to pull the party to the left. Every vote he costs us on the left we are going to have to go to the center to get back.

It all started when the Sanders campaign got caught red-handed stealing Hillary’s data. The progressive voterfile lives in what is called the Voter Action Network, or the VAN. The Van is administered by a company called NGP VAN. We keep all data in the same database, but for primaries, there is a firewall to prevent one campaign from accessing the other’s data. We do this so, after the primary is over, we have everyone’s data and can use it in later elections. It is tremendous advantage that the Left has over Republicans.

The Democrat National Committee rightly shut down Sanders’ data access to make sure the stolen data was expunged. The Sanders campaign responded by playing the victim, accusing the DNC of conspiring against them. They fund raised on it. His supporters took the baton and ran with it. I saw accusations that:

A) the Clinton campaign conspired with the DNC and NGP VAN .

B) the DNC placed a sleeper agent in the Sanders campaign in the form of their data manager.

C) NGP VAN than purposely let down the firewall (in reality, it was a mistake when NGP VAN updated the software).

D) the sleeper agent then stole the data.

All this was so the Sanders campaign could lose data access. For 1 day. And look bad. In an esoteric corner of the campaign world that only experienced campaign staff even know about.

I was hoping that this idiocy was a one off. It just opened of the floodgates.

Bernie’s Campaign Manager Jeff Weaver accused Microsoft of conspiring with the Iowa Democratic Party to cook the election results. Weaver questioned whether the reporting app Microsoft created would give delegates to Clinton. I can’t believe this caught traction. No serious person can believe that one of the richest companies in the world would risk fraud charges to give an election representing .000536% of the population to a candidate already favored to win.

The Sanders campaign accused the DNC of rigging the primary by not having enough debates. The DNC has sanctioned 9 debates. They have held them on a variety of networks and on Youtube. They have been on every night of the week. If Bernie couldn’t get his message out after 18 hours of content, I’m not sure if any more would do the trick.

Sanders supporters accused the Clinton campaign of rigging the vote in Arizona. Polling locations were closed in Maricopa County and there were hours-long wait. First of all, the Maricopa County Recorder is Helen Purcell, a Republican. Why would a Republican conspire to hand the election to Hillary Clinton? You do know that Republicans hate Hillary? Second of all, if this was a conspiracy to hand it to Hillary, they were breathtakingly incompetent in doing so. The polling closures hurt Latinos the most. Latinos are breaking for Hillary.

This brings us to the New York Primary. About 120,000 Democratic voters were wrongly purged from the rolls. Sanders supporters cried “Conspiracy! The fix is in! Hillary got rid of Sanders supporters!”

Before I take this on, I need to tell you about my resume. I was a Voter File Manager for Obama’s 2008 campaign. I stayed in political data for the next 7 years. There is the one thing in this world that I would call myself an expert in, but I am an expert in targeting progressive voters in voterfiles. So believe me when I say this: It is well nigh impossible to find voters for a particular candidate in a party primary using only data found on voter rolls.

I have a hard and fast rule in politics: “Never ascribe to conspiracy what first can be ascribed to incompetence.” The Brooklyn voter purge is a clear example of the latter, not the former.

They’ve delegitimized Hillary wins. “Oh, she won in the Deep South. Those states don’t matter!” Those voters they are dismissing are heavily African-Americans. Black voters are the cornerstone of our strategy in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida. Way to make them feel welcome!

He’s railed against closed primaries, just another example of “The Establishment” trying to keep him down. The reality is that closed primaries have been set years in advance. I don’t like closed primaries. As a professional targeter, being able to add independents who voted in the Democratic primary in an open primary is a gift from the gods. But these rules were set long before the dynamics of the race were apparent. Oh, and Hillary has won 12 open primaries.

Sanders supporters seem to be blithely unaware of the real disenfranchisement going on. Sanders supporters celebrate his caucus wins. Caucuses exclude far more voters than the requirement that you check a party box on a voter registration card a few weeks in advance. Shift workers, parents, people with disabilities, seniors, and people of certain religions who observe a Saturday sabbath are all unable to participate. There are people who want to keep their political preferences secret for fear of retaliation from family, friends, work, or church members. They don’t participate in caucuses. But Bernie is winning caucus states, so of course this isn’t a problem for them.

This hypocrisy extends to Super delegates. Super delegates are backing Hillary because she cultivated them. Hillary is raising funds for party building and to help down ballot races. Bernie actually used Hillary’s party building against her in a fundraising email. I hate money in politics. Believe me, if I could I’d design a campaign finance system that would put at least half of my friends out of business permanently. But we can’t unilaterally disarm. Purity isn’t worth a single electoral vote. Bernie supporters keep telling me that he’ll usher in a new progressive Congress to get his agenda passed. Yet he has done nothing for down ballot races except to endorse a few progressive Democrats running against other Democrats.

Sanders railed against establishment and Super Delegates. And then Sanders started losing. He is now asking them to overturn the will of the voters and back him.

At this point, I am embarrassed for him.

All this conspiracy mongering and unjustified victimhood has real consequences. Now, Bernie supporters won’t accept that he lost. It was a fair game. Bernie raised enough money to be competitive. He spent the most on advertisement. Despite Sanders supporters complaints, he got the same amount of media coverage as Hillary. He had almost a 1,000 paid staff and a robust field program.

Yes, Hillary started out with a big advantage in money, name recognition, and endorsements. She had those same advantages in 2008. Bernie could have beaten her, but he didn’t. He lost. He lost by 3,000,000 votes. His message of democratic socialism didn’t appeal to enough Democrats.

I’ve been in a couple of bruising primary fights. When you are losing, sometimes you have to drop the gloves and go at it. I can respect that. Call Hillary “unqualified” even though she is one of the most qualified people to run for President in US history. Call her corrupt even though all her financial dealings were above board, legal, and reported in the tax returns she released. This is all fair game. I would prefer that he not do it now that Hillary is the presumptive nominee, but I can accept it.

What I can’t accept is baseless attacks on the party, the movement, and the process. Cynicism is at an all time high, and for good reason. Government is broken. The political process is broken. What we don’t need any more cynicism. This baseless conspiracy mongering is just adding to it all with no purpose.

Shame on Bernie Sanders.