Run on Your Strength - Editorial, The Week in Review

Analysis, Commentary, Opinion

04.06.2019

Run on Your Strength

          Not by Undermining Your Opponent

The primary season is just getting and the field is not yet set.

Democratic Party politics is much different now than it was four years ago, the race t be the party’s nominee for president in 2020 is wide open. There are more than a dozen candidates that have jumped in, and a few more who are expected to announce soon.

In the last cycle HRC had all of the structural support locked up, and though BS ran a campaign that made her have to work, her victory was never in doubt, not to me at least, not to most observers, though it was to some self-deluded folks and even though there numbers might be in the tens of thousands they are still just a tiny minority of the voters who participated in the caucuses and primaries.

It seems however, that there bitterness at having lost has not gone away. The BS campaign fizzled out. And the principle eventually endorsed his opponent, though many of his followers opted to resist until the very end, they eagerly pushed all the rightwing and Russian propaganda that was trolling HRC, they refused to support her or even vote for her many even went over to cast ballots for Jill Stein, a Russian stooge, a useful idiot of Vladimir Putin’s.

BS is running again. He never released his taxes, he promised he would but he still hasn’t. He has broken other promises as well. In the last election cycle he gave up his status as an Independent when he sought the nomination of the Democratic Party, he said he would remain with the party but then, in 2018 he ran for his Senate seat in Vermont as an Independent again.

Now he is singing the same old song.

The BS team is different this time, it is as if they were still riding high on their “almost-won” campaign from 2016. They are acting much like HRC did, BS and his campaign staff, his surrogates and supporters, they are acting as if BS should be anointed and they are running down candidates who they feel might be a threat to them; Beto O’Rourke, the latest with Joe Biden, they are poisoning the well.

I say let things shake out with positive campaigning and no dirty tricks; the dirty tricks are disqualifying. The Democratic Party needs unity. We need to win the house, we need to win the Senate, we need to expand our hold on congress, and in state houses across the nation.

We need to win if we hope to get the plethora of Constitutional amendments that candidates are proposing passed, but more importantly, we need to win if want to control redistricting, and the upcoming apportionment of congressional districts.

There cannot be any Green new deal litmus tests, nothing of the sort, democrats need to support democrats in districts where they can win, there cannot be any ugly and divisive purity tests, and primary challenges, anyone who thinks that is a good idea needs to sit down.

I’m not of BS, I think he is a ridiculous candidate with a vision for America, that would be good if it could obtain, but for which there is not a broad enough constituency to pass. He is enamored with his good ideas, and that makes him a dangerous man.    

I don’t want Joe Biden in the race either, Or Elizabeth Warren, let the old guard stand down, but if the win the hearts and minds of the voters then they have my vote and that is that, I’ll even vote for BS.