Dear Bernie,
Your message below shows you are either:
1) naively incompetent to think that changing the corrupt DNC platform you present as your excuse here matters, or
2) a fraudulent, fawning, sellout, "sheepdog" as forecast by many from the start, who was more interested in effective fundraising strategies than fighting strategically for the progressive political change necessary to overcome the ruling plutocracy.
Yes, that stark choice may be criticized as a false dichotomy which omits a less harsh middle theory, that you were never really that serious and you were just kidding when you raised a quarter billion dollars from $27 donors to oppose a Clinton restoration and win the election.
Your campaign did provide a valuable catalyst for the first stage of your aborted progressive revolt. But your flimsy explanation for quitting and capitulating provides no basis to choose a more nuanced understanding than those two choices offered for your flip-flop from opposing plutocracy to now embracing it.
That you ran a very effective speaking and fundraising operation in a unique year of political ferment driven by the Millennial generation is not evidence for any particular view of your true motivation for ultimate betrayal.
Your statement trying to justify endorsing Clinton does not even begin to explain why you failed to make real demands of the plutocratic Democrats instead of capitulating without getting anything of real political value in exchange.
Your appeal to partisan polarization promotes a plutocratic Kabuki narrative that provides no legitimate explanation either for your capitulation to a corrupt election process prior to the Convention, which also betrays a promise to your supporters, or your failure to now oppose both Clinton and Trump by offering the American public the progressive ballot choice that a majority has shown that they want.Your strategy for holding public officials accountable in this corrupt plutocracy is defective. It cannot be accomplished by supporting them but by challenging and defeating them, unless the deliver something of proven value now - before you endorse them.
Your strategy for electing down-ballot progressives by supporting the most unpopular Democrat in recent history at the top of the ticket makes no sense. instead of offering the usual lesser of evils voting, a progressive campaign opposing Clinton and Trump is far more likely to increase the turnout of progressive voters. With no credible progressive chance of victory turnout will be depressed as usual .
The bone you throw to authentic reform by suggesting you will be fighting for changes in the Democratic Rules Committee is both far too late to make a difference, and also not credible in view of the strategic incompetence displayed in the rest of your message, and campaign. As one commenter writes "the Democratic primary was rigged to enable a Clinton win. Your campaign have been ineffective in opposing this theft. By endorsing Clinton before the rigging has been corrected you have sacrificed the considerable leverage that would have been needed to make the necessary rules changes to democratize the party. This is not how to prevent the 2020 election from being predictably stolen from any progressive challenger by the corrupt Democratic Party establishment, just as it was stolen in 2016.
You have proven to be a strategically incompetent leader of the movement. For just one example, as the always incisive BAR described just one of the failures, "the Sanders campaign never even knocked on the door of black support."Please do not try to continue misleading this movement by using the mailing list you have acquired under what has turned out to be false pretenses to propagandize for Clinton, or for more ineffective and diversionary strategies like changing the DNC Platform.
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