GAZA

Bernie’s New Video Demonstrates the Price of Hillary’s 2016 Primary Cheating

Imagining an alternate timeline

I watched Bernie Sanders’ recent video on Gaza, and it got me thinking about how different things could be now if he hadn’t been cheated out of the Democratic nomination in 2016 by Hillary and the DNC leadership. To refresh the details in your mind, you can read a bit about it here and here. It was a big enough story that even the New York Times had to acknowledge it, though with their characteristic understatement and obfuscation. The leaked DNC emails (leaked not hacked) revealed an internal plot against Bernie that was immediately overshadowed shoot-the-messenger messaging that turned the spotlight on Julian Assange. We learned that big “D” Democratic doesn’t mean little “d” democratic in the primaries.

I was never a Bernie fan, and I’m not now. One of my most widely read essays to this day is 2019’s “No, Bernie’s Not Antiwar,” though by early 2020 I wrote another piece supporting his candidacy, in part because his following among youth was so strong, and I felt they deserved to get who they wanted. Since then, he hasn’t done much to impress me other than his attempt to stop the killing in Yemen under Trump.