A few weeks back I wrote a piece that was pretty rough on Bernie Sanders. I admit it. I pulled him through the mud by his loafers and smeared his good name. I had the audacity to point out his rubber-stamping of various wars, his silent support for Israel’s assault on Palestine, and his crude vote during Bill Clinton’s presidency that peeled away the rights granted by habeas corpus. I even called his campaign a dead end. I mean, I was rough on the old comrade.
A slew of emails soon flooded my inbox from Bernie-fanatics. They chastised me for claiming Bernie wasn’t worth the effort (“How dare you, you fucking ass-wipe!”). They openly proclaimed their admiration for Sanders (“It’s like Noam Chomsky is running for the White House!”) and begged me to abandon my criticisms and jump on the latest freight train to change (“You’ll be forced to come around, he’s going to cream Clinton in the primaries, you watch!”). Fact is, I’m not sorry in the least that I wrote the truth about his misdirected campaign. In fact, the Bernie-bots are exactly the reason Democrats don’t give a shit about progressive politics. Let me explain.