I have been on the Philadelphia for Bernie Sanders 2016 page a bit in the last couple of days and I have to say that what I’m reading there is pretty horrifying. It includes the following claims:
1. Projections about how Bernie is going to win that are utterly crazy. Did you know that the polls are biased against Bernie and that, rather than being down ten points in California he is poised to beat Hillary 60%-40%?
2. Given how well Bernie is going to do in the last primaries, no candidate is going to have a majority of all delegates without super-delegates voters (which is barely conceiveable) which means that the convention is an open one and thus a majority of supervoters will turn to him.
3. That they should turn to him because he is clearly more electable nationally despite the fact that no one has actually raised all the objections to his policies (huge tax increases), record (at the left edge of possibility), and political past (Moscow honeymoon, support of Sandinistas, articles about sex and women—and other things I’m not going to mention because they are not known).
4. Constant complaints about how Hillary and the DNC stacked the deck against him even though the (1) many election irregularities that have actually been examined show that they were mostly not the responsibility of Democratic officials who, anyway, don’t take their orders from DWS or (2) many longstanding practices that hurt Sanders (such as having closed primaries) have nothing to do with supporting Hillary and there are good reasons for having them.
5. Complaints about basic practices of democracy, such as handing out ballots at a polling place, that seem to them to infringe on their right to God knows what.
6. Fantasies about symbolism that reveal the deep meaning of Clinton’s campaign. Did you know that the red arrow pointing to the right comes from Goldwater’s campaign and that it is red because Hillary wants to make the country Republican? I guess none of them have ever heard of the import of the color red before 200.
7. Rehash of right-wing criticisms of Hillary: Benghazi, Whitewater, etc.
8. Utter certainty that Hillary is going to be indicted because of the damn emails.
9. False accounts of her voting record that equate missing votes during the 2008 campaign with support for Republican position on those votes.
10. Cockamamie theories about the influence of campaign contributions. Simply getting a campaign contribution from someone is, all by itself, a sign that one supports their position. (How they take into account that politicians routinely take contributions from businesses on different sides of an issue, I don’t know.) None of these folks are aware either of (1) the eight reasons why corporations have too much power in our political life that are far more important than campaign contributions or (2) the huge amount of research that shows that campaign contributions play little role in changing the minds of politicians on major policy issues and are almost entirely influential with regard to second issues.
11. Claims that one is a neo-liberal or corporate shill if one does not accept every last position of Bernie’s. Turns out that that big campaign for health care reform I ran in support of the ACA, that was co-chaired by US Action and SEIU was a bunch of corporate shills.
12. And of course, any group that supports Hillary from Planned Parenthood to one of the big unions are part of the Establishment.
13. An incredible belief in the power of their own will to totally transform our politics and a coming revolution for which there is absolutely no sign.
14. And, of course, none of these people will vote for Hillary because she’s just another Republican.
And worst of all, no contrary voices. There seems to be no one in those groups with any political experience or judgment. Or, at the very least, no one who is willing to risk condemnation for criticizing the most outrageous claims others make.
I’ve never seen a more powerful demonstration of both the influence of groupthink and the truth of the Duhem-Quine thesis which holds that evidence can’t refute any one proposition because you can always adjust your beliefs somewhere else so as not to give up belief in any one particular idea.
The corollary to the Duhem-Quine thesis is that knowledge is based on experience and judgement, which these people not only lack but utterly distrust. If someone says to them, “people who have been involved in politics for some time actually believe with good reason that you are mistaken,” they are LESS likely to believe them because experience in politics is a sign of being part of the corrupt establishment.
Frankly, these folks scare me. I believe they are a relatively small group of folks who, once the Sanders campaign ends, will largely disappear because they have little connection to the ongoing bodies of people who constitute the progressive wing of politics in our city and state. And those who stay will no doubt become “corrrupted” as they learn something.
But if these folks were to become a self-sustaining tendency in our politics, we will have a tea party of the left, a group of people that live in their own world and make demands on politics that are crazy and unattainable and that, when they get power, nominate Democrats who are unelectable.
I’ve supported Sanders largely because I do think that the Democratic Party needs to emphasize the problem of inequality and the dangers of foreign military operations. I’m hopeful that the success of Sanders in raising these issues will contribute to the party in the long term. I’m hopeful that the people he has mobilized, and especially the young people who are our future—even if they never formed a revolutionary force—will tilt our politics to the left in the next 40 years.
But I have to say that a lot of what I’m reading gives me pause. I don’t know how big this group is but Bernie Sanders has unleashed some dangerous ideas. Part of his responsibility in the next few months is to get them under control.