Bernie 2016 was a much better campaign than 2020 because of one reason. Bernie personally hated Hillary, didn't rate Hillary, and not Hillary's friend. The 2016 campaign against Hillary had much more artillery and venom than the 2020 campaign against Biden. Bernie has always been Joe Biden's friend when they were at the Senate.

We all maligned the collusion and consolidation of power that happened before Super Tuesday 2020 - but that was really pertaining to Klobuchar and Mayo Pete dropping out, two third rate politicians. The race was not over then. After it was a 1v1 race, Bernie REFUSES to attack Biden like he attacked Hillary. Biden is as much of a corporate sellout as Hillary. Bernie could've attacked Biden's cognitive decline, which was clear even back in 2020. He could've attacked Biden corrupt family dealing. I was a volunteer canvasser in 2016 and 2020, I knocked thousands of doors for Bernie in NH and MA, it was incredibly frustrating that Bernie wouldn't make a case against Biden like he did against Hillary. That's why Bernie 2020 sucked.

Bernie rolled over, and joined Democrat leadership in Biden administration, essentially extinguished the populist left wing and ceding the populist working class movement to the right. And here we are, Trump is 47th, because Bernie refused to attack "my friend Joe".

Now Bernard had the balls to blame the Democratic party for abandoning the working class, dude you abandoned your volunteers and campaign for your friend Joe.

  • happybadger [he/him]
    ·
    19 days ago

    It's insane that he sold his support for nothing. Harris would have probably won if she had a single meaningful policy. She started her 2020 primary campaign as a Medicare 4 All candidate. His base is the exact kind of disaffected independent voter she needed, including most of the right-wing non-MAGA hogs I know. Bernie became Biden's and Harris' lapdog for nothing.

    • AntiOutsideAktion [he/him]
      ·
      19 days ago

      The funny thing is that she for a hot minute was taking the position that she'd do some kind of price control enforcement on grocery inflation. But the republicans started attacking her (support for the policy went up anyway) and she backed off hard.

    • glimmer_twin [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      19 days ago

      His base is the exact kind of disaffected independent voter she needed

      The libs have been blaming “latinos” - literally a huge part of the Bernie voting block

  • determinism2 [he/him]
    ·
    19 days ago

    All I can say is thank god he sold out when he did rather than after winning the presidency. A spineless loser almost received the mandate and blew it - now his campaign and policies can be pointed to conceptually rather than maligned by his capitulation and impotence.

  • TrashGoblin [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    19 days ago

    Your critique of Bernie's behaviour is correct, but Bernie's diagnosis of the failure of the Democrat party is also correct. Use the "worst guy" emoji if you need to.

    • micnd90 [he/him,any]
      hexagon
      ·
      19 days ago

      He's PART of that failure. Bernie is wearing a hot dog hat blaming other hot dog stand employees for crashing the hot dog truck.

  • GoodGuyWithACat [he/him]
    ·
    19 days ago

    It's crazy because it's not like Bernie and Biden were political allies the way flattened-bernie and warren-snake-green were. It was literally just all the Democrats personally ostracized the Nard-Dog and Biden was one of the few that were nice to him.

    Of course Bernie should have done some self-crit that Biden also considered Strom Thurmand a personal friend from across the aisle so maybe that's not good company to keep.

    Bernie failed us then and I have little hope he'll do anything different. My toxic trait is that I will give him some slack if he starts going on the offensives against the Democrats and Republicans like he did in 2016. But I doubt that.

  • merthyr1831@lemmy.ml
    ·
    18 days ago

    even then he was too nice. Multiple times he was called sexist or straight up libelled - remember when Hilary or Warren claimed he said a woman would lose to trump or some other shit? Like he just let that slide

    • SSJ3Marx
      ·
      edit-2
      15 days ago

      deleted by creator

    • SpiderFarmer [he/him]
      ·
      18 days ago

      That really stuck with me when my dad was basically trying to find a reason to hate anything left of goosestepping fascism. He was quick to mention the libel of Bernie being incredibly sexist. He had no problem praising and voting for Trump, though.

  • Des [she/her, they/them]
    ·
    19 days ago

    Biden was a fake friend

    i stand by this. everyone hated Bernie but Biden was a schmoozer and Bernie just took to the one guy that didn't hate him for being a red commie

    so he ruined it all for a fake friend

  • AntiOutsideAktion [he/him]
    ·
    19 days ago

    If you want a struggle session of this I think you'll have to venture outside hexbear

  • GnastyGnuts [he/him]
    ·
    19 days ago

    Bernie is always going to be a frustrating figure to me because, for all his many increasingly obvious and glaring faults, it was in large part thanks to him that I got into left-wing thought at all. I can't say I'm a fan of his at this point, but I'll kind of always owe him for getting me to start abandoning capitalism.

  • plinky [he/him]
    ·
    19 days ago

    https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/31/bernie-and-the-sandernistas/

    consider this tho

    • glimmer_twin [he/him]
      ·
      19 days ago

      Okay, these nagging caveats about the Sanders campaign, which keep percolating up with the annoying persistence of Banquo’s Ghost, can, with maximal effort, be suppressed for the over-riding goal of the second, and final, humiliation of Hillary Clinton

      Hehe, it ended up being so much more humiliating and so much funnier