Came across this in a Daily Kos diary, and it echoes what I’ve heard both IRL and online.
There is a silent majority of American voters who are DONE with the whole “burn it to the ground” attitude. Done.
These are people of all stripes, all incomes, all races, all genders, who want to return to a functional government with a sane human in the driver’s seat. These are people who are sick and tired of being talked down to because they aren’t comfortable demolishing our healthcare system in favor of one that has never been attempted on this size and scale in America. These are people who, when they simply ask how we would get that kind of moonshot up and running, are accused of being a part of “the establishment.” Or worse, sometimes much, much worse.
So it turns out that when you shit all over people, you create a desire for vengeance. And because you need those people to join you to achieve your goal, their vengeance takes the form of voting for the candidate you hate rather than the candidate you support. Is it logical for them to do that? No, because it’s self-defeating.
But was it logical to shit all over them in the first place? Again, no, because it’s self-defeating. But it’s understandable, because they are fighting with emotion, not logic, and that’s the ground Sanders supporters chose for the battle. Instead of explaining that the Sanders revolution was the next logical step in progressivism, instead of lessening the fears this DK author expressed, the Sanders campaign and many of his supporters shit all over them some more.
So let’s examine this by the metric that matters most: Did it work? Emphatically, no.
This turns out to have been an extremely expensive life lesson. Given the cost, it would be foolish not to learn something from it.