IS PARIS BERNING?

Summary: The elections of Super Tuesday demonstrated that Bernie Sanders’s momentum is not what it had been thought; the Vermont Senator may not be unstoppable, and his path to the nomination may have just gotten a lot narrower. What we’re seeing is Bernie Sanders own setback, like the setback of the Germans at the river Marne in 1914, when the unexpected resistance of the French and British armies jolted German hopes of a swift victory and brought France safely into 1915. As Bernie’s campaign begins to hit roadblocks, his supporters have become, not to put too fine a point on it, more frightened about the outcome and consequently more strident in their denunciations of Hillary Clinton. Their rhetoric has become nihilistic, and they now talk of defecting to Donald Trump, presumably because America doesn’t deserve their greatness. If Bernie Sanders can’t get his more unhinged adherents under control, he will drive people into Hillary’s camp, and the Sanders campaign will go glimmering.

 The elections on Super Tuesday produced the results many prognosticators and political animals expected. Solid wins for Hillary Clinton in most of the South, together with a somewhat unexpected primary win for Bernard Sanders in Oklahoma and in states with caucuses. Perhaps the biggest surprise of the evening, however, was that Hillary Clinton took Massachusetts, a northeastern, heavily liberal state with an all-Democratic congressional delegation.

With super Tuesday now over, or as the British might put it “all over, bar the shouting,” the apparent momentum the senator had had after Mrs. Clinton’s equivocal win in the Iowa caucuses and the trouncement she suffered at Senator Sanders’s hands in New Hampshire, seems to have evaporated. Despite Senator Sanders’s efforts to put a happy face on the outcome of super Tuesday, the fact remains that his path to the nomination of the Democratic Party for President of the United States has gotten significantly narrower in the last 72 hours.

If yesterday morning Senator Sanders had seemed unstoppable, today may represent for him his own Marne moment; in September, 1914, Germany’s seemingly unstoppable advance on Paris was stopped at the Marne River, when the hard-fought French Army and British Expeditionary Force rallied before Paris, attacked the German flank, saved Paris, and helped bring France safely into 1915. I would imagine this morning but the mood at Sanders headquarters is somewhat similar to that prevailing at OHL (Oberste Heeresleitung), or German army headquarters on the day following the battle of the Marne.

As it becomes depressingly clear to Sanders supporters that the path to victory has become less and less obtainable for their candidate, their mood and rhetoric have become increasingly nihilistic. We now hear so-called Bernie or Bust adherents openly declaring that they will either sit out the election in November or that they will cast a protest vote for Jill Stein, the perennial, unsuccessful Green Party candidate, or worse, they’ll vote for Donald Trump on the theory that somehow by having nominated Hillary Clinton the Democratic Party, and by extension, the country, will deserve whatever Trump inflicts upon us.

Let me now unapologetically go all Godwin: all this “Protest Vote for Trump” talk merits comparison with Adolf Hitler’s frenzied demands that occupied Paris be destroyed, rather than conceded to the free French and the other Allies when it became clear that Paris must truly be liberated from four years of Nazi occupation. I had not thought that it would be necessary to go all Godwin on Democratic candidates and their supporters. 

But when I see supporters of Senator Sanders saying things like “if Hillary Clinton is the nominee, I’ll vote for Trump and what the country burn,” or “I’ll cast a vote for Jill Stein and accept four years of Donald Trump in the White House,” I’m reminded, far too forcefully to remain silent, of Hitler’s directive for the destruction of Paris. I’m reminded how he is reported to have wandered around his headquarters in East Prussia asking “brennt Paris?” Is Paris burning?

Of course, you don’t have to take my word for it. All you have to do is look at just about any social media outlet or digital news source which even mentions Hillary Clinton. And that’s not even conservative sources. Left-wing sources are full of nihilistic rhetoric that appears to be intended to accomplish a number of things. First, it’s intended to rally the base, by putting as positive a spin as possible on Bernie’s poor performance in the South, and upon polling numbers which now suggest that not only would Secretary Clinton defeat Donald Trump, but also that she is opening up significant numerical leads in states which have yet to run their primary elections.

Second, there is a kind of child-throwing-a-temper-tantrum quality to all this, as if by stamping their feet and waving their arms and trotting out every discredited right-wing trope that has ever been deployed against Hillary Clinton, the Sanders campaign can somehow stave off the inevitable. Unfortunately, the angrier Sanders supporters get, the more they drive the undecideds into Hillary’s camp. 

I warned about this months ago, in a post entitled “Bernie Sanders’ woman problem” in which I suggested that as the primary season developed further, Bernie’s supporters would do him a real disservice by pissing off women who would in their turn kiss off Bernie. It’s unfortunate that this seems to be the case. I was one of the early commenters on this phenomenon, but it’s become so pervasive that it has now received numerous instances of coverage in both digital and mainstream media.

Third, the nihilistic tone of Bernie’s supporters also indicates that a not insubstantial number of them are willing, in fact, to betray the Democratic Party and what it stands for because of sheer antipathy toward Hillary Clinton, and by extension, toward Hillary Clinton supporters. This troubles me deeply. Democrats, or at least left-wing Democrats, have apparently forgotten the virtues of loyalty and perseverance. By being willing to give the country into the hands of Donald Trump and his supporters, these “Bernie or bust” Democrats illustrate what political treason is all about. 

Apparently, none of them understands, or they refuse to understand, the ramifications of Republican victory this November. No matter how hard you try to reason with them, the Sanders irreconcilables are ready to stab the Democratic Party in the back, while loudly proclaiming to all with ears to hear that they, themselves, alone, are truly principled Democrats, and that the rest of the party, those of us who are willing to fall in line loyally behind whoever is the nominee, including, by the way, Barack Obama, are “sellouts.”

For the life of me, I cannot understand why any self identified Democrat would call a president of his own party a “sellout.” That kind of disloyalty will ensure that Donald Trump is inaugurated president on January 20, 2017, unless loyal Democrats rally around the party’s candidate, who at this stage of the game, looks like Hillary Clinton.