Mild In The Streets

I understand that in the middle of a hotly contested campaign, it is impossible to tell anyone anything.  At this point, campaign staffs are not worried about bruised feelings or stepping on toes: they are grinding it out an inches at at time and rooting through their tool kit looking for the biggest hammer available to get them to the finish line.

However, a brazen flip-flop on this scale does what a campaign should never do: drags attention away from what should be any campaign's focus -- the candidate's strengths and ideas -- and instead hangs a big, bright lantern on campaign's internal weaknesses and contradictions.

Here is Sanders' campaign national co-chair, Nina Turner, being appalled that candidates are using Barack Obama as a crutch:

Nina Turner is disgusted with candidates making campaign commercials with Barack Obama in them.

This was obviously before Bernie made a commercial with Barack Obama in it. pic.twitter.com/hEUmtcRaq3

— ⚖️ Bernie. Please Go Home. It's Over. ⚖️ (@KHiveQueenB) March 5, 2020

And less than 24 hours after getting stomped in the South, we find the Sanders' campaign using Barack Obama as a crutch (by cutting together several sound bites out of context):

Folks, this Bernie Sanders campaign ad with Barack Obama ad is gonna be a talker

Airing in FLORIDA now pic.twitter.com/WFt5sqJNed

— Shane Goldmacher (@ShaneGoldmacher) March 4, 2020

Bernie Sanders has been running for the Democratic nomination on the novel electoral theory that the entire Democratic Party is a wretched hive of scum and villainy and that most of the party's 42 million registered voters are either hapless stooges or corporatist shills.

However (goes the theory) is doesn't matter how alienating those voters may find his burn-it-all-down campaign, because the loss of those weakling moderates during the primaries would be more than offset by a massive surge in new and heretofore invisible young and/or disaffected voters.  And once Sanders secured the Democratic nomination as the vanguard of an explicitly revolutionary new coalition,  those hapless stooges, corporatist shills and weakling moderates would return to the fold because Donald Trump is so fucking awful and ultimately those weakling moderates are pragmatists who will vote for the best available candidate and not fanatics who would piss away their vote out of spite:

So Bernie Sanders has selected Nina Turner as one of his campaign co-chairs. Here's Nina Turner days before the 2016 US Presidential election saying she's not backing Hillary Clinton. pic.twitter.com/jS2I5Ea2fP

— Ethan Grey (@_EthanGrey) February 21, 2019

And who knows?  That theory might still bear out, because we're now in a political universe where no one knows anything and we're not even halfway through the primaries, so Sanders' revolutionary coalition might very well still break through and win the nomination.

And if he does, he will have my vote.

But if the theory fails...

Chop Wood/Carry Water/Hit Tip Jar