Fttttzzzzzzzsssssshhhhh. That’s the sound a charcoal grill makes if you dump water on it once you’re done grilling. It was also the sound coming out of the Bernie Sanders campaign in South Carolina last week.
At least for now it appears that Hillary has extinguished the Bern.
It’s not as if Bernie Sanders ever stood a chance at winning the Democratic nomination. Unlike Republicans, the Democrats employ a weird system of super-delegates that lets party elites select a nominee without regard for the popular will of rank and file voters. Or in other words, the whole thing is rigged.
It’s not like Bernie Sanders ran an aggressive campaign against Hillary either. A passive-aggressive campaign sure. But he never went after Madame Secretary and her many negative attributes. Bernie Sanders spent the majority of his campaign folding like a cheap lawn chair before the Hillary machine.
Sanders never faced any real scrutiny either. There were lots of skeletons rattling around in his closet:
– The donations he accepted from the National Nurses United For Patient Protection Super PAC.
– Abusive behavior towards his staffers.
– His involvement in Vermont’s Liberty Union Party.
– The essay he wrote in which he stated that men wanted to rape women, and that women fantasized about being gang-raped.
– His honeymoon in the Soviet Union, and his vacations in Cuba.
– A chronic lack of employment the bulk of his adult life.
– Sanders’ role in shipping nuclear waste from Vermont to a remote, sensitive habitat in western Texas that also happened to be the home of a large and impoverished Hispanic population.
– A campaign event in Baltimore that was designed to show that Bernie cared about poor urban black people that instead saw Bernie show up to conduct a super quick photo op and then leave without speaking to anyone.
– The unusual arrangement in which his wife would take charge of activist organizations contracted by his campaign to perform various services; his campaign would fund the organization and his wife would promptly skim a five or six figure salary off the top.
These are but a few of the items an enterprising journalist could have stumbled upon if enterprising journalists in 2016 were interested in investigative reporting. There were more to come, especially in Bernie’s income tax returns had those been made public – the things that make one say hmm.
As Bernie’s campaign cools it’s jets, maybe Facebook Chelsea will record another Facebook cry-fest for us all to see. Facebook Chelsea was the millennial chick who, just before the South Carolina primary, posted a video where she cried about the abuse she says she encountered while working a Bernie Sanders phone bank. She bawled about South Carolina voters who “thought they won the Civil War” and other such nonsense. Facebook Chelsea never did explain why she, as a representative of the Bernie Sanders machine, was calling Donald Trump supporters – the GOP primary was over and done after all. There’s a very good chance Facebook Chelsea is an actress of college student who read from a well-prepared script in a last ditch effort to rescue Bernie from the jaws of a Clinton victory.
Facebook Chelsea, what say you now that South Carolina is over and done?
Hillary’s camp no doubt believes any threat posed by Sanders has been dealt with. There’s some truth in that. It’s unlikely that Sanders is going to see many more down to the wire second place finishes. Even if he does, the whole super-delegates thing will keep that old Oscar-white man from Vermont down.
Like that smoldering heap of ash that just cooked your steaks and sliders, there are still some embers aglow on Bernie’s side. There are the many Democrats Hillary didn’t reach in South Carolina and most likely won’t no matter how many times she thanks those who donated less that $100 to her campaign. They still do have a vote to cast – with their feet in November. If they don’t show up to vote for Hillary in the general, she can’t win.
Bernie Sanders is well aware of this. The Bern may have been extinguished in South Carolina – expect him to linger on, prodding and pestering Hillary to run further left of center than she might otherwise.
Image: Senator Bernie Sanders via photopin (license)
