5/17/2016

In Brief: No, Bernie Sanders. That's a Bad Bernie Sanders.

In response to death threats against the Nevada Democratic Party Chair Roberta Lange after she was doxed following the upheaval at the state party's convention in Las Vegas, Bernie Sanders issued one of the stupidest fucking press releases the Rude Pundit has seen in a long damn time. See, the Sanders delegation appears to have been trying to shut the process down over what they saw as unfairness in the application of rules and in the way the convention's outcome was decided.

Referring to the death threats (including calling Lange the usual barrage of sexist terms), Sanders said, "Our campaign of course believes in non-violent change and it goes without saying that I condemn any and all forms of violence, including the personal harassment of individuals. But, when we speak of violence, I should add here that months ago, during the Nevada campaign, shots were fired into my campaign office in Nevada and apartment housing complex my campaign staff lived in was broken into and ransacked." That bullet hole found in a window at a Sanders campaign headquarters in Vegas is scary shit, indeed, especially because it was found on a day that Sanders was visiting that office in January. The police are still investigating.

But what Sanders is doing there is completely fucking irresponsible. By discussing violence against his campaign in the same breath as the death threats that came out of the convention, he is implying that Hillary Clinton's campaign or the Democratic Party was responsible for the "shots...fired" and the "apartment...ransacked." Is that a stretch? If it is, then why the fuck bring it up? To say, "Oh, you want violence? Here's some fuckin' violence"? Bullshit. There is an implied accusation, whether intentional or not. Chances are that this is some ham-fisted way of making a point.

And, hey, Bernie supporters, don't fucking respond  to this with "Oh, the rules are too complicated" or "They shut down the process" or "Shillary is Killary" or whatever the fuck you want to respond with. Honestly, the uprising at the convention itself is the kind of shit we expect when passions run deep. The Sanders campaign conspiracy theorists will have fuel for weeks now, even though most of their complaints boil down to "rules suck, man." Tim Robbins has probably worn out his thumbs tweeting about it.

But we're talking about the kind of fucked-up barrage of death threats that internet culture fosters, whether it's for a dentist who shot a lion or someone tweeting a stupid joke. Sanders didn't acknowledge that, in and of themselves, separate from whatever unconnected violence happened months ago, the violent, sexist language and explicit threats ("someone will hurt you") are fucked up. That's goddamned disheartening and, really, a missed opportunity to talk about the meaning of non-violence. Instead of strong condemnation, Sanders gave his worst voters a pass.

For fuck's sake, Sanders followers, this was over losing out on 4 fucking delegates.

And while the Rude Pundit has ignored much of the fuckery done by those followers to show how passionately they support Bernie, Sanders himself, through this response, may just have lost him this voter.