While the failure to seize that moment cannot be undone, the battle is still there to be fought.
More particularly, it is still possible for Senator Sanders-- who bears primary responsibility for this unfortunate misreading of the battlefield and thus for the ground lost -- to play a major role in winning that ground back. And he can do so in a way entirely compatible with the goals -- short of the nomination, which he has already lost -- that have inspired his campaign.
More about that in the next piece: "A Win-Win Way for Bernie to Lead."
************
*Note from above: One example that should be reasonably fresh in everyone's mind: How did President Obama ever let the across-the-board obstructionism be a winning political strategy for the Republicans? It's a fight Obama could have won, but he never even took the fight on. There was from President Obama nothing like what Harry Truman did in 1948, running against his "do-nothing Congress," which was way more productive than the obstructionist Congresses to which Obama has acquiesced without much protest.
How would the Republicans have been able to maintain their priority on blocking everything to make the president fail, if as soon as their strategy became clear the President had used his rhetorical skills to mobilize the public against the GOP putting partisan advantage ahead of doing the people's business? What if he had joined the battle and said to the Republicans: "I'm going to campaign against you in your own districts, from now until as long as it takes, if you persist on this effort to cripple the people's government for mere partisan advantage."
But if there has ever been a single powerful denunciation from President Obama of this fundamentally unpatriotic Republican conduct, I cannot recall it. The Republicans fought him with everything they had, while the President never unsheathed his sword.
The list of battles forfeited, or poorly waged, goes back through acquiescing in the crimes of the Bush II regime, to the Swiftboating of John Kerry, to the Bush II squandering of national unity for the sake of politicizing the response to terrorism, to the 2000 Florida electoral debacle, to the scandalous Republican effort to find a way to destroy Bill Clinton's presidency.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
1
1
