Bernie Sander's "Progressive" White Power Movement

Bernie Sanders and Supporters

Hold on a minute, lady. Donald Trump is the politician running a white power movement. But, alas, so is Bernie Sanders. He is just positioned on the left rather than right side of the spectrum. It has taken me much of the primary election session to figure out the theme of this convoluted tale. But I now see what's going on with crystal clarity.

Bernie cannot win the Democratic nomination for the same reason that Donald Trump cannot win the general election. The demographics of American society have changed and there are simply no longer enough white males in the electorate. Yes, of course Trump and Sanders have differences. Trump is a bigot. Sanders and his supporters are not racists. Rather they are people feeling their white-skin privilege slipping away. And they just want it back. Yes, there are females as well as a smattering of blacks and Latinos among Bernie's supporters. But they are drawn by the packaging of what Bernie's selling, not the product itself.

What drives Sanders' movement only became clear to me when I noted his campaign's success in disembodying the Maine superdelegates. Rather than have the power to choose their candidate, they were being forced to align themselves with Bernie because he won their state.

If Sanders campaign was really about "reforming" the Democratic party, his first priority would have been to get rid of caucuses, which are as elitist and undemocratic as a fraternity rush. Instead he went after closed Democratic primaries because he was losing them. Then too, he railed against Hillary Clinton's expensive Wall Street speeches, given when she was a private citizen.  Yet he bellows about transparency and still refuses to release more of his tax returns. 

I understood that something beside principle drove Sanders when he and his supporters seemlessly switched from denouncing the superdelegates when he thought he would win the popular vote, to courting them when he found himself 3.5 million votes behind.  I have now even figured out what's  behind the "Bernie or Bust" movement.  Why would any so-called progressive Bernie supporters either vote for Trump or sit home (and passive-aggressively do so)?   It is because both Trump and Bernie supporters wallow in the same sense of aggrieved and stolen entitlement.   This is why their styles are so similar -- conspiracy theories and bullying.  Trump eggs on his supporters to beat up protesters.  Bernie simply ignores his supporters yelling obscenities at children attending Hillary Clinton rallies with their parents.

Bernie Sanders lily-white support base is not the future of the Democratic Party. It is the convulsing tail end of a privileged history when the votes of white males counted more than  everyone else's.