NOPE

[Content Note: Racism; misogyny.]

Bernie Sanders once again suggests he's going to be a magical president, and again slams President Obama for failing to overcome Republican obstructionism:

Bernie Sanders says the aim of his political revolution is to bring more people into the political process than President Barack Obama, arguing that he can close a presidential leadership gap that's persisted over the eight years of the Obama administration.

"There's a huge gap right now between Congress and the American people. What presidential leadership is about closing that gap," he told MSNBC in an interview Wednesday that will air in full Thursday evening on "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell."

Asked if he believed President Obama had closed that gap, Sanders said: "No, I don't. I mean, I think he has made the effort. But I think what we need, when I talk about a political revolution, is bringing millions and millions of people into the political process in a way that does not exist right now."

I don't have anything to say about this that I haven't said before:

Is Sanders suggesting that President Obama didn't have "tens of millions of people [ready] to stand up and be involved in the political process the day after the election"? Because whooooooooooooops. I described being in Chicago literally the day after President Obama was first elected thus:

Wednesday, the day after the election, the Space Cowpokes, Iain, and I were in Chicago all day, and something incredible had happened. (The same thing was happening in New York, too, as noted by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, and I've gotten emails from people saying they found the same thing.) It was, like, Crazyhappyland. Everyone was laughing and smiling and being extra nice—spontaneous conversations about music, art, food, life, the election with strangers in elevators, in restaurants, in cabs, on the sidewalk. It was like every single person in Chicago had been told they had 100 years to live. Black, white, gay, straight, woman, man, everybody. People were happy and inspired and excited. A cloud had lifted. In one of the most politically cynical cities in the world, where the people know better than most that policians are fallible beings who often fail to deliver and fuck up in myriad ways, there was still a tangible, beautiful sense of the possible. The entire city was enveloped in great expectations.

Right now, let's believe we can do this.

And because, as I've said no fewer than a nonillion times now, this election is not just about Barack Obama, and his presidency will not be just about Barack Obama, but about us all, there's just this huge chance for something big in that optimism blanketing Chicago on Wednesday.

There was a palpable feeling of excitement and engagement, all over the country. If that didn't translate into enough energy and involvement to overcome the Republicans' gross obstructionism, welp.

Well, I do have one new thing to say. I have a real problem with Sanders' entire campaign increasingly resting on the idea that he will be able to accomplish things that a woman and a black man could never accomplish. I understand that Sanders isn't specifically saying he can accomplish them because he's a white man, but the reality is that he is positioning himself as uniquely capable in comparison to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, neither of whom are white men.

And lest anyone imagine that this unspoken message isn't resonating with at least some of his supporters, behold this incredible meme which is flying across social media:


Yeah.

Bernie Sanders isn't a wizard or a Jedi, despite what his claims about marshaling millions suggest to the contrary. He's just an old white guy, who is currently engaging in fantastical rhetoric that is demeaning to both our current president and his primary competitor.