Kentucky and Oregon Primary Wrap-Up

Yesterday, the Democrats held primaries in Kentucky and Oregon. (The Republicans also held a primary in Oregon, but with only Donald Trump left, who fucking cares.)

Hillary Clinton won Kentucky in a squeaker. Naturally, because she didn't win it by a huge margin, it wasn't really a win. Because when is a win not a win? When it's Hillary Clinton.

Bernie Sanders won Oregon. Naturally, because he won at all, despite still having basically zero chance of winning the nomination: HUGE WIN! MOMENTUM! HEY DID YOU HEAR A BIRD LANDED ON HIS PODIUM ONCE? BERNIE SANDERS IS MAGIC, PEOPLE!

The long and the short of it is: Yesterday's primaries did not fundamentally alter the race.

And, naturally, Sanders used his victory speech to launch another tirade against the Democratic Party:

The Democratic Party is going to have to make a very, very profound and important decision. It can do the right thing and open its doors and welcome into the party people who are prepared to fight for real economic and social change. That is the Democratic Party I want to see, bringing in people who are willing to take on Wall Street, to take on corporate greed, and to take on a fossil fuel industry which is destroying the planet.

So I say to the leadership of the Democratic Party: Open the doors; let the people in. Or, the other option, the other option for the Democratic Party, which I see as a very sad and tragic option, is to choose to maintain its status quo structure, remain dependent on big money campaign contributions, and be a party with limited participation and limited energy, and a party which incredibly is allowing a rightwing extremist Republican Party to capture the votes of a majority of working people in this country.

I come from the working class of this country and I will be damned, I will be damned if we allow the Republican Party to win the vote for working class Americans.

After his jeremiad, the audience in his rally burst into a "Bernie or Bust" chant, and he did not stop them.

There is a lot I could say about Sanders' rant—like, for instance, that there is already plenty of room for people who are prepared to fight for real economic and social change; or, for example, that the working class people who vote Republican probably aren't primarily concerned with "big money campaign contributions," given the GOP's fundraising—but mainly, I just want to ask: What does Sanders even mean? The Dems did "open the doors" to him. (Which I'm guessing they're probably regretting right about now.) They opened their doors, and let him run, and he and his platform were simply not as popular with Democratic voters.

He had as much chance as Hillary Clinton, and he lost. Because he ran a shitty campaign, which was, at best, a single-issue campaign that alienated lots of marginalized people, and, at worst, an increasingly reactionary and venomous campaign of hatred that was less for any discernible principles and more against the funhouse mirror version of Hillary Clinton that Sanders and his team created as their foil.

This isn't about there being "no room" in the Democratic Party for people like Sanders and his supporters. It's an absurd claim based on defining "room" only as "winning."

It's as garbagey an argument as an anti-feminist troll who howls about "censorship" when he gets banned from this space for refusing to follow the rules.

Not getting your way, not being centered and privileged 100% of the time, being held to the same standards as everyone else, isn't evidence of corruption or exclusion. And throwing a tantrum that asserts foul play to deflect from your own failures is epically pathetic.