Bernie Sanders, What Are You Even Doing?

[Content Note: Pulse shooting.]

Leaving aside for the moment the absurdity that Bernie Sanders is even continuing to run for the Democratic nomination, despite the fact that Hillary Clinton has already won it, and also setting aside that he hasn't had the decency to even acknowledge her historic nomination, I am really angry that he chose yesterday, of all fucking days, to announce that he refuses to concede.

Senator Bernie Sanders said on Sunday that he would "take our campaign for transforming the Democratic Party into the convention," refusing to concede the presidential nomination to Hillary Clinton though not explicitly saying he would challenge her for it.

...On Sunday, he gathered with about 20 key supporters and advisers at his home in Burlington, Vt., to discuss how to proceed.

"We are going to take our campaign to the convention with the full understanding that we are very good at arithmetic and that we know, you know, who has the received the most votes up to now," Mr. Sanders said after the meeting, standing on his front lawn with his wife, Jane.

...After he met with Mr. Obama on Thursday he said he looked forward to exploring how he could work with Mrs. Clinton "to defeat Donald Trump and to create a government which represents all of us and not just the 1 percent." Then he held a rally that night in Washington urging voters to cast ballots for him on Tuesday in the nation's final primary.

...Mr. Sanders said that he and Mrs. Clinton planned to meet on Tuesday and that he would ask her "whether she will be vigorous in standing up for working families in the middle class, moving aggressively in climate change, health care for all, making public colleges and universities tuition-free."

"And after we have that kind of discussion and after we can determine whether or not we are going to have a strong and progressive platform," he said, "I will be able to make other decisions."

On a day when decent people were mourning, he called the media to his front lawn so he could announce that he refuses to concede and hold forth about the concessions Hillary Clinton needs to make to him, while she, meanwhile, was telling the LGBTx community that she stands with them and recommitting herself to trying to get assault weapons off the street.

That about sums it up, I guess.

And lest anyone shout at me that Sanders also talked about shooting, indeed he did. While Jane Sanders stood behind him with a case of the fucking giggles. It was so wildly inappropriate that I'm having a hard time finding the video posted anywhere. But here's a photo that a friend texted to me at the time it aired, because he was so upset at what he was seeing.

And, listen, I get that sometimes, even in very dark moments, you get a case of the giggles. There was an entire (famous) Mary Tyler Moore episode about getting the giggles at a funeral, which is remembered decades later because it resonates.

But if you are the wife and surrogate of a presidential candidate who is making a comment on the worst mass shooting in the nation's modern history, have the decency and sensitivity to excuse yourself so you're not chortling away on camera during the discussion of a massacre. For fuck's sake.