U.S. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and other Democratic Senators at U.S. Supreme Court
Republicans must feel like they’ve dodged a bullet. We have written for years about the GOP Civil War, which threatened to spill out into the open and tear the party apart during the Republican National Convention this summer. That could still happen, but meanwhile, Republican leaders recognized Donald Trump as the presumptive nominee within hours of his Indiana primary win on May 3. Instead, it is now the Democratic Party that is threatened with civil war, as Bernie Sanders essentially runs a third party campaign against the Democratic Party, from inside the Democratic Party.
Sanders’ third party-style run becomes clearer every day. First, Sanders was never a Democrat. He has a long history of attacking the Democratic and Republican Parties equally. He recently admitted to joining the Democratic Party primaries for “media coverage.” Since joining, Sanders has personally attacked not just his rival Hillary Clinton, but the Democratic Party itself, as well as liberal groups such as Planned Parenthood and the Human Rights Campaign. Sanders even sued the Democratic Party after his staffers were caught improperly accessing Clinton campaign proprietary data. Moreover, many of Sanders primary and caucus voters are not Democrats, but rather, Independents.
Now, the Sanders campaign has turned violent and dangerous. At the Nevada Democratic Convention in Las Vegas last weekend, many Sanders delegates and supporters exploded in anger when they felt (wrongly) that the processes and results unfairly disfavored them. They booed, blocked cameras and video screens, and even threw chairs when liberal U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer of California stood up to speak as Hillary Clinton’s representative. When Nina Turner, the Sanders campaign representative, tried to calm the crowd, they booed her too. Some Sanders supporters then viciously harassed Nevada State Democratic Chairwoman Roberta Lange, posted her home address and cell phone number online, and even threatened her child. Lucy Flores, a former Nevada state Assemblywoman from the Las Vegas area, current candidate for U.S. Congress and endorser of Bernie Sanders, released a statement saying:
Regardless of whether you agree with the leadership of our Chairwoman Roberta Lange, under NO CIRCUMSTANCES do her actions warrant being harassed, insulted with misogynistic vulgarities and or threatened in any way.
The Nevada State Democratic Party also filed this complaint against the Sanders campaign, saying that:
We write to alert you to what we perceive as the Sander[s] Campaign’s penchant for extra-parliamentary behavior—indeed, actual violence—in place of democratic conduct in a convention setting, and furthermore what we can only describe as their encouragement of, and complicity in, a very dangerous atmosphere that ended in chaos and physical threats to fellow Democrats.
U.S. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada likewise blamed “Sanders people” for the convention violence and had a telephone conversation with Sanders to say such behavior is unacceptable. CNN then aired audio of Sanders campaign National Delegates Director Joan Kato telling supporters a couple of nights before to “take over” the convention and “not leave,” which suggests that some of the mayhem the next day may have been planned.
After initial silence, the Sanders campaign issued a statement that did not apologize for or condemn the specific violence and threats from Sanders supporters, but rather, doubled down and attacked the Democratic Party for the same alleged wrongs for which his supporters had rioted. In response, Minority Leader Reid said he was “surprised” by Sanders’ “silly” statement” and that “he should say something about this [and] not have some statement someone else prepared for him.”
Many people believe that Sanders’ reaction to his supporters’ violence and threats equals acquiescence, and could encourage more violence. Even worse, some Democrats fear that the Nevada chaos foreshadows what could happen at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia this summer. History (the Democrats in 1968 and 1980, the Republicans in 1976) shows us that such party divisiveness and chaos leads to electoral defeat.
Bernie Sanders promised us a “political revolution” against the “establishment.” Most of us didn’t realize that Sanders true aim, as evidenced by his behavior and the behavior of his supporters, seems to be to infiltrate and hijack the Democratic Party, an organization to which he never even belonged, and to tear it down from the inside. He mustn’t be allowed to succeed.
Photo by Senate Democrats, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/E0Nwbb
