Bernie Sanders and Some Democrats Get Ready to Lick Elon’s Boots and Practice the Politics of the Past
Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images
One of the common retorts to Bernie Sanders supporters like me who rage against the social club for gerontocrats who like losing is something akin to “well isn’t Bernie too old too?”
Yes, he is. And he is a problematic institutionalist in a lot of the same ways that Democrats ranging from Chuck Schumer to Joe Manchin are, evidenced by his longstanding opposition to abolishing the filibuster that is the single largest immediate obstacle to ever getting his agenda passed. Lefties largely don’t participate in political fandom the way that some liberals do, as proven by many turning on Alexandia Ocasio-Cortez, and when our handful of politicians do things that we don’t like, a lot of us are more than willing to call them out too.
Like right now. Bernie, what the fuck are you doing?
Elon Musk is right.
The Pentagon, with a budget of $886 billion, just failed its 7th audit in a row. It’s lost track of billions.
Last year, only 13 senators voted against the Military Industrial Complex and a defense budget full of waste and fraud.
That must change.
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) December 1, 2024
Of course, The Pentagon budget is bloated. It’s currently being haunted by unidentified disappearing “drones” over extremely sensitive bases and it can’t do anything about it. There are immense failures related to Pentagon waste and fraud everywhere you look, even by The Pentagon’s own (destroyed) knowledge. That doesn’t mean you need to start out a sentence with “Elon Musk is right.”
No he’s not! He’s a disingenuous piece of shit whose words should never be taken at face value! He just posted an AI image of Pepe the frog burning down The New York Times building, holding a sign saying “I am the media now,” which is not what a man looking to compromise looks like. Why do you think one of America’s largest defense contractors is someone “very smart” who you can work with to cut waste at the Department of Defense?
Sanders did this again with literal brain-wormed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. when Bernie said, “when he talks about an unhealthy society, he’s right,” even though as the last week (and polling forever) has proven, the public’s rage is far more concentrated at the immoral cost of healthcare, not aligned with RFK’s opposition to the basic tenets of science.
Next, I turn to longtime Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal and ask the same question: what the fuck are you doing?
Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal: “Elon Musk is the champion among big tech executives of 1st Amendment values and principles”
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) December 11, 2024 at 9:40 AM
I would like to clarify that I know exactly what they are doing. It is the safe political play I have seen my entire life. Reach out across the aisle and try to make it look genuine, then when these douchebags inevitably go back on their word, you get to show these clips and posts to voters saying, “look we tried.” It’s not totally ineffective, but it very clearly is the politics of a different generation and runs counter to one of the main lessons from the Trump era.
After years of talking to Trump supporters my view of them has become very simple: They want socialist, even sometimes progressive reforms but they want them from someone who makes those reforms feel powerful and masculine and they want to make sure the people they don’t like don’t benefit from them
— Ryan Broderick (@ryanhatesthis.bsky.social) December 10, 2024 at 7:51 AM
Obviously perception has subsumed reality for many Americans, and all that’s left to win them back is to fight and show you care. Trump’s “brash” image is an asset that allows him to tell the fiction of his unique business savvy, while losers who are always saying “the people I think are bad have good points” stay losing. Independent of whether that is true, it is not the kind of politics that meets this rage-filled anti-establishment moment.
Why are Senate Democrats already compromising while still in power and allowing the GOP to portray a realignment as the same thing as a mandate? It’s not! Trump won by a smaller share of the popular vote than Hillary Clinton won it by in 2016. A lot of voters who rebuked Trump in 2020 did the same to the Democrats in 2024, and assuming that this is the new norm is to fail to learn the lessons from 2020 that Trump did. There is a huge group of people out there who want to see the opposition party actually be the opposition party, some of whom even voted for Trump, and many others who didn’t even vote at all.
Not to mention that the idea that Elon’s DOGE, should it ever even come into formal existence, is going to be anything other than another way for conservatives to starve the beast is naiver than Charlie Brown lining up to kick the football yet again. Rep. Jared Moskovitz said “Democrats shouldn’t fear this conversation. I think there are ways to improve government and I’m looking to do that,” and while that makes sense in the abstract, a group of people who have proven that politically, they have long been willing to exchange $100 for $1 are not who I would want going into negotiations with the most craven and cynical humans alive. I’d much prefer that they never enter them and instead try to convince folks that the people inside that room are working behind closed doors to screw them over.
As great for the movement as Bernie Sanders has been, his limitations are showing here as yet another a creature of Washington D.C. for the last forty years-ish. He is part of the gerontocracy holding us back, and we would be a lot better served by a Democratic Party that looked a lot younger and called Elon Musk and his band of over-compensating losers out for what they have proven to be: manipulative doofuses.
Many are reckoning w the role Elon played in the election & how he artificially manipulated X’s algorithm for his purposes. There is real concern about legitimizing misinfo w/ their presence.
Of course, there ARE people there, and that is not easily dismissed.
But talks of a larger switch are real
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@aoc.bsky.social) November 30, 2024 at 5:09 PM
Green card holders can’t vote, but you know that since you are literally an immigrant 🤦🏽♀️ https://t.co/awze6Xnf5H
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) March 28, 2024
That said, young does not equal a youthful vision of politics, as Rep. Ro Khanna has been and still is an Elon fanboy who wants to work together with him on his fake government job that doesn’t exist and isn’t real. New Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar has so far articulated the best way forward for the Democratic Party, and it’s to actually fight back when the Republicans start lying. When asked about DOGE, Casar said “I don’t have my hopes up that Elon Musk is going to do anything other than really awful, stupid, self-serving stuff.”
See! It’s not that hard to just say what polls show most non-Republicans know: Elon’s dumb and he sucks!
It’s pointless to try to play this stupid bipartisan game that the Republican Party is better at playing, and which the Democrats can never win anyway because their strategy relies on a media environment that is diametrically opposite from the one we actually have. Voters are pissed off, perception is reality now, but people are still smart enough to know that “bipartisan agreement” is usually just Washington-speak for another way to screw the little guy over.
Choose your fighter, but for real, Democrats. Voters chose the only fighter on the battlefield this past election, and saw right through the bipartisan-brained bullshit tossed together in 107 chaotic days spurred by Joe Biden’s gargantuan ego. It’s insane to try the same thing over and over and over again while expecting a different result, but such is the nature of the Democratic Party. Bernie Sanders included.