DEMOCRATS, GONNA PARTY LIKE IT’S 1968???

While I suppose I could have entitled this post, “Careful What You Wish For” or, “What Goes Around, Comes Around”, it just seemed most fitting to use the one that I did, seeing how so many top Democrats now appear to be more than just a little worried about how it’s becoming more likely to be their convention that could turn out to be a political nightmare, perhaps even similar to what the party of peace experienced back in 1968.  The problem, according to some of those Democrats, is none other than Bernie Sanders and his rather raucous supporters.

Bernie, or so it would seem, has now  gone into pretty much full attack mode on the Democrat establishment, putting the splintered party on, what some fear, is the verge of open warfare between factions.  And at least one veteran Democrat has now gone so far as far as to actually make the prediction that this summer’s Democrat convention could actually erupt into riots reminiscent of 1968 gathering of Democrats in Chicago.  Bernie has made it very clear that he intends to take his campaign against Hitlery Clinton all the way to the convention in Philadelphia.

Remember, now, it was in 1968 that Chicago cops and anti-Vietnam War protesters clashed violently at the party’s convention in August of that year.  After the June assassination of New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, who had been the Democrat frontrunner and who had been running on an anti-war platform, anti-war Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy had faced off against Vice President Hubert Humphrey.   Humphrey had vowed to continue the Vietnam policies of retiring Lyndon Johnson.  Humphrey emerged victorious, enraging the anti-war left.

Now in fast-forwarding to 2016 we saw how party tensions spiked as recently as just this week between ‘Team Bernie’ and the national party after Bernie’s campaign manager, some clown by the name of Jeff Weaver, accused national party Chair Debbie Wizzerman Schultz of trying to stop Sanders’ populist outsider candidacy.  It was Weaver who told MSNBC, “It’s been pretty clear almost from the get-go that she has been working against Bernie Sanders for personal reasons.”  I think it’s difficult to argue that Wizzerman Schultz has been pulling for Hitlery.

And it was then that Weaver went on to say, “It’s clear there is a pattern of conduct from the beginning of this campaign that has been hostile to Bernie Sanders and his supporters and really she has become a divisive figure in the party.”  Weaver proceeded to slam Wizzerman Schultz a day after she blasted Sanders supporters for their rowdy behavior during the Nevada Democrat State convention last weekend.  The Nevada party said earlier this week that Sanders’ campaign is “failing to adequately denounce the threats of violence of his supporters."

Sanders’ backers overturned furniture, threatened state party officials and had to be escorted out of a Las Vegas convention hall by cops after party big wigs disqualified 58 state delegates supporting Sanders. Nevada’s Democrat Party charged that the Bernie backers posted state Chair Roberta Lange’s personal info online and threatened her and her family.  While Sanders condemned the violence, sorta-kinda, he also mixed that with a not subtle swipe at the party’s leadership.  And, at least for now he shows no sign of letting up in his attacks on party leadership.

It was on the Communist News Network (CNN) that Weaver also accused Wizzerman Schultz of “throwing shade on the Sanders campaign since the very beginning.”  He criticized the party’s decision to limit the number of debates and hold some of the showdowns on weekends.  Wizzerman Schultz replied, telling CNN, “My response to that is SMH,” an acronym for “shaking my head” in disgust or disbelief.  Let’s face, Wizzerman Schult has been rather obvious in her desire to ensure that Hiltery gains the Democrat nomination, so you can understand Bernie’s frustration.

Meanwhile, Ms. Wizzerman Schultz said Democrats needed to focus on getting through the primary season and working to prepare for the general-election campaign against presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump.  Which I guess is all well and good as long as it’s the ‘proper’ candidate that ends up being the one to go against Trump.  Which is where the problem comes up.  Because, you see, it’s Bernie’s supporters who feel that, as being the better candidate, Bernie is being edged out to make room for Hitlery.  And the ire of Bernie’s supporters show no sign of subsiding.

Meanwhile, New York Democrat Party officials assured the Sanders campaign and its local supporters that they will be treated fairly at Monday’s state party convention, in order to avoid a Nevada-type debacle.  It was on Monday of this week that Sanders’ New York campaign lawyer, Arthur Schwartz, held a preliminary meeting with the Hitlery campaign as well as state Democrat Party brass.  He said, “They want everything to go smoothly. They don’t want to happen in New York what happened in Nevada.”  I’m sure they don’t.

So anyway, here we are after all of the wisecracks, and all of the jokes, that we heard over the course of the last several months, coming for any number of Democrats, as well as those in the state-controlled media, about how the Republican Convention was likely to end up as little more than a hot mess.  But it now looks like we might be the ones who have the last laugh.  Now I don’t want to be counting my chickens before they’re hatched, but it would seem that things are beginning to look a bit more dicey for the Democrats than they do for the good guys.