An open letter to both Biden and Bernie Supporters

[The Magistrate]

39. Exactly, Ma'am

If you are one of the Trotsky-ite faction in the little left group on campus, battling it out with the Mao-ist faction, while perhaps a couple of those types who plaster the lamp-posts with those neat retro Albanian posters look on, then certainly the 'party platform' means a great deal. People who don't take the line laid out may have to leave the group, it sets out what everyone has to say on the chief subjects of the day when speaking within the group, or outside it. There is not a great deal besides factional wrangling that goes on in such groups, and should one chance to grow, it will soon calve off new factions and so keep itself within the stable, several dozens at most size range.

That is not how party platforms in our major parties work. Ages ago they used to represent real factional compromises, and were viewed as somewhat binding on the candidates who stood on the party platform for election. Nowadays they do not mean a thing, they are merely occasion for delegates to congratulate themselves on the superiority of their party, and on their agreement with one another on issues of the day and hopes for the future. No one cares a fig for the platform once in office, it neither binds nor directs. People know that what the party's people do in office will be conditioned by what can actually be achieved.

'Bernie' emerges from the factional far-left milieu in which platforms matter, and matter greatly because there is in fact almost nothing at stake, there is no chance any of it will ever come to fruition in the big world, and no chance whatever of ever being responsible for acts and their consequences. No one outside the room is ever going to care which faction writes the manifesto, though to people inside the room it matters hugely --- not in political terms, but in social terms, defining who is in and who is out, who is on top and who is on the bottom. That 'Bernie' seems seriously to think platform planks are important matters is not only one of the things which betrays his 'new left' Marxist roots, it is something that brands him as a political naif, for all his grey hairs and the lines time has etched into his face....






"From Bernie’s perspective, dropping out of a race once you have no chance of winning is peculiar behavior that can only be explained by the work of a hidden hand. For most politicians, though, it is actually standard operating procedure. Only Sanders seems to think the normal thing to do once voters have made clear they don’t want to nominate you is to continue campaigning anyway."





"When things are not called by their right names, what is said cannot make sense. When what is said does not make sense, what is planned cannot succeed. When plans do not succeed, people become uneasy. When people are uneasy, punishments do not fit crimes. When punishments do not fit crimes, people cannot know where to put hand or foot."