Saturday, May 21, 2016

Realities and Hallucinations about Bernie and Hillary

#BernieLostMe is trending on Twitter. Some Bernie supporters have accused a pro-Clinton PAC of creating the hashtag. Some of the popular tweets on (at? I don't know the lingo) #BernieLostMe say that Bernie lost them by blaming everybody except himself -- the Clinton camapign, the Democratic Party, black voters, Wall Street -- whenever something displeases him, like the outcome of a primary election, or a hashtag.

I don't really know how to read such tea leaves. I'm still trying to figure out how Twitter works. Does this hashtag trending mean that people leaving the Sanders campaign in order to back Hillary is a major trend? Or is it mostly just a meeting place for people who never were with Bernie to begin with? I don't know.

Today when I search Google News I'm seeing fewer headlines saying that Hillary must withdraw from the race -- oh, btw, Berners,

Hillary's not going to withdraw from the race.



All the talk about Bernie still having a chance to get the election is not based on reality, and all this talk about Hillary withdrawing is even less reality-based.

Anyway, I was saying: today when I search Google News I see fewer headlines demanding that Hillary withdraw, and more demanding that she pick Bernie as her VP.

I don't really know for sure, but I think that talk of Bernie getting the Veep slot is just as divorced from reality from those other things. However, it may be an indication of a growing reconciliation with the reality that Hillary has clinched the nomination.

I see reports that Bernie's campaign is running out of money. Not only do I not know exactly how to interpret this if it is true, I don't even know whether it's true. I suppose it's true, I seem to remember reading and hearing it in some relatively fact-based news outlets.

Back to #BernieLostMe: it's mostly anti-Bernie over there, but not 100%. For example, someone posted a meme about what Bernie and Hillary were doing in the 1960's, saying that Bernie was working for civil rights and that Hillary campaigned for Goldwater in 1964. I fact-checked this, and it's true that Hillary campaigned for Goldwater. The meme does not mention that Hillary turned 17 just a few weeks before Election Day 1964, or that she campaigned for Eugene McCarthy in 1968 and George McGovern in 1972 and Jimmy Carter in 1976.

So, on the one hand, unlike most things Bernie's supporters accuse Hillary of, this one is actually true. On the other hand, in order to find something which actually happened, they had to go back 52 years, to when Hillary was a child.

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