For a brief time in May, it appeared that the Democrats would be the ones heading into a contested convention. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders was close enough to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that he could have made a real mess of her coronation if he chose to.
Instead, Sanders gradually bowed down to Clinton, paving the way for her coronation. Many of Sanders’ most die-hard supporters were shocked and dismayed by this and wondered why Sanders’ vows to continue his “political revolution” to the convention floor simply died away.
The answer to that question may surprise many people. Buzzfeed reported that a memo from the Sanders campaign showed just how much to cost to get Sanders to give up his challenge: one airplane.
That’s right, the leader of the socialist revolution, a self-proclaimed outsider, an environmental activist who thinks global warming is a greater threat to mankind than Islamic terrorism and a man who everyone said stuck to his principles sold out his millions of devoted disciples for a big plane that pollutes the atmosphere and a couple speaking slots.
How ironic coming from the man who decried corporate greed for over a year.
The memo seemed to outline an argument both for and against Sanders conceding to Clinton, but most of it was devoted to figuring out how to get the most political capital out of his concession.
“Sen. Bernie Sanders will back Hillary Clinton in exchange for speaking opportunities at fall campaign rallies, a fully-funded campaign aircraft and a share of the credit for her hoped-for election, according to a negotiating memo obtained by BuzzFeed News and dated two days before the June 7 California primary,” Breitbart reported.
“‘Request a plane and staff for a series of fall rallies in battleground states … plane would be paid for by the DNC,’ according the the Sanders memo, titled ‘End Game 2016’ and addressed to ‘Bernie 2016,’” the report added.
Breitbart also said that it had been unable to confirm the memo’s authenticity but that the Sanders campaign had not denied it.
The memo pointed out that Sanders could simply threaten a contested convention to get his way. For someone who claimed to be an outsider, he sure knows how to play the political game well.
It’s clear that Sanders doesn’t care about anything other than his own political future. The leaked DNC emailsshowing that they conspired against him should have caused him to rally his supporters, but he has simply brushed them aside and continued to kowtow to Clinton in front of the whole world.
(via: Conservative Tribune)
