Feb. 03--Bernie Sanders' supporters were not happy late Monday night when Hillary Clinton took to the stage at her Iowa headquarters to declare her "relief" at the apparent result of the state Democratic caucuses.
When TV monitors at Sanders' headquarters began showing Clinton's speech, lusty boos and chants of "She's a liar! She's a liar! She's a liar!" rose in the room until the campaign cut away from the feed.
Sore losers?
Not at all. By any measure except the count of delegate equivalents won in the Byzantine nominating contest, Sanders was the winner, and his supporters knew it. He'd come from 56 percentage points behind Clinton in an NBC/Marist poll of Iowa voters taken a year ago to finishing less than half a percentage point behind her -- a gap so small that Clinton didn't dare use the v-word, victory, in her remarks.
Sanders had run a largely positive grass-roots campaign against a better-organized, better-funded opponent who'd long ago been all but coronated by party leaders as the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee.
His focus on the need for dramatic change pulled Clinton to the political left. He'd won dramatically among younger and lower-income voters and, like Barack Obama eight years earlier, he'd galvanized first-time voters.
And he looks in good shape for next week's primary in New Hampshire, where recent polling averages show him with an 18 percentage point lead over Clinton.
Yes, Clinton was rushing to the podium in Iowa to put the best possible spin on these disappointing facts, mostly by ignoring them. And no, I didn't expect the Sanders faithful to cheer for her. Caucuses and primaries aren't T-ball games, where everyone cheers for the other side when the game is over. Feelings get bruised in politics.
But I do hope that Clinton and Sanders remember the old political saw that a foe within your party is an opponent, not an enemy.
Giving in to the impulse to demonize Clinton -- which Sanders has creditably not done -- will only make it harder for the party to come together to defeat the actual enemy in November. That enemy, for Democrats, will be the GOP standard-bearer who will have promised to get rid of Obamacare, block any pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, continue efforts to erode abortion rights, keep taxes low on the rich, appoint conservative federal judges and Supreme Court justices and so on.
Under the slogan "Bernie or Bust!" the website Revolt Against Plutocracy claims to have collected more that 40,000 pledges from Sanders supporters either to write in Sanders' name or vote for the Green Party candidate if Sanders isn't the Democratic presidential nominee.
Look, I get it. Clinton is a cautious centrist who too often puts her moistened finger to the wind before she stakes out positions. She's as calculating as Sanders is unswerving. If you say you want a revolution, she is not your candidate.
But it takes breathtaking naivete to declare that "bust" would be better than a Clinton presidency for the causes to which Sanders has devoted his public career.
There's a legitimate difference on the left between those who see a Sanders nomination as too risky and those who see it as no riskier than the nomination of the controversy-plagued Clinton and just what the Democratic Party and the nation needs.
I've heard from hundreds of you who took issue with me after I staked out the "too risky" position in a recent column. The most persuasive notes were from those who focused on positive, optimistic reasons why I might be wrong, not from those who couldn't resist name-calling, suggesting I'm on the take or accusing me of being afraid of a radical candidacy.
Not since I cheesed off Ron Paul supporters in 2011 has my inbox been so filled with scorn.
And maybe this time I'll be wrong.
But people all across the political spectrum would be wise to keep the big picture in mind as the bitter interparty squabbles proceed. Don't let your enthusiasm drive a wedge between you and your natural allies. Save the boos and derisive chants for the fall.
