Desperate politicians tend to do desperate things. And right now, there’s no better metaphor for Bernie Sanders’ desperation than his new campaign ad that purports to depict him as best buds with Barack Obama.
When I watched it last night, I laughed out loud. Being suddenly relegated to second place in the delegate hunt, with the very real possibility that he will rise no higher, has apparently sent him flailing. As recently as three days ago – before he lost 10 of 14 contests on Super Tuesday – he was down on Obama. He has long signaled his belief that Obama was just another establishment sellout, someone not worthy of his democratic socialist fervor. As he said in 2013, “I’m not Obama’s biggest fan.” Obama’s diplomatic take on Bernie, which he shared in a 2016 podcast, was that he didn’t really know Bernie at all.
But now that Bernie was woken to the realization that a non-Democrat can’t win a Democratic presidential nomination by thumbing his nose at grassroots Democrats – that, indeed, he can’t surf to the nomination on a wave of Generation Y hero worship – he’s suddenly clinging to Obama (a multi-millionaire, no less!) as if he were a life raft.
But hey, why not. Bernie needs to do something. The delegate-rich Michigan primary looms next Tuesday, a major union – with heavy minority membership – has already endorsed Joe Biden, and Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer endorsed Biden today.
Hence the Bernie-Obama ad. If you watch it, you’d swear that Obama was endorsing Bernie and that Bernie was basking in it. There’s a visual of Bernie and the president walking together at the White House, wearing mutual smiles. Obama, in a voiceover, says, “Bernie is somebody who has the virtue of saying exactly what he believes. Great authenticity, great passion and is fearless.” Moments later, in the voiceover, Obama says that voters “want somebody who’s gonna fight for them. And they will find it in Bernie.” Cut to a visual of Obama behind a podium, declaring, “That’s right – feel the Bern!”
OK. Where to begin.
That visual of Bernie and Obama walking at the White House, with Obama ushering Bernie inside? That was in June 2016 when Hillary Clinton had clinched the nomination and Obama was getting ready to endorse her and stump for her.
That praise from Obama, about Bernie’s “great authenticity, great passion”? That was plucked from a Politico podcast in January 2016, when Obama was officially neutral and saying equally nice things about both presidential candidates.
That praise from Obama, about how voters wanted somebody “who’s gonna fight for them”? That was plucked from a Vermont event 10 years earlier, in 2006, when Obama, a freshman senator, was stumping around the country for down-ballot candidates. Sanders was running for the Senate, and Peter Welch was running for the House. Obama made those generic remarks at a Sanders-Welch rally.
That Obama remark at the podium, about feeling the Bern? That was plucked from his 2016 Democratic convention speech. The purpose of that speech was to extol Hillary Clinton: “I had a front-row seat to her intelligence, her judgment, and her discipline. I came to realize that her unbelievable work ethic wasn’t for praise or attention – that she was in this for everyone who needs a champion…She has never forgotten just who she’s fighting for.” Obama gave Bernie half a paragraph.
And the Obama voiceovers were strung together to leave the impression that they were part of that speech.
It’s all quite hilarious, given the fact that Bernie was so dissatisfied with Obama that he thought seriously about mounting a Democratic primary challenge in the year that Obama was running for re-election. He had to be hosed down by Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid. (“What could you be thinking? Reid asked Sanders, according to multiple people who remember the conversations. You need to stop.”) Which means that, four years before the non-Democrat damaged the Democratic party in the Trump race, he was jonesing to damage a sitting Democratic president.
Now he somehow thinks he can turn on a dime and magically broaden his narrow base with gestures to the “corporate” party “establishment” that he loathes. He thinks that by suddenly clinging to Obama, he can magically attract the black voters who’ve been spurning him en masse since 2016. I get what he’s trying to do; he has no other choice. But good luck with that.