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in atlantas 2017 mayoral race...'progressives', bernie sanders, and bernie sanders political organization 'our revolution' threw their full muscle behind a candidate named vincent fort. he came in 5th in the primary lol (like a lot of their endorsed candidates).
in the top 2 runoff election...many 'progressives' spent the campaign smearing black woman 'establishment' democratic candidate keisha lance bottoms...with some outright supporting white conservative mary norwood (refashioned by them as an 'independent progressive') who staffed her campaign with trump supporters and was caught on tape calling black people felons and thugs.
shaun king addressed the turn of events and chastised his fellow 'progressives':
https://theintercept.com/2017/12/07/atlanta-mayor-bottoms-progressives/
in it he wrote...
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Between the two available options, Bottoms clearly best represented the positions, policies, and people progressives should care about most. Yet at every single mention of her on Facebook or Twitter seems to get pushback from the left; some progressives will call her supporters a sellout, say they are supporting the Democratic establishment, and ask if they are being paid by the Democratic National Committee.
This is foolish. They speak as if the more progressive option was to support Norwood. It wasn’t — at all.
This is where progressives find themselves. When the preferred progressive candidate doesn’t win, either because they ran a bad campaign, struggled in the two-party system, or lacked the support they needed in other ways, progressives too often proceed to tear down the establishment candidate. I’m not speaking in code here about Hillary Clinton, either. I’ve seen this in races all over the country.
Progressives are terrible losers. And don’t get me wrong: I hate losing, too. I despise it. But when my preferred candidate loses, I simply don’t feel like I have the right to set the whole election ablaze. And that’s the rub for me. It’s far too easy for people who won’t be directly harmed by conservative policies and leadership to trash a Democratic candidate they didn’t prefer, at the risk of assisting their opponent. This isn’t me echoing the “If you aren’t for me, you are against me” style of politics. In primaries and large-field races, you should go hard for the candidate you love and support. But when you lose, a transition should take place.
Keisha Lance Bottoms is not perfect. Hell, if you thought Vincent Fort was perfect, you probably aren’t from Atlanta. But I have to be honest with you: Hating good candidates because they aren’t perfect is getting old. Critique their policies. Investigate their decision-making and financing. Do those things! But when a race comes down to a left-leaning Democrat and a right-leaning conservative, stop pretending like they are one in the same. Stop acting like the Democrat has cooties. Stop acting like you are so holy that you can’t lower yourself to vote or support a person endorsed by the establishment.
This type of thinking loses important elections and puts real people in harm’s way.
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just thought it was interesting to see him and some of his allies/colleagues currently engaging in the exact same behavior he called out. he clearly spells out the exact same patternized behavior (eg- 'the dnc must be paying you!') that 'progressives' engage in when they dont get their way. maybe someone should read his own work to him/them again.
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