It's well known that the best way to persuade someone to change sides is to yell at them and threaten them. But outsider campaigns are more concerned with showing righteous anger than convincing anyone. And so Bernie Sanders, who has little control over his campaign or supporters anyway, has attracted the lunatic left which is surprisingly acting like... the lunatic left.
The increasingly nasty public tone of the Democratic presidential race is also playing out behind the scenes, with superdelegates committed to Hillary Clinton facing a barrage of abusive and threatening emails urging them to switch allegiance and back her opponent, Sen. Bernard Sanders.
“It goes with the territory. I have thick skin. But you’re not going to [get] people like myself to support your candidate by making threats,” said Ken Martin, chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and a superdelegate backing Mrs. Clinton.
He said he receives between 10 and 20 threatening emails daily and gets just as many abusive phone calls, which he said were spurred by a Sanders supporter posting his cellphone number online.
Doxxing doesn't actually win friends and influence people. But when your election campaign is about showing anger, the more anger you show, the more righteous you are.
Superdelegates are an undemocratic aspect of the Democratic Party. But Bernie Sanders chose to run as a Democrat. And his supporters are not going to convince anyone to switch sides with threatening phone calls. Especially when the campaign itself is incompetently run and not doing the hard un-fun work it takes to win.
“Sanders knew what the rules were. He should have wooed us some time ago or talked to us some time ago,” said Jon M. Ausman, a Democratic Party committeeman from Florida and a superdelegate supporting Mrs. Clinton. “I haven’t heard from Bernie Sanders ever.”
So instead of putting together a campaign that could reach superdelegates, Bernie Sanders screwed up and his supporters are throwing a tantrum. Because that's how Socialists react to setbacks.
Jocelyn Bucaro, chair of the Democratic Party executive committee in Butler Country, Ohio, and a superdelegate committed to Mrs. Clinton, said she gets cajoled with phone calls, emails and Facebook messages — though she didn’t describe them as threatening.
“Their arguments are mostly to follow the will of the voters of Ohio,” said Ms. Bucaro. She said it made her “giggle” because Mrs. Clinton won Ohio by a wide margin.
Well who cares about facts anyway. Or math. Or anything. #FeeltheBern