Bye, Bye, Bernie

      It looks like it's all over for Bernie Sanders.
      I guess technically he could still rack up enough primary votes to win the Democratic Presidential nomination, but most commentators and prognosticators think it's been over for Bernie since this past Tuesday, Super Tuesday,

...when Joe Biden unexpectedly  swept up victories in the primaries of nine important states and has now racked more delegates than Bernie Sanders.

     Not actually a whole lot more delegates at this point,

...but along with his Super Tuesday primary victories Biden has also garnered a number of key Democratic endorsements.

      And so Joe Biden now has the momentum going and conventional wisdom is that Bernie may fight for a while longer but as a Presidential candidate he's finished.
      I believe this as well, and I'm disappointed over it, sad, even, because I really liked Bernie.
      Though I didn't always. I used to number among the many who still held resentment over the fact that  after Bernie Sanders lost the 2016 nomination to Hillary Clinton he went home in a huff and took his Bro's with him,

...which accounted for at least part of the reason why Hillary lost to He Who Should Not Be Named and Should Likewise Not Have Been Named President Because He Actually Lost The Election To Hillary By Over 3,000,000 Votes.

    Hence at the start of this election cycle I liked Bernie Sanders least of all the original 24 candidates. Until I started listening to him speak at the debates and his town halls. Rather than sounding radical or wildly revolutionary, to me what Bernie had to say made the plainest sense: Why not join the rest of the developed world in instituting universal health care for Americans?  Why not start acting immediately to combat climate change, which is burning, storming, and flooding our country before our eyes? Why not promote affordable higher education for a well-educated, more productive population? Why not do something about our inexcusably crumbling infrastructure? And to pay for all of the above, and ours being the richest country in the world, why shouldn't everyone pay their fair share of taxes commensurate with their income?
      The more I listened to Bernie, the more I knew what it meant to  Feel the Bern, and  over time I graduated from fan to super-fan. In describing myself, I wondered what one called the female equivalent of a Bernie Bro?
     One of my children mischievously suggested, "Bernie Ho?"
     When people replied to my enthusiasm for Bernie  that he could never beat Trump my come back was, "Of course he can. Enough people in enough states just have to get out and vote for him."
      Alas, so far they haven't. Bernie Sanders hasn't even been able to inspire people to get out and vote for him in the primaries. So I now believe that Bernie as President isn't going to happen, nor are all those things he wanted to accomplish for our country.
      And in truth, Bernie himself is probably mostly to blame. Why did he have to call himself a Democratic Socialist? Why did he need to call himself anything? Why did he have to talk about leading a revolution rather than just talking about doing what needs to be done? Why was it necessary for him to bring up something good that Fidel Castro did? He scared people and offered fodder to his critics with that kind of talk. Nor did it help that he has a history in the Senate of refusing to compromise, of standing apart from his fellow legislators on his high moral ground while they scrabbled and horse-traded and gave-and-took and did all the heavy lifting to get bills passed, policy made, and the American people's business taken care of.
      Still, I'm sorry that it's over for Bernie.
      (Sigh) I guess come September I'll be knocking on doors for old Joe.