169 The HA Goodman Files: Mr. Bernie or Bust Endorses Trump
Open to question wether to add another part now. Possibly just a chapter? HA Goodman-turning out to be MAGA? How much of Bernie support was actually Hillary hatred?
Of course, it’s sometimes hard to figure out where Bernie Bros end and Trumpkins begin as HA Goodman has openly endorsed Trump this time around.
Why Bernie Sanders Supporters Should Vote Trump In 2020 (thefederalist.com)
Indeed Goodman’s-not to mention Sarandon’s and Zizek’s-impact on the Left was just as Chomsky warned.
The irony of this is that when Goodman first started blogging on Huffington in early 2014, he and his articles appeared tethered to reality. One of his first pieces, “The Republican Strategy Against Hillary Clinton in 2016,” is so level-headed that you almost can’t believe he wrote it. While it isn’t an endorsement of Clinton per se, it does outline all the ways Republicans will try to attack her, from spreading myths about Benghazi to attacking her mental health, which sound benign compared to the things he would say about her years later. This changed in November of that year when he wrote the first of his pieces aimed at the middle of Jean-Pierre Faye’s horseshoe, titled, “I’m a Liberal Democrat. I’m Voting for Rand Paul in 2016. Here’s Why,” his first step down the road to madness.
As his Huffington articles gained steam, Goodman became a contributor at Salon, where they published, by then-editor-in-chief Richard Daley’s estimations, “about a quarter of what he pitches.” The online publishing giant had already garnered a reputation for needlessly provocative clickbait, and Goodman fit their bill, sending them articles like, “Please, FBI, you’re our last hope: the Democratic Party’s future rests upon your probe of Hillary Clinton’s emails.” These articles sparked a debate in the newsroom over how they made the website look, but Daley insisted on giving the BernieBros a voice – after all, he also published Goodman clone Walker Bragman, who eventually collaborated with Goodman on a piece for Paste Magazine and wrote for Goodman’s short-lived website, Counter-Propa.com.
In the summer of 2016, Goodman was dropped by Salon as wiser heads prevailed, axing some of their most clickbaity writers. In addition, neither of his most-mocked predictions came true: Bernie did not become Democratic nominee and the FBI did not indict Hillary Clinton for her emails. The Banter’s own Bob Cesca wrote of him at the time:
“His almost sociopathic disconnect with reality will surely inspire other disaffected Bernie supporters who see Goodman on CNN and MSNBC and assume that he’s a legitimate reporter, thus making it acceptable for others to follow in his footsteps. The endgame is, obviously, the slow Fox News-ification of the left. Due to the efforts of Goodman and others, the progressive movement is rapidly losing its credibility and, at the very least, is stripped of its high-road posture.”
It was obvious to all of us at the Banter that Goodman was a con man – his use of stock phrases to glide over complexities (“we could go on forever,” in reference to all the wrongs Hillary and the Democrats have done, is an oft-repeated one, as is “Pick a crime, any crime”), embrace of conspiracy theories, and inability to admit how wrong he was all reminded me of an orange Republican candidate whom he repeatedly dismissed as a “buffoon” who wouldn’t get any of his policies passed by Congress. My hate-watching has continued to this day, especially since my articles about him have gotten under his skin. He refers to us often as “nobodies,” and has even made two videos attacking my articles, one last June, and one last October. (I know he made these to insult me, but honestly, I think they’re hilarious.)
Although Goodman spent early 2017 either downplaying Trump, or dismissing criticisms of him outright, the biggest sign that he would convert to the Orange Overlord came that summer when Caitlin Johnstone’s articles defending a progressive collaboration with alt-right leader Mike Cernovich hit Medium. Many in the progressive, Bernie-or-Bust community turned against her, but Goodman didn’t, arguing that progressives shouldn’t disqualify potential collaborators because they disagree over one thing, even if that one thing is vicious racism. In a debate with Progressive Army’s Ben Dixon, the African-American Sanders supporter challenged him on his repeated dismissals of Cernovich as a “blogger” with “crazy ideas,” repeatedly stressing the repugnance of these views. But Goodman couldn’t hear Dixon’s message: he had become so obsessed with going against mainstream reporters like Joy-Ann Reid and David Fahrenthold that he didn’t realize it was the online, progressive, pro-Bernie community, of which he had been a vocal advocate, were the ones asking him to disavow Johnstone and Cernovich, not the Reids and Fahrentholds of this world.
Do these long quotes belong in the HA chapter?
So much of the Bernie support of 2016 was really #NeverHillary support-as Silver has documented.
This is borne out by the fact that only 31% of voters who supported Bernie in 2016 support him for 2020-ie almost 70% don’t support him this time; in fact considerably more Hillary 2016 voters support Biden in 2020(43%) than Bernie 2016 supporters support Bernie.
No doubt there is the Bernie base who sees a campaign as a progressive beauty contest-who ever has the most progressive policies in their view gets their vote. But a larger subsection of Bernie voters in 2016 were #AnybodybutThatWoman; it was clear all along that HA Goodman is in this camp but this cycle he removed all doubt by endorsing ‘President Trump.’
So progressive purity may have been a driver for Bernie but an even bigger one was HillaryDerangementSyndrome-fed on by GOP dirty tricksters, amplified by the Russian hackers and bots and the MSM-the anti Clinton pro Trump rogue agents at the FBI got the winning shot in ‘defeating’ that woman.
FN: In Peter Strozk’s lawsuit he rightly argues that only those who expressed opinions unfavorable of ‘the President’ were punished not all those rogue agents who expressed negative opinions about Clinton during the campaign-much less those who forced Comey’s hand into the Comey letter.
You had agents and former agents threatening to release information to Julian Assange if Comey didn’t publicly reveal the-as it turns out nothingburger-emails.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/24