A discussion was recently posted on a prominent anti-Bernie forum asking whether Berniecrats and centrist Democrats could reach a truce. I’m not sure such a truce is possible at this point.

A central problem is that much of the Berniecrat agenda comes from a willful misinterpretation of the Democratic Party’s positions. For instance, Berniecrats want us to punish and regulate the financial industry, but the Democratic Party already does that. We are the party that passed the absolutely massive Dodd-Frank regulations. Elizabeth Warren is the favorite to win our 2020 nomination, for christ’s sake. We can’t have a real conversation if the starting point is them claiming she’s bought and paid for and actually lying about her positions. We can’t have a position if anything less than “break up the big banks” or “tear Wall Street apart” is described as being in the pocket of those big banks.

Same with universal health care. Nearly every Democrat is in favor of some form of universal health care, be it through single payer, a public option, or some adaptation of Obamacare. The Berniecrats lie about this and say that single payer is the only way to achieve universal health care, and accuse all Democrats who disagree (or even waver on it, like Kamala Harris) of being bought and paid for by “Big Pharma.” It’s not possible to meet in the middle when one side has such a distorted view of reality that they don’t understand where the middle is.

They also love to demand that Democrats stop accepting money from huge corporations. But we don’t accept money from huge corporations. That’s a willful misunderstanding (pushed heavily by Cenk Uygur) of what OpenSecrets.org is telling them. Google’s CEO doesn’t call up Tom Perez and say “hey buddy, our company will give you $10 million this cycle as long as you make this law.” The numbers on OpenSecrets are from employees of a particular company, and often have a bias towards one party due to region or corporate culture. For instance, Google employees have donated tons of money to Democrats, but a lot of this is because, being based in the bay area, Google has a lot of very liberal and wealthy employees. A key example of this is when Cory Booker was accused of being a “pharma shill” because he accepted donations from pharmaceutical employees, who are heavily based in New Jersey. I will concede that we do accept a lot of money from *individual* billionaires, such as George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, Thomas Steyer and various Hollywood figures, who distribute individual donations to various state- and local-level candidates. But this is very different from the argument they make.

So in all three of the above cases, how are we supposed to meet them in the middle? We already agree with them on most issues. It seems like the only differences are either isolated cases of extreme positions they demand we take, such as “breaking up big banks” or “rejecting donations from millionaires and billionaires”, or differences in *rhetoric* where their rhetoric is just brazenly dishonest, such as representing “universal health care” as synonymous with “single payer.”

Furthermore, there’s a lot of basic things on our side that I think we should not compromise on. Our rejection of conspiracy theories, for instance. Our rejection of the lie that the DNC rigged the 2016 primary to steal it from Bernie Sanders. Our rejection of “media outlets” that are either extremist demagoguery (The Jacobin, The Young Turks), foreign propaganda (The Intercept, RT, WikiLeaks) or simply flat-out fake news (The Observer, USUncut, etc). Our rejection of their strategy of using political blackmail (such as voting Green) to bully us into destructive hardline positions. Our proclivity towards a broad, inclusive, agenda, rather than focusing solely on income inequality.

And in truth, we know that many of them will never be satisfied. It is in the best interests of the forces driving their movement to ensure that compromise is impossible. Cenk Uygur, for instance, will reject any notion of compromise because he and his channel thrive on promoting a storyline of division, conflict and conspiracy. Tom Perez made Keith Ellison vice-chair of the DNC and The Young Turks just started attacking Keith Ellison as though he was establishment all along. The Berniecrats have also allied themselves with revolutionary socialist groups that take extremist positions, so appeasement will only be met with moving goalposts.

If it was only a matter of finding middle ground on the issues, I would love a truce. The Berniecrats have so much energy and fundraising prowess that they’d be an enormously helpful ally. I don’t, however, think that is possible at this point, when their side is dominated by liars who profit from continuing the conflict. You can’t win in that environment.

So, in lieu of a truce, the best thing we can do to push back against the tidal wave of lies and terrible policy is to loudly and clearly shout from the rooftops, “these are the facts, these are what we believe, and we’re proud of it!” I will continue to do my part.

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