I expected it — there hasn’t been much campaigning in the past month anyway, and his campaign communications have been requests for charitable donations for the past few weeks — but still a little shocked to hear Bernie suspend his campaign. Listening to his announcement today was a rare occasion where I don’t get what he’s saying — yeah, this movement is an attempt to stand up to massive corporate interests and a corrupt political system. From the perspective of someone who cannot even speak ill of their government without fear of imprisonment, I guess that’s something to celebrate. But that’s not my perspective. America has a long history of letting people voice dissent; unfortunately America is also amassing a long history of ignoring majority dissent. We stood up against crony capitalism and crony democracy, but we didn’t win. Not like Bernie could say it sucks; but, as a voter who really believed that Bernie’s economic, social, and environmental policies are needed … it sucks.

I’m glad Bernie will continue to amass delegates as a tactical maneuver. While my totally impractical self thinks *maybe* people will see how tying health care to employment, how allowing corporations to deny people paid sick leave, how having a minimum wage that means you’re working two jobs to pay rent and feed your family isn’t the right direction so Bernie manages to win 99% of the remaining delegates (or Biden being the nominee makes Republicans think it’s open season on Biden investigations & Biden’s campaign becomes non-viable by mid-summer), I want to see what planks Bernie manages to insert into Biden’s platform. And how Biden manages to *not* look disingenuous adopting those planks.