Gabbard was conservative from the start, people just got caught up in the story of her rebelling against the DNC. If they’d applied a little more scrutiny to her past they wouldn’t have assumed she was a progressive.
Bernie’s big problem was that he liked to surround himself with charismatic people who would puff his ego while being outside the establishment structure, which is fertile ground for grifters. They ran out of room for grifting in the Bernie lane and there’s all this conservative money floating around for turncoats and wreckers, so of course a lot of them ended up following that path.
It’s not that liking charismatic flatterers is all that different from a lot of establishment politicians, but for them there’s a deeper web of power making it both harder to advance a personal brand and easier to keep the money-train running indefinitely if you play ball.
Gabbard was conservative from the start, people just got caught up in the story of her rebelling against the DNC. If they’d applied a little more scrutiny to her past they wouldn’t have assumed she was a progressive.
Bernie’s big problem was that he liked to surround himself with charismatic people who would puff his ego while being outside the establishment structure, which is fertile ground for grifters. They ran out of room for grifting in the Bernie lane and there’s all this conservative money floating around for turncoats and wreckers, so of course a lot of them ended up following that path.
It’s not that liking charismatic flatterers is all that different from a lot of establishment politicians, but for them there’s a deeper web of power making it both harder to advance a personal brand and easier to keep the money-train running indefinitely if you play ball.