Why are Berniecrats so obsessed with Tulsi Gabbard?

[Mr. Morden]

I'll just copy and paste what I said about this in another thread:

Separate from where you land on the left-right spectrum there’s the question of how establishmentarian you are.  I think Averroes commented recently about how one of the biggest determinants of whether a voter went with Clinton or Sanders in last year’s primary is to what extent they view the Democratic Party as having been a force for good, as opposed to being a fatally compromised institution that enables reactionary policies.

For better or worse, there are certain issue positions that at least a certain set of activists read as a proxy for establishing anti-establishment bona fides.  And opposition to the mainstream foreign policy consensus in the US is one of them.  Because of issues like that, Gabbard would fit in at the “People’s Summit” in a way that many members of Congress whose voting records put them to her left would not.

[Mr. Morden]

Btw, there's a new article in Jacobin magazine titled "Tulsi Gabbard Is Not Your Friend":

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/05/tulsi-gabbard-president-sanders-democratic-party

So don't accuse Atlas forum of being the only place where people are "obsessed" with her. 

[Mr. Morden]

She is popular because she does and says things that people like. People don't like PACs, so she says she won't take PAC money. People don't like NSA survelliance, so she introduces a proposal limiting it. What is so hard to understand? This should be 1+1=2, yet we have 100 Senators and 434 members of the House who don't.

Yet she's losing in a landslide in the all-important Atlas forum primary!:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=264865.0

[Mr. Morden]

She endorsed Bernie, and criticized the DNC for putting their thumb on the scale in the primary

Yeah, this is literally all there is to it. In Hardcore Bernie World, if you're a politician who supported Bernie - regardless of your personal or political positions and whether any are progressive or not - you're a True Progressive. If you're somebody with an identical record or have a comparable number of ideological transgressions as "Generic Progressive" but who didn't support Bernie, you're a neoliberal hack.

It's really not complicated. It's also why a) the push for ideological purity from these supporters is so laughable and b) why this movement is very likely to continue falling flat on its face in terms of enacting legislation/policy. They'll just keep supporting anybody who kisses the ring as "progressive" (i.e. supporting Bernie and/or a handful of other figures) and then get all mad when half the candidates that they actually do succeed at putting into office don't turn out to support them on a particular initiative.

Well, as I said upthread, I don’t think that captures the full picture.  Sure, some just blindly back Gabbard because she endorsed Sanders.  But there’s definitely a strain of Gabbard fandom which has joined the Gabbard cult for reasons that have little to do with Sanders.  Read the commentary at RunTulsiRun, and other FB and Reddit groups, you’ll see the folks who have a Glenn Greenwald-esque view of the world, where they are anti-establishmentarian above all else, and their principle attraction to Gabbard that elevates her above other progressives is her rejection of the bipartisan foreign policy consensus.

I mean, they like her on other things too, like health reform and the Dakota Access Pipeline, etc., but it’s her foreign policy views that set her more apart from most of the rest of Congress.  Some of these folks will even talk about how Sanders is too wishy washy on foreign policy.

EDIT: E.g., here is someone who's deep in conspiracy-land and strongly backs Gabbard:

https://medium.com/@marshallbart/tulsi-gabbard-is-americas-last-best-hope-deb62b45efb6

His column actually ends with "We are living in The Matrix and Tulsi is The One."