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| I'm with Bernie--and Hillary now. |
Well the dust has mostly settled since Bernie
Sanders sent shockwaves though
his loyal supporters and waves of relief through Hillary Clinton fans and the Democratic Party establishment. Of course it doesn’t take much more than a frustrated
kick in the dirt to raise a small cloud around the knees. Wild
rumors and calculated disinformation
keep folks jumpy as pundits scan the horizon for the dust wall that will bury the farm like an
Okie’s nightmare. That disaster,
although it would make an exciting apocalyptic
movie is unlikely to happen.
Sanders said in his statement the other day in New Hampshire:
…Our campaign won the primaries and caucuses in 22
states, and when the roll call at the Democratic National Convention in
Philadelphia is announced it will show that we won almost 1,900 delegates.
That is a lot of delegates, far more than almost
anyone thought we could win. But it is not enough to win the nomination.
Secretary Clinton goes into the convention with 389 more pledged delegates than
we have and a lot more super delegates.
Secretary Clinton has won the Democratic nominating
process, and I congratulate her for that. She will be the Democratic nominee
for president and I intend to do everything I can to make certain she will be
the next president of the United States.
During the last year I had the extraordinary
opportunity to speak to more than 1.4 million Americans at rallies in almost
every state in this country. I was also able to meet with many thousands of
other people at smaller gatherings. And the profound lesson that I have learned
from all of that is that this campaign is not really about Hillary Clinton, or Donald Trump or Bernie
Sanders, or any other candidate who sought the presidency. This campaign
is about the needs of the American people and addressing the very serious
crises that we face. And there is no doubt in my mind that, as we head into
November, Hillary Clinton is far and away the best candidate to do that….
…It is no secret that Hillary Clinton and I disagree
on a number of issues. That’s what this campaign has been about. That’s what
democracy is about. But I am happy to tell you that at the Democratic Platform
Committee which ended Sunday night in Orlando, there was a significant coming
together between the two campaigns and we produced, by far, the most
progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party.
Our job now is to see that platform implemented by a
Democratic Senate, a Democratic House and a Hillary Clinton president—and I am
going to be in every corner of this country to make sure that happens.
I have known Hillary Clinton for 25 years. We were a
bit younger then. I remember her as a great first lady who broke precedent in
terms of the role that a first lady was supposed to play as she helped lead the
fight for universal health care. I served with her in the United States Senate
and know her as a fierce advocate for the rights of children.
Hillary Clinton will make an outstanding president and
I am proud to stand with her here today. Thank you all, very much.
I am taking the blog
space to quote Bernie at length because it is apparent that
some of his supporters either never read it or were incapable of listening to it after freaking out about some kind of alleged betrayal of their trust. They found
the feet of clay of the idol of
their own construction. It was, after all, not a real live human candidate that
they were supporting or even the moderate
socialist program he advanced, but their projection of a perfect and
absolutely pure hero who valiantly slew all of the right dragons. Until, at the last minute, he didn’t—he lay
down at the greatest dragon’s feet.
The real Bernie, however idealistic, always operated
in the real world as evidenced by
his long successful political career. He could stand forthrightly for clearly
articulated principles but also always had to master strategic accommodation and compromise. Of course to the
zealot there is no dirtier word than compromise
and no virtue higher than absolute
purity.
I also cite the original statement for a passage that they never heard in their
rage over the embrace of Hillary. Of course had they noticed it, it would have
made them even more unhappy—“Our job now is to see that platform implemented by
a Democratic Senate, a Democratic House and a Hillary Clinton president.” That was a commitment not only to Clinton, but to the entire Democratic Party, the Party he has always deigned to actually join.
It was a recognition that beyond
stopping Donald Trump there is no way forward to a more just and equitable society without dislodging
reactionary Republicans, Tea Party zealots, Bible bigots, Ayn Rand sociopaths, and old fashion flat out racists from the seats of power. Even if that means embracing an admittedly
flawed Democratic Party.
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| The Sanders Political Revolution was authentic, powerful, and realigned the Democratic Party significantly to the left. |
The good news is that the political revolution then Bernie Sanders stood for and embodied has
already changed the Democratic Party and shaken
its corporate accommodationist wing
to the core. The revolution has shifted the center of gravity significantly
to the left for the first time in decades.
The push to the left has affected Clinton, a cautious politician with a keen
sense of what is possible. Suddenly
a lot of progressive options seem achievable that only lately seemed
pipe dreams. Not only is this reflected in the proposed
Party Platform, it is reinforced
by hundreds of progressive candidates shaking things up in Congressional races and at the state
and local levels as well. Given the political climate this year, many
of those progressives will be elected.
None of this means that the Democratic Party is about
to become a socialist party or even
a social democratic party in the European mold. At best it means it has shifted from a center-right party in an environment where there has been no effective electoral left at all to a
center-left party. That’s far from what many yearn for, but
a significant improvement.
I have preached
the sermon before, but it bears repeating again. Electoral
politics are defensive. The victory of Hillary Clinton and the
Democrats in November will not usher in some
sort of golden progressive era. It will erect a firewall to further right
wing depredations and be able to enact modest
but not fundamental or systematic economic reforms and
actually advance to some degree the social justice claims of minorities, women, immigrants, and the LBGT
community.
The future of more
fundamental change lies in the creation
of organic popular movements willing and able to creatively take to the streets, shop floors, and institutions
with militant direct action. History
has shown us the effectiveness of this from the movements of labor, and
for women’s suffrage in the past to
the more recent examples of the Occupy
Movement, Immigrant Rights movement,
LBGT and marriage equality
movements, Black Lives Matter,
and Moral Monday movements. That creative
energy and turmoil is what shifts societal paradigm and opens the door suddenly to sweeping societal change.
Bernie Sanders has shown that he understands this. The question now is, do his supporters?
If you paid attention to social media you might think
there was a wholesale stampede for the
exits after the Sanders endorsement.
There were lots of individual
wails of betrayal of defiant
declarations that they would never vote for Clinton no matter the consequences and blaming
a potential Trump victory on the Democrats for choosing her—there we even a
few posts claiming that Trump would be the lesser of two evils for one reason
or another. Within a couple of days
fanciful pieces were being posted and forwarded like mad. Some claimed that Sanders had not really
conceded and endorsed at all. Others
still claimed that Clinton would be indicted
and the Convention would turn to Sanders, all evidence to the
contrary. And one headline screamed “91 Percent of Sanders Supporters Will Never Vote for
Clinton” which, of course, was absolute
bullshit. Yet some swore it was gospel.
Now a truer
picture is emerging.
More reliable
polling is now available and
although there are variations between
the surveys and one widely variant outlier. Pew, perhaps
the most highly regarded poll, reported that despite all of the noise, 85% of
Sanders supporters will vote for Clinton in November. Significantly that is higher than the percentage of Clinton who would support Barack Obama after their long, bitter primary battles at a comparable point in 2008.
You may recall there was significant hand wringing at the time about the hold outs costing
Obama the election. It turned out that a
lot of the most shrill and public voices were Republican plants and trolls. By Election Day,
virtually all of the holdouts cast votes for Obama. That may have been because there was no serious alternative to the Democrats in
that election. Ralph Nader, running
again as an Independent was highly reviled for possibly draining enough votes from Al Gore to tip Florida and
the 2000 election to George W. Bush. He earned only about 750,000 votes nationwide. The Green Party, which fielded former Representative Cynthia McKenna was not
a credible alternative. McKenna finished
dead last behind all of the other minor candidates with only 12% of the total
vote.
Sanders will probably have a tougher time, however, earning the most hard core Bernie or Bust votes.
The Hill, a newspaper for Washington
political insiders ran a story citing data and local discussion on Yik Yak, a location-based social network which claimed that 48% of Sanders’s millennials would support a third party
and 13% of them even said they would vote for Trump.
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| The Green Party's Jill Stein has been actively courting disappointed Sanders people. |
The Green Party and its standard bearer Dr. Jill Stein represent a much stronger
alternative than it did eight years ago.
Stein has been aggressively
angling for Sanders diehards for weeks and the Party has adopted for the
first time an explicitly socialist
agenda heavy on the economic justice
issues dear to Sanders voters. Her allure
was demonstrated when in the first twenty-four hours after the endorsement
speech her fundraising jumped a
reported 1000%, an accomplishment that
was impressive and highly touted. But it is important to remember that it
was 1000% jump from a very low level.
Steins campaign reported taking in $80,000 in that day, still a pittance
compared to the fundraising juggernaught
of the Clinton campaign or even the comparatively struggling efforts by Donald Trump.
Stein also picked up her first big name former Sanders
supporter, Black scholar and public intellectual Cornel West who was
the key Sanders representative on the Platform Committee. She has not, however as yet gotten any
defectors with high level elected positions
or even the entertainment celebrities
that grab attention.
The Green candidate will probably do well with the hard
core Sanders cohort this fall who seem in no mood to even consider Clinton who
they paint in nearly apocalyptic terms as a liar, criminal, and monster. But a good chunk of the Bernier or
Busters having had their fingers burned
by politics may crawl back into the hole
of electoral non-involvement from
which they were briefly lured.
Clinton’s biggest problem might not be the Sanders
people AWOL from the Democrats this
fall. Although she has a devoted base, especially among women
and minority voters as well as with long time registered Democrats, Clinton
is only getting reluctant and unenthusiastic from many Sanders people. The same Pew poll that showed he getting most
of their votes also showed dissatisfaction
among them on her perceived honesty,
ability to change Washington, and independence from special interests. A popular social media meme showing a car with
a Sanders bumper sticker and one that reads “Oh, fine, Hillary I guess” summed
up the sentiment.
Among critical
undecided voters, larger in numbers now than at the same point in 2008,
Clinton rivals Trump in unpopularity,
largely due to months of relentless smears and lies, old doubts about her honesty, and quite frankly a distaste for a pushy woman. In that respect despite the Sanders
endorsement, it was a tough week for Hillary.
Although the FBI issued a report saying they would not recommend indicting her in the e-mail server scandal, the official
making the announcement went out of his way to denounce her for trimming close to the line, and for misrepresentations and lies.
In particular he accused
her of sending or receiving classified secrets on her unsecured servers. That made for spectacular headlines causing her real damage even though the Bureau
had to walk that back that none of the e-mails were classified at
the time they were sent.
The most recent polls show that Clinton’s several point
lead over Trump has melted away. Polls
show her lead down to one to four points in most cases with the widely divergent Rasmussen Poll putting her behind by 7 points.
Aggregating the polls, her lead has shrunk
to 43.1% to 41.1% with 11% undecided and
5.9% other. More alarming one poll showed Trump
taking a lead for the first time in critical
swing states including Florida,
Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
There are nearly
gleeful reports of panic in
Democratic Party circles. I strongly doubt it.
There is ample time for recovery,
Trump has not run out of ways to shock and offend, and Clinton will have a well financed and well oiled
campaign organization that will run rings around Trump’s ego driven, slapdash, chaotic campaign.
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| Trumps Republican Convention promises to be a circus and fiasco. |
The Republican
National Convention in Columbus next
week will be a literal circus with boundless opportunities for candidate
to shoot himself in the foot with
his Magnum .44 mouth and for his collection of barely hinged surrogates to lob
grenades in all directions. Trump
will waste no opportunity to demean,
disparage, and attempt to destroy party
regulars who won’t endorse him or who are tepid
at best. Far from unifying the party
even a successful—from Trump’s point of view—Convention has the potential to shatter the party. Don’t
expect the usual post convention bounce for
Trump
By contrast, Clinton’s Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia will be able to stay
pretty clearly on message. It will
not be totally without drama. There will still be nominations and roll call
vote. Sanders has promised no floor fights over the Platform, but he has less control over his
own delegates than any candidate in recent history so some floor pyrotechnics is
possible. But parades of speakers,
including Sanders, and the very popular sitting
President will paint Clinton in glowing terms. She will deliver a carefully planned acceptance speech that will hit all of the right notes. Troops will be rallied rather than alienated
and the television audience will
surprise themselves by warming to her. Clinton should be able to sail into August
with her lead restored and strengthened.
She will be aided because Trump has his own major minor party threat. The Libertarian
Party is now well established and has been the leading minor party in
recent elections. It strongly appeals to
the Randist laissez-faire wing of the party and those uncomfortable
with Christian jihadism. A number of high-powered Republican
office holders and media figures have
signaled that they intend to vote for Libertarian Gary Johnson. On the other
hand, more anti-Trump Republicans seem ready to swallow hard and vote for Clinton than ex-Sanderistas will
vote for Mussolini lite. Which minority party might do the most
damage to which major party will vary from state to state. Theoretically either could put a close state
or two into play, my guess being that the Libertarians might do the most
damage.
That’s my two cents as pundit.
As for me, the stakes have never been higher. Regardless
of the jeers of old friends I stand with Bernie Sanders this year in full
and enthusiastic support of Hillary Clinton and progressive Democratic
candidates from the top to the bottom of the ticket.
The coveted Heretic, Rebel, a Thing to Flout official endorsement goes to Hillary.
The propriety awaits his appointment
as an ambassador to a small but pleasant country…
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