Relitigating the 2016 Election: “Bernie or Bust” Protesters Need To Get Real
Note: This story originally appeared on my blog on July 26, 2016.
2nd Note: “Relitigating the 2016 Election” is a series of the contemporaneous blog posts that I wrote in the lead up to the 2016 election. As these posts reflect my views at that time, they have not been updated.
I guess I have to write another post about emails. Not Hillary Clinton’s state department emails but those of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the now former head of the DNC. She was forced to resign after emails in which she suggested that Bernie Sanders’ religion (or lack thereof) could be used as a cudgel in the protracted fight for the Democratic nomination were made public.
I’ll be frank. I was disgusted and more than a little surprised.
Disgusted because using religion as a litmus test is not only unconstitutional but downright discriminatory. It was something that Trumpian Republicans would do and then endlessly attempt to justify. And I was surprised that someone of Wasserman Schultz’s caliber would be dumb enough to commit such hatefulness to print via the internet; watching Hillary Clinton be dragged through the mud over her use of email should have served as a warning to Wasserman Schultz about how easy it is to hack emails. Wasserman Schultz no longer has a job due to her stupidity and I, for one, am glad.
That being said, members of the “Feel the Bern” crowd need to get over it. While ideological purity has its place in American politics, now is not the time for it. Donald Trump has defied all expectations and become the Republican nominee. Anyone who is progressive enough to have supported Sanders should be absolutely terrified at the prospect of a Trump presidency. And progressives should ask themselves if they are willing to spoil things for the very first woman to have clinched a major party presidential nomination. Do they really want to be on the wrong side of history?
And speaking of history, why haven’t Sanders supporters learned from it? Not even twenty years ago, leftist progressives rejected a “centrist” Democrat with decades of political experience in favor of a progressive who didn’t have an ice cube’s chance of winning the general election. After the dust settled, progressives ended up with George W. Bush and then spent the next eight years bemoaning the effects of Bush’s political decisions. While Bush, arguably one of the worst US presidents, was an incompetent war criminal, Trump would be infinitely worse.
Instead of playing the role of anti-Clinton spoilers, Sanders supporters should leverage their considerable power toward getting the Democrats to tack a little more to the left and keeping the (supposedly) corrupt Clinton honest. That being said, members of the “Feel the Bern” crowd need to put down their picket signs and grab their ballots.
