By Peter Oliver
To my Sanders-supporting friends: Your inspired advocacy for Bernie and the principles for which he stands has been truly commendable. The Sanders’ campaign, buoyed by your enthusiasm, has had an enormous influence on this election year.
But it is time to shift your focus. Hillary Clinton is unambiguously the Democratic Party’s nominee for president and deservedly so. She won more delegates, pledged and otherwise, than Bernie. She won more states. She won the popular vote by a wide margin.
She even won almost 40 percent more delegates than Bernie in so-called open primaries and caucuses. Perhaps, as Sanderites have argued, open primaries should be the party’s standard modus operandi henceforth, although personally I wonder why Republicans or Independents should have a say in the Democratic Party’s nominating process. But maybe that’s just me.
Bottom line: Bernie’s loss was not the outcome of a rigged process, as many supporters have suggested. (Ironically, Bernie did best in state caucuses, which are notoriously subject to political manipulation.) Hillary won fair and square and now there are two important reasons to get behind her.
First and most glaringly, of course, is the presence of the most despicable charlatan ever to gain a major party’s nomination. No need to mention his name, but let’s agree that giving this fraud even a sniff at the White House would be a political disaster of unprecedented scope. All you need to do is follow Bernie’s lead. He has said he will “do everything within my power” to prevent a Republican, any Republican, from winning the presidency.
I appreciate the sanctity of your votes and the conscience that empowers them. Bernie was your man and as one friend said to me, “For me, it is Bernie or nothing.”
Fair enough. But I urge you to allow your conscience to be more flexible. Any vote you cast represents a choice for one option better than the others. It might not be the perfect option in your judgment, but politics inevitably involves imperfect compromise. And to suggest that there is no substantive difference in electing Hillary or that phony-haired, orange-faced clown, as some people have said to me, is basically delusional.
Which leads to an important second point: If you want to see the priorities that were at the core of Bernie’s campaign come to life, Hillary (and the Democratic Party in general) will carry many of them forward. Not all of Bernie’s campaign initiatives will see light, of course, but just a couple of days ago, it was announced that the Democratic Party officially wants to expand Social Security. Thank Bernie for that, and certainly don’t expect the Republicans to follow suit. The Republicans are almost diametrically opposed to everything Bernie has been articulating for the past few months.
In the heat of the primary campaign, Bernie surrogates demonized Hillary and many of my Bernie friends, with emotions inflamed, leapt wholeheartedly aboard the Hillary-as-she-devil bandwagon. Such spirited antagonism is just a part of politics.
But now simmer down and consider a few Hillary negatives that became Sanders’ campaign talking points. Start with the contention that Wall Street has Hillary in its back pocket. I combed through her Senate voting record and nothing – nothing – suggests she caved one way or another because of Wall Street influence.
The idea that she is untrustworthy is a conceit pushed for a quarter of a century by the “vast right-wing conspiracy,” and Sanders’ supporters, regrettably, have tended to join that chorus. Again, look at the record; while no one with Hillary’s political longevity can survive the truth-meter unscathed, she has been, by and large, honest throughout her career. Try as they might for decades – Whitewater, Vince Foster, Benghazi, emails, etc. – her right-wing adversaries have been unable to pin anything meaningful on her. The bipartisan fact checker, PolitiFact, has found her to be the most truthful of all the candidates in this election season, Bernie included.
It is indeed likely that she would be more hawkish than Bernie, but to suggest that “she would keep us in eight straight years of war,” as one friend said, is a bit silly. Even Bernie has said that Isis “must be destroyed” – not exactly a declaration of pacifism. Hillary did vote for the Iraq invasion, but she, like many Senate colleagues (e.g., John Kerry) has since found that vote regrettable.
I think Bernie is great. I have voted for him, I believe, eight times. And, while Hillary might be smart and incredibly detail-oriented, her political pragmatism may appear insipid next to Sanders’ avuncular charisma. Still, I urge my Bernie friends, especially in states that might be more in play than Vermont, to cast off your Hillary animus. It is a case of what we used to call situational ethics in high school philosophy class. It might not live up to your highest ethical standards, but it is the most ethical choice given the situation. Hillary might not inspire you, but she is far, far, far better than the distressing alternative.
Peter Oliver lives in Warren.
