Oh, and ye gods—for those of you saying “wait a minute, now! Hillary talked about student loan issues on _date_!” number one, Bernie’s been voting for student loan relief since 2003 (unless you’re going to stretch “but that was just for TEACHERS! So it doesn’t count for some reason!”).
But the point is: yeah? She was behind Hillarycare, too, which was also great (but also not enough). But the point is that in 2015 and 2016, which is where we are, it was NOWHERE to be found. Her website said some limp stuff about maybe making some Medicare drugs less expensive. Whoopie. So what she did in the past did NOT indicate that she was putting any more energy into it NOW, which she wasn’t, until Bernie and several million progressive voters put the fear of God into her.
None of this is as important as climate change and fossil-fuel pollution and war, though. If we have many more Flint, Michigans because of fracking water pollution; if we fail to address climate change; if the world is broken even further by more wars or regime-change revolutions that we’ve blundered into causing without knowing exactly what we’re doing, and don’t have a plan for the aftermath, as happened in Iraq, and AGAIN in Libya, the people who suffer for it will be asking: “how could you let this happen? You were warned. But you voted for someone who did these thing anyway.” You won’t be able to avoid those conversations, not for the rest of your lives.
We progressives, who she IS listening to now, should keep criticizing Hillary, and keep pushing Hillary, until she adopts the most important Bernie planks: 1) don’t do stupid, ill-thought-out interventions abroad militarily; and 2) don’t allow fracking, and do conduct a World-War-Two-sized effort to combat climate change, and do it like you mean it. Bernie voters: this is our chance to press this. The next month and a half are when she’ll listen to us (though, witnessing the hysterical loyalty oaths with “you’re still going to vote for Hillary, though, right? Right??” that may continue). The fossil fuel and warmaking critiques are both sound, and dreadfully important. Raise your voices about them. Be well, all.