(“Tough Love”, or “Too Soon?”, or “What many are thinking but few will say...”)
Dear Senator Sanders,
It was a valiant effort, the effort to secure the Democratic Party nomination, that is.
Sure, it’s not over yet. We have until June.
In fact, I’d like to think it’s just getting started, the Political Revolution, that is.
But, the reality is that the effort to secure the Democratic Party nomination is all but out of reach.
Is it impossible? Nope.
But I’m not going to let the fact that’s it’s still technically possible detach me from the fact that it’s completely and totally improbable. In fact, it pretty much always was.
But now, it’s gone from the theory of being improbable to the to reality of being improbable.
Let’s face it: the Democratic Party just doesn’t want you, or us.
More than that: it doesn’t want anything that will dare to threaten, even in the slightest, its hold on the levers of corrupt Establishment political and economic power. Even if that is millions, of energized voters for the next generation.
They’ve made it clear: they will grip tightly to those levers of corruption, use them for their own enrichment and the enrichment of those around them, and refuse to let go.
Those corrupt levers will not be pried from their cold, pulseless, blood-soaked hands.
Therefore: it is imperative for you to give serious, introspective thought to where you want the movement to go from here. While the movement is made of millions, like it or not: YOU’VE become the figurehead for that movement.
Millions are watching YOU, waiting to follow your lead. Where will you lead them?
Into the darkness of the very Democratic Party going out of its way to reject them?
Really? Is THAT how you want to proceed?
By telling them to get over all the things the Party has done in this primary (and over decades), both to you and them, and fall in line in support of a candidate that represents practically all that you say and they know is wrong with the system of corruption and injustice ruling our society?
Do you want to be respected and taken seriously by the millions you’ve moved to action?
Or the corrupt powers who commence the coronations?
I can tell you this, not that my little voice really matters: if your thoughts are to try and figure out a way to lead this movement into the rank-and-file base of the Democratic Party that has either left it or in most cases was never there for it in the first place, I will be the first to lose practically all the respect I had for you. I suspect countless hundreds of thousands, if not millions, will feel the same.
Is that what you want?
After all: what would you end up being at that point besides just another left-wing politician using his pull in the Community of the Ignored to keep the members of that community in line for the electoral good of a political Party that takes them for granted and doesn’t care in the least about any of their desires or policy goals besides paying lip service to them, or in some cases, actively fighting against them, when an election is coming around?
Your choice, then, is to just be another Howard Dean?
What corporate lobbyist gig are YOU lining up for the sell-out?
You want to be another Barack Obama?
Which drone strikes will YOU argue to expand upon?
Which whistleblowers will YOU argue to wage war on?
Will that be before or after YOU make the case to make permanent even more of the Bush Tax Cuts?
THAT’S the road you want to travel? Why?
For fear of being cast as the outsider by the political Party that just got done treating you like one wandering around at their party with a deadly disease?
Allow me to propose another course of action.
It’s one I’m sure you are pondering, while at the same time trying to find any excuse for not taking.
But maybe it’s time to consider that maybe working within the Democratic Party for fundamental change is not only useless, but for all intents and purposes, completely impractical and impossible?
It is not a vessel for fundamental change. Had it been, fundamental change would be taking place.
For instance, we’d be moving toward single payer healthcare instead of the leading members of the Party arguing against it while continuing to find new arguments, or, hell, even recycling right-wing arguments as a means to prop up this heartless, murderous, for-profit private health care industry and system.
But, we’re not moving toward fundamental change.
Instead, business as usual becomes more and more engrained in its functions.
Those private, for-profit health insurance providers get richer by way of tax-payer funds used as subsidies to rightly help those in need. Not of health insurance, but actual access to healthcare. Practically everyone else gets higher premiums and less useable plans. Democrats get donations. And around and around we go.
This Party is not a vessel for fundamental change.
It is a construct now designed to squash fundamental change and reorganize it under the umbrella of giving lip service to fundamental change by way of some form of far-too-little-far-too-late incrementalist idea sold to the masses as meaningful.
Sure, there may be a nibble or two here or there around the edges.
After all: they can’t make it TOTALLY obvious they don’t care about regular everyday people.
There must at least be a bone of something good thrown in the corner for the savages to feast upon and fight over as distraction from the greater evil being carried out. I’m not going to deny that.
But the greater action is the evil, no matter the good.
Will you play the part of helping them carry out that evil, convincing the savages in the corner that they’re getting the best they can be offered at the moment?
What does that make you, then?
Just another wrangler in a circus, if not the Resident Jester?
You want your efforts to result in you becoming a joke for entertainment? Really?
Then maybe it’s time to give up on the Party that has given up on the working poor, and move to greener pastures: accept the offer to discuss with and become the Presidential running mate of Vice President Jill Stein on the Green Party ticket in November 2016.
There are many reasons why this course of action makes far more sense, for the movement, than leading supporters into the corporate-sponsored tent of the Democratic Party. Some have already been discussed.
I am fully aware that the discussion of what is best for the movement is perhaps considered separate and apart from the discussion of what is best for you. In many cases, it is.
In other cases, however, what is best for the movement can also be what is best for you:
winning the White House in November with a plurality of the popular vote, enough to secure the electoral votes needed in a 3-way matchup.
I’m willing to venture the guess there are some in the Party who would be and may well be more concerned about THAT reality than they are about the possibility of some “spoiler” claim.
But, ultimately, I suppose, you have to decide if you are making the decision on the next course of action based on what is best for you, or what is best for the movement.
Did you mean it when you said it was not about Bernie Sanders?
Did you mean it when you said it was not about about any one individual?
Did you meant it when you said it was about us?
What do you mean when you say it’s too late for Establishment politics and Establishment economics?
That it’s time for us to support the Establishment candidate in her question for just that?
Don’t insult us. Don’t embarrass yourself. “Do The Right Thing”.
(commence my beating, or worse, for failing to fall in line)