Bernie Sanders has fought a tough and good race. But the Democratic nomination race is over, and it is time for him to drop out.
The Sanders campaign was a good thing for the Democrats. It represented a real opportunity to bring a progressive voice to the Democratic Party, and for a debate to run about what the Democrats could do to bring real progressivism and change to help the working classes in this country.
But as of today, I wonder whether I can, in fact, actually call Sanders a progressive at all. As he continues to state that he will stay in the race and bring his campaign all the way to the Philadelphia convention, it is becoming more and more obvious that this campaign has become less about the progressive cause and more about Bernie Sander’s ego.
That is more or less what Sander’s own campaign staff revealed last night. In a devastating article from Politico, Sander’s staff made it clear that nearly all of the controversial campaigns of the Sanders campaign – from his weak rebuttal of the violent Nevada incident to his embarrassing decision to challenge Donald Trump to a debate – have come from Sanders himself.
This is disappointing. For months now, pro-Hillary Democrats have excused Sander’s actions by pointing the blame on Sanders chief strategist Tad Devine. Devine does not exactly have a clean campaign history. He worked for Ukrainian mobster Viktor Yanukoyvch and allegedly received $800,000 from the Sanders campaign in March. So it was easy to point the blame on Devine and pretend Sanders was innocent.
But it is now clear that this is not true. And even if it was true, the buck stops with Sanders anyways. Now after bring this campaign into the mud, Sanders plans to sit and hope that Clinton will be indicted.
Think about that. Having lost the nomination race by any way you can calculate, Sanders now plans to invalidate the votes of every single Democrat who cast a vote for Hillary over these past few months. That after Clinton is indicted, Sanders will just walk in with his minority and take the nomination just because.
This is the man who claims to represent the will of the people?
The Democratic race has been realistically over for months now and there have been calls for Sanders to drop out before. Now, with July 4th just a month away, we should be thinking about our nation’s future. Independence Day is not just a day for fireworks, or getting sparklers online for your July 4th party. It’s also time to reflect on what’s good about our country.
The Democratic race has been realistically over for months now and there have been calls for Sanders to drop out before. But now there is no excuse. If Sanders does not drop out now, it is clear that he has drunk his Kool-Aid and values running for president over uniting the Democratic Party, defeating Donald Trump, and bringing a progressive agenda to America.
If that is what Sanders values, I wonder whether he can be called a progressive after all.
Sanders has fought bravely against difficult odds, but the simple fact is that he has lost. Hillary Clinton has picked up a majority of the delegates. And while Sanders and his hardcore supporters are eager to point out that some of these delegates are super delegates who could switch at any time, the fact is that there have been zero super delegates who have switched from Clinton to Sanders in 2016.