***This is my first diary, so be gentle.
The question that burns a hole in my brain, with the heat of a thousand hot suns, is...
Can. Bernie. Win?
Because the alternative is ghastly and cannot be allowed to happen. Now, I don’t mean Hillary getting elected. I mean someone from the Clown Car becoming POTUS.
That. Cannot. Happen. No ifs, ands or booty calls.
The reasons are legion. Obamacare must be protected. The Supreme Court cannot become more anymore conservative than it is currently. A woman’s right to choose must be protected. The economy cannot be steered any further in the direction of the corporations. We must find a way to bring races together instead of dividing them. Everyone needs a chance at the American Dream – not just skinny up-tight white folk. (Okay, I’ve been to a mid-western Wal-Mart – I was just making a point) We have to invest in infrastructure. We have to clean the planet and make sure the food we eat doesn’t accelerate the lumps we get from standing in the sun too long.
I could go on. If I’ve missed your favorite, I apologize. But…
I live in the real world, I think. I think if Bernie Sanders were the Democratic candidate for President in 2008 or 2012, he would have lost to McCain and Romney.
Can he win in 2016?
I’ll tell you this, if my choice in 2016 were ONLY between Clinton and Sanders, Bernie would have my vote. But it doesn’t work that way. There will be a Republican running. So I’ll say it here first: I’m fairly certain that Hillary Clinton will be sworn in on January 20th, 2017.
And that makes me sad. Not that I don’t like her and I don’t think she will “Keep Us Safe”, but I think she is a bit of “business as usual.” I don’t expect sweeping change with Hillary at the helm. I don’t expect to see Eisenhower tax rates on the rich while she is POTUS. I don’t see fundamental change – and change is what we need.
She’ll do fine on most things – nominating judges that respect individuals’ rights and protect the few from the many (also the many from the few, in some instances) and she’ll gamely battle a divided Congress who will, no doubt, do their level best to block any progressive initiatives she may champion. She will however, in my opinion, not get at the crux of the central problems this country has right now. She will never inspire the change this country needs to move forward - with everybody included. She has too much baggage – too much stake in the status quo to really make a structural difference.
But I sense that America is nearing a crossroads. It’s getting a bit crazy out here.
But is some ways it is a good crazy. There are huge swaths of the electorate hungry for fundamental change. For about 15% of the country (I made that number up), that means building a 1,954-mile wall at our southern border. There’s no arguing with them. But I believe there is a much larger group that realizes that an opportunity has presented itself. It is called self-governing. If we all got together, we could really make this whole USA thing pretty cool.
I also think Bernie Sanders is pretty cool. I think he gets it. I think he knows that to grow the middle class, you have to spend some dough. I think he knows the right place to get it. The right wing always pines for the good old days; they don’t remember the 90% tax bracket that helped make this country a financial and manufacturing dynamo. When we build we excel. We aren’t building now. We are letting the 1% accumulate - and hoping for scraps from the table.
Bernie gets it.
That there’s a problem is becoming more obvious to everyone – even on the right. The fact that the top three Republican Party presidential hopefuls have zero government experience is telling. It is also an opportunity. They want to thumb their nose at the Republican elite and vote for someone different.
What could be more different than Bernie? Just think if the voters, who have always voted against their own self-interest by voting Republican, really sent a message to their overlords? Bernie? That’s one hell of a message. Gotta get past the Socialist badge though – maybe ask them to describe what it means.
But honestly we don’t need them now – but just like Obamacare, if Bernie as President came through on fundamental change, they might come around. They could like it. I hear Texas may turn blue someday soon. It really comes down to getting the folks on our side to come along – that’s the trick.
The masses have always held the power in this country. There are more of us than them – comes in handy in a democracy, but we get easily distracted. We like shiny things. We like to slow down at car wrecks. We watch “Dancing With the Stars.” We also like to be tended to. We like to be mothered – and we worry. I worry. What if nominating the hard-core liberal Bernie Sanders resulted in the same outcome as nominating the hard-core liberal George McGovern? We kept Nixon. Here we will get worse – much worse. Unacceptable.
Still, there is the Clown Car. There is an opportunity. Can the car stay on the road and bump around without careening off a cliff (leaving an electable Republican) for enough time, so that the entire country (51% at least) will see the occupants for who they are? A group of corporatist, revisionist, homophobic, racist, fascist incompetents? Is there enough gas in the tank?
Because the longer it stays rolling, the more time there is to convince everyone to VOTE. Because we can change this entire picture. We have the technology. I think Bernie wants to. We The People can do this. We just have to turn off American Horror Story. Just kidding, I’m looking forward to the new season.
Like I mentioned before, there is an opportunity – one is to fall in line and let Hillary toe the Democratic line and not do too much damage, maybe even reverse some – or…
Can. Bernie. Win? I just don’t know – and until convinced, Hillary is the lesser evil.