Supporters of Hillary Clinton employ the Mr. Burns Disease Theory of their candidate's livelihood. (Watch this minute-long Simpsons sketch for the analogy.) She has so many scandals, they say, that they act miraculously in unison, providing the glue which holds her whole campaign together. She is "indestructible."
Fellow travelers on the left caution: "No, no, in fact, even a slight breeze could..."
But they wander off, self-longingly: "Indestructible…"
Meanwhile, lurking outside the door of the comparatively safe doctor's office, is the Big Bad Wolf with two large lung-fulls of criticism just waiting to blow.
Donald Trump is so full of hot air he's like the Earth's ever-heating climate: Republicans want to pretend he's not there, but he is. For Trump, every single hint of smudge on Clinton, or her husband, or anyone either one of them have ever even known or bumped into, is fair game. Any small-time muckraker could dispose of the straw-house that is the former Secretary of State's "progressive" credentials. So imagine the fun Donald Trump will have huffing and puffing it to pieces.
Bernie Sanders – a once-unknown independent Senator from some New England forest-town – has exhaled only minor criticism towards his opponent thus far. He is much-too-kindly focused on his roaring, New Deal stump speech to spare any breath blowing Clinton's house down. She continues to appropriate his rhetoric in an unsubtle acquiescence to the reality that she doesn't actually possess a progressive platform, merely platitudes. But what is she going to do if she survives Sanders' fraternal competition and then steps into a general with his stump speech but none of the substance and all of the scandals?
Trump will call Sanders a "socialist", we are warned. But now that Clinton is sounding more and more like Sanders every day, isn't she also a "socialist"? Do you think any of our sisters and brothers on the right, whose definition of "socialist" often begins and ends with the word "government", and occasionally finds space for "Stalin", is going to spare the insult, "comrade", for Hillary? Do you think Trump will? Many of these individuals thought – and still think! – Barack Obama is a Kenyan, commie Islamist. The flaccid "socialist" slur won't stop Sanders; but we on the left have to now admit that if indeed the word carries some baggage, Sanders and Clinton are both bearing it.
Well then, Democrats might as well give Republicans the Real New Deal, and not an empty adaptation of it. The irony – and I believe I use that word correctly here – of a Clinton/Trump race is that Clinton becomes at once a symbol for legitimate progressive politics and at the same an unscrupulous mirage of it. Meaning Trump gets to attack her once for being a progressive and then again for not really being one at all. This straw-man caricature is what the progressive movement will be reduced to if Clinton wins the Democratic nomination. A large portion of Trump’s candidacy is based on how phony all America’s politicians are. Presenting him Hillary Clinton neatly proves his case.
Now, the Clintons have certainly suffered three decades of heavy muckraking. But they have also enjoyed three decades of state power and privilege. My position on muckrakers is that a healthy democracy has many of them: they reveal the dirt we think is too indecent to discuss yet somehow perfectly decent to vote for. I will not pretend to personally shy from discussing, or having interest in, the dirt of the Clinton family. The filth of privileged elites interests me, generally. Besides, it is one of the more disgusting false dichotomies of state-privilege to believe the private sins of public figures are none of our business while the private pleasures of unimportant nobodies are a public threat. And the Clintons have always been on the wrong side of the Drug War.
But Bernie Sanders has, to his credit, and consistent with his reputation, refrained from bringing up most of what he could, and even dismissed minor Clinton scandals as partisan ploys in the hopes of transitioning the debate to the issues, where he knows he has Clinton soundly beat. This is the smart strategy for Sanders. But the smart strategy for Trump will be to focus on the scandals – and Hillary offers many.
This is where we meet another contradiction between the expected narrative and reality. Clinton supporters say it is Sanders who is not ready for a general election; that he is not ready for the dirty games of Trump because he has never had to face them. The Clinton campaign said the same thing about Obama, let us recall, and even helped originate some of the very false dirt on our President in the name of defending him from hypothetical Republicans who might later bring it up. Meanwhile, they say, Clinton has weathered every storm.
If she has weathered every storm, then why has her lead over Sanders continuously evaporated and her approval and trustworthy ratings continuously dropped? And this is only the beginning. Most Americans do not know who Jeffrey Epstein is. Most Americans do not know that the Clinton Foundation is partly funded by Saudi royal family money. Most Americans do not know that Clinton as Secretary of State armed the precursor to the Islamic State. Most Americans know about the e-mails, but not what’s in them; and about Benghazi, but not Libya and Sidney Blumenthal; and about the sniper-fire story, but not the arms-dealing to radical jihadists. It is naïve to think all of Clinton’s scandals are public knowledge as of yet. If she goes toe-to-toe with Trump, however, they will be.
So Democrats should not fret over Trump’s ability to find some small, hidden Sanders scandal and exploit it for months on end. Sanders is 74-years-old. You think he hasn’t seen – and weathered! – some Republican tricks in his time? Democrats should instead worry that every single Monday of the election cycle Trump will release a new, major scandal on Clinton, and sit back while the media discusses every final detail of it.
Did you know Bill Clinton took many trips on Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet to his private island where he kept underage sex slaves? Did you know this jet was called “Lolita Express”? Do you want America to spend its October learning about this, and much more?
Clinton will never find her footing. She hasn’t even found her footing against Sanders, who is taking it easy on her and, anyways, has a sense of decorum. Trump has no rules. Against a man like that, you need to put up your best, most-principled candidate, look Trump in the eyes, confidently, and say, “Bring it on.”
You do not put up someone with a flimsy and failing reputation and ask her to stand strong in the court of public opinion against a man who will expose everything.
With no legitimate platform for her to stand on, she won't be able to stick to the issues. Trump will force the conversation, night after night, debate after debate, onto her and her husband's personal lives. He will bring up every little thing critics of the Clintons, from both the right and left, myself included, gladly bring up, but that Sanders has yet to: the wealth of income they receive, both political and personal, from big banks and privileged royal families; the sordid range of Bill's extra-marital abuses and deceptions, and his sordid assortment of friends, Marc Rich, Jeffrey Epstein; her “goddamn” e-mails; the fact that their daughter received over $24k for every minute of face-time on NBC; the fact that Time-Warner is one of her top donors; the disasters in Syria, Libya, Iraq, etc.
Worse yet – yes, it gets worse – Trump will be able to attack Hillary from the left on Iraq, on regime change, and on international trade agreements. He will be able to smugly note, “Look, even I’m more progressive than Hillary Clinton.” Conservative audiences will eat this up while liberal audiences wonder, wide-eyed in a nightmare, how we let this satire of triangulation commence. Why did we put ourselves through this when we had a real, viable, electable, practical, substantive, experienced alternative right in front of us?
And there’s the rub: Hillary Clinton is unelectable. The entire premise of her candidacy – its inevitability – is a myth. The truth is that Clinton will inevitably lose.
Barack Obama won the general election in 2008 on the surge of an inspiring campaign that brought new people, including young people, into the political process. Much like Sanders is doing now. But Clinton cannot count on them. In an election between her and Trump, a lot of people under 30 will simply stay home – and people who couldn’t care less won’t suddenly find in Clinton a reason to care more.
Why? Because telling young people to vote for someone they markedly distrust because the other guy is worse is not an inspiring strategy. Especially when the other guy is to the left of you on two issues young Americans overwhelmingly agree on: the Iraq War was a senseless waste of human life and no more regime change. The only thing her camp can rely on is frightening the youth vote into the polls by referencing Trump’s disastrous, deluded fantasies of walls, deportations, and arm-bands.
Let us be serious: Donald Trump’s racist rhetoric is scary. It constitutes some of the worst elements of white reaction. But fear, in my opinion, and if we can enjoy enough privilege to prevent it, is a strategy that ought belong exclusively to the right-wing of political discourse. We on the left can do better. Can’t we? We can talk about love, about the joy of democracy, about participating in the political system, about bringing people together around a legitimate platform of social change.
Can’t we?
Clinton is so disconnected from the youth vote that she does not even understand the vast range of their concerns. She cautioned them after Nevada, “It can't be just about what we're going to give to you.” She might as well have said, “Get off my lawn!” Young people, like old people, like all people, care about many, many issues – not just the ones that affect them personally.
There is an essential, nonbargainable tradition for those of us on the left called solidarity. It means we throw in with others in their struggle, even at personal cost, and without the promise of personal benefit. If anything separates us from the right, it is our spirit urging humanity away from provincialism, in all its forms, and towards internationalism. Young people do not struggle hoping some vast reward awaits them personally at the end of it – only a neoliberal, obsessed with models of capitalist self-interest and cost-benefit analyses, would think that’s how everyone thinks. (Which tells you a lot about how Hillary Clinton thinks.)
Young people are passionate about the Earth, the environment, Black Lives Matter, the poor, our sisters and brothers in the Middle East, our immigrant friends, the health and future of our democracy, and more. Clinton, in that single quote, portrays the same crude and narrow conception of youth that her surrogates Madeleine Albright and Gloria Steinem portrayed of women. She really, actually believes Bernie Sanders is leading the youth vote because of free college. She has no apprehension of what is going on, either among the young, or their perception of her. She is Mr. Burns walking out of the doctor’s office thinking, “I’m perfectly healthy. I’m indestructible. There’s nothing wrong with me. Must be something wrong with them.” Yet we are to believe millennials are the narcissists? This is precisely the generation Clinton needs to win over somehow before November. It won’t happen.
The other important group of voters that Obama won in 2008 – even against a “maverick” like John McCain – was independents. Independents constitute a larger voting bloc than Republicans and Democrats. They are now a record-high 42% of the population, and they strongly distrust Clinton. They will not come out to vote if uninspired to do so. Neither will Democrats. Which is why Democrats need an inspiring candidate. Republicans are bringing out record numbers. Though Donald Trump polls very unfavorably among independents, and this will cost him in the general, Clinton fares even worse. Neither Trump nor Clinton have any crossover appeal.
Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, is the most preferred candidate among independents and also has crossover appeal. He will crush Trump among independents while expanding the Democratic base and sweeping the youth vote. He polls better than Clinton against Trump. He is the better Democratic bet for the general election.
The high of Clinton’s campaign has steadily sunk to newer and newer lows. Her momentum is non-existent. Every narrative is flipping. First the women had to come out for her. But Sanders won them in New Hampshire. Then the Latinos had her back. But Sanders won them in Nevada. By the Convention in July, Clinton’s every human-shield will turn.
In the end, staring right at us, stands the only conclusion: the one “trump” card Clinton supporters have always played against Sanders when all else failed – that he is unelectable – is doubly wrong. Clinton is the unelectable one.
With Clinton, Democrats lose the general to Trump by failing to enthuse the young vote or independents and by allowing Trump to mercilessly hammer Clinton over the litany of her and her husband’s private and public scandals.
With Sanders, Democrats crush Trump and the Republicans nationwide in the general election by bringing all kinds of new voters out to embrace an inspiring platform of unity and love. Yes, we can put an end to institutional racism. Yes, we can stop policing the world and overthrowing governments for petty geopolitical games. Yes, we can overcome our addiction to fossil fuels. Yes, we can provide health care to all our people. Yes, we can take our democracy back and find useful compromises to the big questions. Yes, we can resist Wall Street and the corporate class. Yes, we can find a way to let our immigrant allies stay in their new home, with their new friends. Yes, we can find a way to destroy the racist, for-profit punitive system. Yes, we can free our black sisters and brothers from its clutch. None of this can be accomplished with Sanders alone, as he always reminds us, but it can only be achieved if we organize across the nation, across divisions.
The Democratic Party can even garner crossover appeal with Republicans because some of Trump’s biggest issues – corporate trade agreements, disappearing working class, corruption of the political system – are Sanders’ stump issues and he is better rehearsed on them and has a long, well-documented history of fighting them. And Trump’s other big issue – immigration reform – puts him in very unpopular territory with the American public compared to Sanders.
Donald Trump is a ridiculous candidate, partly the product of a flailing, fractioned Republican Party. In a single word, the Republican Party is decadent. This is the necessary outcome of their nihilism. They have committed themselves, not to politics, but to disruption. They lack an ideology, and they have lost the cultural “war”. Feminist phraseology now pervades social and campus life. The public consciousness continues to expand as liberals dictate it must. The Republicans had to find a way to reach beyond being the party of old, white men, but they just don’t have the guts for it. Here, now, at last, stands their presumptive nominee; a man who reifies the joke.
The Democrats, with a strong, inspiring candidate in possession of a legitimate platform, can sweep the conservative establishment while it is at its weakest. Democrats should put forward a serious, progressive candidate to better reflect this rare opportunity. A candidate who can beat Trump on the issues by keeping the focus of the race on the issues.
Trump cannot appear like an outsider against Sanders, and he cannot appear less corporate. Nor can he appear more genuine or honest. On all of Trump’s major points of appeal, Sanders either co-opts the issue from a more popular, and much further to the left, position, or he simply shakes his head and dismisses it because he has no major personal hypocrisies to exploit. Bernie Sanders steals almost all of Trump’s thunder.
Clinton, however, can co-opt nothing from Trump, falls to his right on several major issues, and has a treasure trove of trust and corruption scandals for Trump to dive into and spit out like Scrooge McDuck in a pool of gold coins.
Trump’s main message is that our system is a facade of democratic values plagued by corporate mismanagement and self-interested politicians who care more about their personal finances and rubbing elbows with China and the Saudis than American workers. As if to prove his point, some Democrats seek to nominate a fake progressive with a neoconservative foreign policy, who is part of a dynastic family with funding ties to China and the Saudis, and whose career is riddled with personal profits derived from state-privilege.
Let me be explicit on this in two brief sentences: Bernie Sanders undermines Trump’s entire candidacy. Hillary Clinton validates it.
Let us do the right thing this primary season. Not just because we have the chance to nominate a real progressive who wants to inspire a mass social movement for change, but because nominating Bernie Sanders is the practical, winning strategy.
For once, America, just this once, we can have our cake and eat it too. And we can embarrass Donald Trump, celebrity politics, the national media, and Wall Street in the process.
Now is the time for all of us to come together.