As virtually everyone on this site knows Hillary Clinton soundly defeated Bernie Sanders in the New York primary tonight by anywhere from a 58-42 to a 57-43 margin. There is no doubt this was a severe blow to the Sanders campaign. There is now almost no doubt that Clinton will win the Democratic nomination after this defeat, especially since Pennsylvania and New Jersey which are both major states, are closed primaries.
But that is not what this diary is about. There are plenty of diaries out there already celebrating Clinton’s win or talking about it and that’s fine. Just as Sanders supporters celebrated his Michigan upset the Clinton people have every right to be happy that their candidate won tonight. I do not want to rain on their well earned parade.
What I want to talk about is something very different than what the pundits, social media, or the campaign surrogates are discussing. I want to talk about why I will continue to support Senator Sanders. I want to talk about why I will be going to my county convention in Washington as a proud delegate for Sanders. I want to talk about why I look him up at least twenty times today. I want to talk about why any of you who are Sanders supporters should continue to stand by him as well, instead of losing hope, getting depressed, and walking away. I want to talk about why the established forces should listen too.
I am a millennial voter. Virtually every person I know, many of them fellow millennials, supports Sanders. We support Sanders by overwhelming margins. In the New York primary my generation supported him by a margin of 34 percentage points. I am far too tired to write a new section as to why but this old diary I posted, many months ago, more than speaks for itself:
After over nearly three decades in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, and several terms as Mayor of Burlington, Vermont, Bernie Sanders has seen a lot of reality about America.
- He has seen the corruption, the insatiable greed, the endless tax breaks for those on Wall Street, the billionaire class, the millionaire class, and wealthy and powerful corporations during his almost thirty years in Washington.
- He has seen veterans get repeatedly screwed over by the country they fought to protect.
- He has seen people in his home state of Vermont being unable to get decent healthcare because they can't afford to pay the devil (the health insurance/drug companies) enough for it.
- He has watched as almost every prediction he made about the Iraq War become a nightmarish truth.
- He has lived through the offshoring of millions of good U.S. jobs overseas thanks to one corporate dominated trade deal after another, the NAFTAs, the CAFTAs, and the TPP.
Bernie has done virtually everything in his power combating many of these evils.
- He was known as the Amendment King in congress.
- He drafted and passed legislation that greatly improved the VA's services with Republican Senator and former Vietnam POW John McCain.
- He took fellow Vermont residents across the Canadian border to get the affordable healthcare they needed. He voted against the Iraq war and spoke, time and time again, against it.
- He has voted against NAFTA, CAFTA, and the TPP, siding with the little guy instead of the powerful corporations, technocrats, conservatives, and billionaires that have written these deals for their benefit.
Now he is calling for a political revolution in this country to counteract the continuous rape of America and the middle class that is going on.
Somehow we have been able to have endless welfare and socialism for the most powerful Americans but continuous budget cuts for such programs that benefit the poorest.
Bernie recognizes this.
He recognizes that it is wrong to go to war based on a lie. He recognizes that we should make our own products in America, not in China, or in Mexico. He recognizes that the minimum wage should be a starter wage, not a slave wage. He recognizes that no one who takes advantage of a corrupt campaign finance system can or will change it. He recognizes that healthcare should be a right of the many, not a privilege of the few.
If Bernie were to become president he may never be able to get hardly any of his progressive proposals past an extremely conservative/corporate congress. But neither would Hillary Clinton as all her experience, while beneficiary, has made her one of the most admired and polarizing figures of the century at the same time.
Now is not the time to compromise with evil. Now is not time to continue to concede to the gun lobby, the healthcare lobby, the banking lobby and so on. It is time to fight them! To fight for things that should never be considered ‘pie in the sky’ promises such as single payer healthcare, stronger gun laws, pay equity, paid family leave, better funded education programs, affordable college, socialism for the poor instead of endless subsidies for the well to do.
Why should it ever be considered unrealistic to say that “yes we can” achieve these goals when we have managed to attain the greatest inequality, the greatest and most bloated defense budget, and the largest prison population compared to all other countries in the world? If we are able to make the system drastically worse for the many and continuously better for the few then the opposite is absolutely achievable as history has shown us time and time again.
Indeed, is it realistic for one to say that there’s no point in trying to make real change by starting a movement because the odds of it succeeding are considered too small? Is it realistic to say that one should continue to appease the powers that be instead of relentlessly pursuing real change because the status quo could be worse? No it is not!
Someone once said today’s dreams, with enough effort and tenacity, are tomorrow’s reality.
The fact is, no one ever radically changed a screwed up system by constantly over-compromising proposing half measures after building up an impressive past of standing up to the wealthy and powerful. No one ever did that while taking millions in speaking fees and campaign contributions from the very people who have screwed it up. No one ever did that when some people in their own party view them with little enthusiasm or excitement.
The people who did change the course of the nation, who really shifted the balance of power in a meaningful way, were people who never stopped advocating for progressive causes. Theodore Roosevelt broke up the most powerful and dangerous trusts and he lended a hand to the nearly powerless workers with his Square Deal. FDR worked incessantly to bring America out of the Depression with his New Deal. These were people, both former Presidents, who advocated incessantly for progressive causes in spite of daunting odds. In the case of TR, Americans were seeing a concentration of wealth and power that harkens to the 1920’s and especially to today. For the vast majority of FDR’s presidency the American economy was in tatters where millions of Americans barely had enough to put food on the table let alone afford a second helping.
Bernie has said this many times before but I will say it again: Today in America one family, the Walton Family of Wal-Mart, owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 40% of Americans while they pay a large number of their workers virtually unlivable wages. Some Wal-Mart employee wages are so low they need food stamps, social security, and employee food drives to get by.
That is ridiculous.
That is obscene.
And that is wrong.
And that sort of scenario is becoming increasingly common in modern day America.
Don’t get me wrong, Bernie has his many flaws and Hillary is certainly an extremely knowledgeable person who is certainly up to the task of the Presidential post.
But at the end of the day we all desire a more humane world and a more perfect union. We all want to combat some of the most hateful voices out there who threaten to turn this country into a theocracy or a police state. We simply have different ideas of how to do that.
Clinton represents, more or less, a continuum of the status quo or ‘Obama’s policies’. That is not a bad thing, the status quo now is certainly far, far better than it was under Bush.
But Clinton simply does not represent what I truly, truly want in my heart and Bernie does. There is no other way I can put my unyielding support for Bernie than to say that I do not want the same America we currently have. I want one that we could have. This is not selfish, this is not idealistic, this is realistic.
If we can spend hundreds of billions of dollars on being the world police we can damn well figure out how to take care of our own kids.
If we can figure out how to send a man to the moon can damn well figure out how to treat our veterans with honor and compassion instead of austerity once they come home.
We can do the most fantastic things if we use our considerable wealth and power for good not evil. Bernie’s plans on how to do these things may have issues, but that is not the point.
The point, which I will reiterate once more, is that we can have society that works, that really works, for everyone, not just those at the top. There are hundreds of millions of American voices out there, and we cannot, and must not ever let them become silenced.
That is why this campaign is much larger than Bernie and always will be. Even if he does not win the nomination, he has brought up ideals and proposals into the public spectrum that are worth fighting for, beyond the constraints of any election.
You see, my generation is the future of this party.
And we are democratic socialists.
We are new dealers.
And we are part of a movement for the future of this party, this planet, our children, and our country.
And very soon, we are going to elect more people who give a damn about this planet, those kids, and this country.
Not me, us.
Thank you,
-Toby