This morning I head that Bernie Sanders was voting for Hillary, except not exactly but probably (depending on which network), and/but wouldn’t endorse.
It went something like this:
Slate:
Bernie Sanders on Friday said that he will vote for Hillary Clinton this fall. “Yes,” the Vermont senator said when asked the question on MSNBC. “I think the issue right here is: I’m gonna do everything I can to defeat Donald Trump.”
Bernie, though, also made it clear that he has no plans to officially end his campaign before Democrats arrive in Philadelphia later this summer. “What my job right now is,” he said, “is fight for the strongest possible platform at the Democratic convention.” Nonetheless, his admission that he plans to vote for his rival is the latest—and most direct—acknowledgement that the primary race is indeed over. (The furthest Sanders would go during a lengthy C-SPAN interview on Wednesday was to concede, “It doesn’t appear that I’m going to be the nominee.”)
That’s a great sentiment. Except for walking it back a bit on a different network. And my reaction on twitter was less than charitable (and remains so now).
If Brexit and its aftermath aren’t enough to focus your attention, how about Donald Trump explaining that it’s all good, because it’s good for his golf course? He said that. In Scotland, which voted to Remain.
Fun and games?
No, because what supporting Donald Trump in any way, shape or form goes along with this:
My friend Jonathan Weisman at the New York Times wrote last month about the “anti-Semitic hate, much of it from self-identified Donald J. Trump supporters,” he has received. “[Twitter user] Trump God Emperor sent me the Nazi iconography of the shiftless, hook-nosed Jew. I was served an image of the gates of Auschwitz, the famous words ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ replaced without irony with ‘Machen Amerika Great.’ Holocaust taunts, like a path of dollar bills leading into an oven, were followed by Holocaust denial. The Jew as leftist puppet master from @DonaldTrumpLA was joined by the Jew as conservative fifth columnist, orchestrating war for Israel.”
Bethany Mandel, a conservative who is Jewish, wrote that her “anti-Trump tweets have been met with such terrifying and profound anti-Semitism that I bought a gun earlier this month.”
So what is Bernie going to do? And when is he going to do it?
I will forgive not being there for the Chris Murphy filibuster. I will applaud him for stopping by the House sit-in and honoring American hero John Lewis (when that man speaks, you be quiet and listen).
But there’s a time and a place for everything. The primaries are over, and Bernie lost. Now comes the general election and it is a binary vote. Clinton or Trump.
It’s time to congratulate the winner, endorse her and her historic win, and work on defeating Donald Trump. If you are not doing that, and not doing it now, Bernie, you are more than failing. Why? Because it‘s not about you. It’s about what kind of country this is and is going to be. And instead of making demands with less and less leverage, you should be asking how you can best help.
You’re a Democrat now. You chose to be. You ran in the Democratic primary, which helped you publicize your important issues. And good that you did.
So where do you stand, Bernie?
Where the hell are you?
It’s a time to declare and choose. And not doing so is also a choice, one that will not be forgotten.