Sorry if this comes off as a bit terse, but I am frankly getting sick and tired of this…
Enough already. If you are a Democrat, you do NOT threaten other Democrats. You do not threaten the Party. You do not make demands based on a campaign that lost.
What you do is you continue to fight for your policies, but you get better at doing so. You improve your messaging and you build a bigger and stronger base for a future election. You understand that somewhere along the way, your side screwed up its messaging, its choice of representative, or its overall campaign, but you march forward. You accept your loss gracefully and work to make the Democratic Party even better.
What you NEVER do is burn down the fracking house. You don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. You don’t blindly except any lie you read online that fits your preconceived notion about the Party’s nominee and share it all over the internet. You do not “hope” that the Party’s nominee gets indicted. You do not talk about contesting the Party’s nomination convention with less Pledged Delegates and Less Votes. You do not threaten to withhold your vote unless you get your pony.
You learn, live, grow, and help the Democratic Party win the White House, the Senate, the House, the Supreme Court, and all the down-ballot races.
For months and months now, I have had to read endless comments about how Clinton was too much of a pragmatist. How Bernie had the real vision. How Clinton was too likely to compromise. How Bernie would fight for his ideals.
Now, as it increasingly becomes clear that Bernie will not only lose, but has lost his way, Clinton supporters are now being told that she must compromise and adopt large parts of his vision to get his voters votes.
Sorry, but you can’t have it both ways.
Either you believe that the candidate who wins gets to carry out their vision (like Bernie supporters have argued repeatedly for months about if he were to win) or you believe in compromise.
You can’t have it both ways when its politically expedient to do so.
If Sanders won by even 1 vote, I bet his supporters wouldn’t want to accept a damn thing from Clinton. All we would be hearing about is how she lost and he won, so he gets to set the whole platform. That this was Democracy in Action.
Well, I hate to break it to those very people, but they would have been right, except their candidate didn’t win.
Clinton won. She didn’t just win by a little, she has won by a lot. So much so that to anyone paying attention, it has been clear that she was going to win by a lot since early March, just a month into the race. She will likely close out the race with more than 5 times the pledge delegate lead than Obama had in 2008 and likely more than 5 times the popular vote lead she had in 2008.
Now, Clinton gets to lead the party forward. She won it fair and square. You can either get on the train, and maybe help to make it a better train as it runs over the Republicans, or you are the one being unreasonable and you will never get anything you want.