"Help me Obi Wan! You're my only hope!"
I support Bernie Sanders in his bid for the presidency; however, after his loss in New York State this week, I think most of his supporters, no matter their ardency, are at a crossroads. While the path to victory isn’t quite closed, the trail is getting very narrow and the markers much harder to see.
Bernie and Tad and the rest of the Sanders campaign team are now talking about flipping super delegates, as their strategy heading into Philadelphia. I think everyone would just rather there were no super delegates and the new tack of the Sanders campaign to use them rather than eschew them is leaving a bad taste in many mouths.
New strategies aside, there are reasons why many democrats who ordinarily would support Hillary just can’t get behind her for the presidency; not without much holding of noses and closing of eyes, (and PayPal accounts.) I don’t trust Hillary Clinton. I believe that she is bought and paid for by Wall Street. I believed all of these things before Bernie got into the race. I voted for Obama in 2008 because I didn’t trust her then and the trust factor has degraded significantly since 2008.
Perhaps as bad, I just get this overwhelming sense from her that she feels entitled to the office, almost as if everything that went wrong at the end of her husband’s presidency can only be assuaged by her returning to the White House.
On the simple matter of her speeches to Wall Street banks and those oft called for transcripts, if you are a Hillary supporter and you don’t squirm, just the littlest bit inside, when she says she will release them, only when all of the other candidates, including the Republicans, also release their transcripts, I think you are lying to yourself. (It makes you squirm.) She could just be transparent and release them or be transparent and say she refuses to release them but instead remains opaque.
I see Clinton as a centrist, (I’d argue that Obama is too), who won’t move forward, at anything like a liberal speed, on health care, climate change, or wealth inequality. She will also likely make hawkish moves on the foreign policy front that will be to the right of Obama and I cannot support a president that will go there.
Here is my hope. I hope to see a brokered convention. I hope to see Elizabeth Warren ultimately get the Democratic Party nomination for President. After all, this really doesn’t have to be about, (shouldn’t be about), our loyalty, (or lack thereof), to one candidate or the other as much as our shared goal of fielding the best candidate we can for president against the eventual Republican candidate. I think Elizabeth Warren is that candidate. I thought that a couple of years ago and am a Bernie Sanders voter because he parallels Warren on many key issues. (I am not a BernieBro.)
I think it is long past time for our nation to have a woman as president. I want it to be the right woman. I don’t think Hillary Clinton is the right woman for the job. We need a new hope.
