1986 to 2008 held incredible examples about the power of the people to effect change that their contemporaries (especially Americans) thought were impossible pipe dreams. The common thread in all of these events is that people faced a choice at a critical moment whether to believe that change was possible and whether to make that change happen. I envied these people their opportunity to buy in with their hearts and to see with their own eyes the results of their courage to demand change. The whole point of this diary is to encourage Markos in particular and DK in general to choose a side — Bernie Sanders. Rather than passively accept what the party planners want, I encourage you to go all-in for Bernie. You’ll find more company than you’d ordinarily expect to find in the Sanders camp. There are many, many Republicans and independents who can find at least some common ground with Senator Sanders that we can’t find with Secretary Clinton and that we’d rather not even look for with either Mr. Trump or Senator Cruz. Here are some quick stories about people just like you who risked a lot for a better outcome.
February 1986: After an obviously stolen election in the Philippines, most people took scant notice that there was trouble brewing in Manila. There were protests and street demonstrations, but quite honestly, I expected Marcos’s thugs to break the whole thing up. Then February 22 happened. The military, forced to choose sides, abandoned the corrupt Marcos, and the revolution happened. Those who had risked everything to side with the people rejoiced with their compatriots.
November 1989: The Berlin Wall was thrown on the ash heap of history. The particulars are in the history book, but I mention it because it was worldwide news. Who was more jubilant — the East Berliners who crossed into West Berlin, or the West Berliners who welcomed them? It doesn’t much matter anymore.
August 1991: Soviet hardliners staged a coup, and most people, assuming that the backers were competent enough to have at least imprisoned Gorbachev and Yeltsin, figured that the world was to be thrust right back into the Cold War. However, the coup wasn’t planned very well, and Yeltsin made it to the Russian White House to speak to the gathered masses. His speech broke the coup, and on Christmas Day 1991, the Soviet flag was lowered over the Kremlin for the last time.
November 2008: Barack Obama was elected President of the United States. I didn’t vote for him, but I was terribly moved by both his victory speech and the very fact of his election. It had been only 24 years since Jesse Jackson’s candidacy had been regarded as an exercise in point-making.
2016
Circumstances have combined to create an opportunity to elect a president whose platform is entirely one of political revolution, but so many Democrats are balking at the point of decision. Your Republican friends (like me) are ready to join you if you will give us the chance to do so. However, you are on the precipice of nominating the ultimate representative of the status quo. The likely nominee of your party is someone who can promise nothing except continuing political division in a country that desperately needs effective government.
I don’t know how much influence Markos and this site really wield in Democratic circles, but that’s not terribly important. It’s a time for choosing. How will you feel a year from now if you realize that if Markos and DK’s contributors had put everything they could into nominating Sanders, it might have made the difference? How will you feel if Clinton gets the nomination but loses the GE because of her lack of trustworthiness? You’ll always wonder what might have happened.
The leaders of the Philippine military didn’t have to wonder whether they might have achieved a just election result, because they backed the side that they knew was in the right. The men who protected Boris Yeltsin with their own bodies don’t have to wonder whether they could have stopped the coup, because they did. If you capitulate to the supposed inevitability of Clinton’s nomination, you’ll always wonder what might have happened if you had gone all-in for Sanders, even if Clinton wins the presidency.
Yes, if Sanders is the nominee, much will be made of his self-characterization as a “socialist.” Mr Priebus goes on about how that would guarantee a Republican victory, but I’m not so sure. Of the two likely GOP nominees, both have severe downsides that will make many voters (like me) wonder whether they can, in good conscience, vote for them when there’s a reasonable alternative. I’m very conservative, but I could see myself voting for Sanders for president. Why? It’s because I believe the president has strictly enumerated powers, and so my decision first whom I can trust to be president and secondly what discretionary choices that president might make. Frankly, other than SCOTUS nominees, I’d probably prefer the discretionary choices of a President Sanders over those of a President Cruz or President OMG-NO.
But what I won’t ever, ever do is to vote for Hillary Clinton. The most easy way to explain why you shouldn’t vote for her either is to ask you to consider how you’d react if a Republican candidate had done or said some of the same things. I’ll call this fictional person Mr. GOP. (FWIW, these guesses are based on the sorts of things I have read at DK, and I’ll also admit cheerfully that there’s a bit of hyperbole in them too.)
If Mr. GOP had characterized Ronald and Nancy Reagan as national conversation starters about HIV and AIDS, you’d question whether that candidate understood history well enough to be president. If Mr. GOP were 68 years old, you’d offer amateur diagnoses of his self-evident senile dementia.
As just a brief follow-up on that, I’m a big fan of Reagan, albeit more of his political philosophy than how he implemented (or didn’t) that philosophy. However, even I acknowledge that his non-response to HIV/AIDS was far and away the worst aspect of his presidency. Of a hundred things I might say about Nancy Reagan at her funeral, I wouldn’t have mentioned HIV/AIDS as one of them. There’s nothing nice to say
Suppose Mr. GOP had stood on the floor of the Senate and proclaimed that marriage is a sacred bond between one man and one woman and that his belief in that was a bedrock principle. If Mr. GOP today said that he had “evolved” his opinion about same-sex marriage, would you give him the benefit of the doubt? Would you regard the “evolution” as credible, or would you ask whether a focus group had determined that the only way the Mr. GOP might win the presidency was to abandon his bedrock principle?
Suppose Mr. GOP had a prominent government position. As it turns out, there are a number of instances in which parties which had business with Mr. GOP’s government entity made significant contributions to a charity associated with Mr. GOP. In some cases, Mr. GOP’s decisions about those parties directly contradict previous statements about the decision. Even though there might be no smoking gun that reveals a quid pro quo arrangement, you would certainly seize upon the appearance of impropriety that has attached to Mr. GOP’s record. You would cite that Mr. GOP’s being oblivious to the very notion that there could be an appearance of impropriety as a further disqualification for even greater trust.
If Mr. GOP earned hundreds of thousands of dollars making private speeches, you would question whether Mr. GOP could be objective about regulating the parties who paid Mr. GOP to make those speeches. You would point out that because there were repeated occasions of those paid speeches, it must be true that Mr. GOP is telling them things they want to hear. If Mr. GOP claimed that he had actually rebuked the people who paid him, you would howl with laughter that no one pays to be lectured about their bad behavior multiple times. If Mr. GOP defended his actions with some tenuous “because 9/11” reasoning, you’d pounce on that in a heartbeat.
Thank you for reading this, if you made it this far. If the readers of DK hide this, ban me, or whatever you do, that’s OK. It was more important for me to write this than anything else. If it provokes thought and conversation, that’s gravy on top. It’s more important for me to write this because just as I have argued to my Republican friends that it’s important to nominate a candidate who can win election and can govern with less acrimony, I am compelled to argue the same to my Democrat friends here. I believe that a Hillary Clinton presidency would be disastrous for our country, just as I believe that a Trump or Cruz presidency would be fraught with gridlock. Of the candidates of both parties, Sanders offers the best hope of a president of whom all Americans can be proud, even those of us who disagree with particular political views. I can accept the political downside (for me) of a Sanders presidency as the consequence of the GOP’s inability to offer a coherent conservative alternative. (I could discourse on why that coherent alternative does not exist for hours.)
Endnote: Of course, there are many similar stories of people’s courage that I left out, even during the time period I stated. These include the Chinese students whose peaceful movement was literally crushed at Tiananmen Square, the Romanian revolt against Ceausescu, and the remarkable changes in South Africa. If your best example of people’s willingness to risk all for the best outcome is not included, I apologize for the omission.
