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Have you seen John Lewis’s comment today? Check it out (above).
I’m for ensuring that a Democrat sits in the White House next year. I’m not “against” Bernie Sanders. But because Bernie Sanders cannot — cannot -- cannot — win, I can’t support him.
That isn’t the only reason — far from it. I’ve been reading comments and blog entries from lefties like me who, unlike me, have little but contempt for Hillary Clinton despite her remarkable lifetime of service in support of the underserved and disadvantaged. And please, cut the cheap cynicism — precious few of us have earned the right to throw rocks at her when we measure our own ethics and commitment against hers. Suddenly, liberal Democrats can’t seem to separate reality from fantasy.
The Sanders agenda will lose the November election. It’s also a populist — and frankly, if unconsciously, manipulative fantasy.
We have to dream big dreams — Bernie does, Clinton does. We also have to remember that the road from dream to reality is never fast or easy. The embrace of Sanders and the rejection of Clinton by my fellow lefties seems to me an extension of a general liberal view of President Obama’s record: rather than gape at his astonishing list of accomplishments in the era of a radically obstructionist Republican party, so many on the left express varying levels of disgust that Obama has failed miserably because he hasn’t gone far enough.
That view seems even more repugnant and demoralizing to me than the right’s growing embrace of Donald Trump.
Much more should be done. We ought to have universal health care and free college tuition. It’s exhilarating to have someone shout along with us that after years of frustration, the time is now.
But please — please — take another hard look at what Obama has achieved — as hard a look as so many lefties relish taking at what he hasn’t. When a country is so radically divided, this is what systemic change looks like; he’s going to go down as one of the greatest Presidents we’ve had -- why not recognize it now, while he’s still here? And the biggest reasons for that? Abiding human decency -- and methodical pragmatism. Under the fulminations of a new generation of Republicans, under the constant hailstorm of inhumane, crackpot, and outright crazy notions tossed around by Tea Partiers, Obama has been busy rebuilding the economy, restoring our stature in the world as a standard-bearer of human rights, creating radical new clean energy policies, creating the closest thing possible in this country (right now) to a universal healthcare system, restructuring the criminal justice system, asserting our commitment to the systemic reduction of our massive carbon footprint, affirming our commitment to LGBT rights and women’s rights and immigrants’ rights -- on and on and on.
So let’s turn to another great pragmatist driven by idealism and committed to realism: Hillary Clinton. She’s made plenty of decisions I don’t support. But the vast preponderance of them have been directed at the very same goals as those of our current President.
Bernie Sanders is a person of intelligence and commitment. But in 2016, the Tea Party, Donald Trump, and Ted Cruz are gaining real devotion from a great number of American voters. Karl Rove and his associates have spent years drumming into American brains the Big Lie that Socialist = Stalinist. They’ll have no ethical problem working implicit “but he’s a New York Jew” whispers into every piece of Republican campaign literature.
So again: Bernie Sanders can’t win the general election, partly because he’s a Socialist Jew from New York. I know what I’m saying -- I am too. I only wish he were a Socialist Jewish Realist from New York, in which case he’d immediately throw his support to Hillary Clinton so we can get on with the critical business of putting another Democrat in the White House.
Go ahead and curse me, delete this, rend your garments, call on your Higher Power to damn “the establishment”. It won’t change anything. While Quixotic hopes and dreams inspire us all, they only translate into reality through tedious, tireless, incremental, compromised, relentless effort by people who know how to do that. If rhetorical flights of poetry, and implicit peans to purity are motivating, keep them coming. But only ground-level, pragmatic deal-making — which gets everyone’s hands pretty dirty — will keep us moving toward our humanist ideals.
And do I really have to say that we have to beware of candidates who make glorious promises, no matter how appealing they seem to be? They will not keep them because glorious promises are not real. The candidates to embrace are the ones who offer visions of grand change while being brave and clear enough to also give us the bad news -- honest acknowledgement that the only way we’ll get there is through pragmatic, grind-it-out, incremental, messy — impure (sorry) -- effort. Those candidates are the keepers.
John Lewis knows Hillary Clinton is committed to racial justice because, as he says, she stood with him when he needed her to — when it was dangerous.
And in this era, knowing how to pull the levers of power matters more than ever. If you’re disgusted that there are any levers of power at all, it would seem that the messy, upsetting, impure democratic / capitalist system we live in isn’t for you. In that case why bother voting — I’d rush to the barricades, though I think you’ll have to build them first.
But however grudgingly, if you acknowledge that of all the political and economic systems in recorded history, our American one, by pretty much every measure, is — even today -- the fairest, most humane, most ethical of any that have lasted more than a few years, then GET PRAGMATIC. Or we’ll all have to deal with some very, very upsetting consequences. Such as an even more Republican Supreme Court (more than the one that’s now trying to cut off at the knees our President’s public commitment to fighting climate change). You can forget about overturning Citizen’s United. Or upholding Roe v. Wade. Or the Voting Rights act. Or Obamacare (never mind universal single-payer health care). And the list goes on and on and on.
The people driving today’s Republican Party are cunning, classist, and dead-set against pretty much anything that could even possibly curtail business profits or limit how wealthy individuals can become, regardless of how they get there. Today’s Republicans conflate “rights” with “privileges” without a blink. They’re downright feudal -- even fascist, and that’s not hyperbole. Their political thinking would have fit right in back in the 1400’s.
So we have no choice: in this election we’re called to fight cunning with cunning, pragmatism with pragmatism, power with power, experience with experience, realpolitik with realpolitik. Tarring Hillary Clinton with silly ‘60’s mythologies about the monolithic conspiracy of power-mad manipulators once called “the Establishment” is populist, cynical slander unworthy of the person Bernie Sanders claims to be. If guilt by insinuated association is now a valid basis for condemnation, Sanders’ 26 years in Congress would make him the biggest enemy — the real “Establishment candidate” — a consummate Washington insider who repeatedly voted against gun control and in favor of key deregulation that helped his other enemy of all that’s good and pure, his other demon: “Wall Street”.
How many of you have, or plan to have, a 401k or an IRA? If you do, by Bernie’s broad-brush definition you’re already your own enemy. Without “Wall Street” you’d have nothing to invest in. Wall Street excess, hubris, greed, remorselessness — those are the problems. But not “Wall Street” the Godzilla-like monster that aims to swallow us all — unless, again, you really do want a revolution, which most of us would find completely devastating, and would only end up (as almost all of them do) with totalitarianism claiming to be for the public good.
Along those lines, do you think Bernie Sanders has any investments? Does he use a bank? Does he own a mutual fund? I’m sure he uses the cushy health care program provided by Congress for Congress that none of the rest of us outsiders can use. You’re either in the club or not. Or like we said in the ‘60’s, you’re either on the bus or off the bus. Clearly, Sanders is on the bus. I wonder if he’s also part of the landed gentry that puts its money in the real estate we stole from Native Americans back in the day? See how this works? I’m using absurd innuendo to cast shadows all over the man. Remind you of anyone?
By the way, what exactly is the financial line beyond which “moral integrity” becomes an oxymoron? Do you become “the Establishment” enemy in Bernie’s moral universe if you have more than $10,000 in your 401k? $50,000? $100,00? $500,000? A million? Shouldn’t he be making absolutely sure that none of his $27 donations are coming from anyone who’s over whatever that line is? Or anyone who works on “Wall Street”? Or for a bank or even a corporation? Or for that matter anyone who’s spoken to, or had lunch with, anyone who does?
To paraphrase Bob Dylan, I think it’s time Bernie started investigating himself. When he does he might have to endorse Hillary Clinton, because he might discover that by his own definition he’s even more of a Washington insider than she is. And of course her accomplishments dwarf his. DWARF them.
But I admit that she can’t hold a candle to him when it comes to promises and the pretense of purity.
Don’t listen to me fulminate (if you haven’t already stopped). Just go listen to John Lewis’s statement, and his implicit message about who is and isn’t the real thing in this Democratic field.
We HAVE to win the White House.