Now The Real Battle Of Convincing America To Vote For Hillary Begins
Many are going to hate it, but it truly is only a matter of days before Bernie Sanders packs it in and tells his followers what they have known in the back of their mind at least since the New York primary. It is over. You can blame the media. You can blame the DNC. You can even point to irregularities in the voting.
At this point, it doesn’t matter. Sanders is probably only hanging in there at this point, not to be bullheaded, but to give the good people of Washington, D.C. a chance to have their voices heard for once. By this time in every primary season, there is only one single candidate and the nomination is always called. So what’s the point of DC even going out to vote? They really only have one candidate that is in the race. So they are only ever left with protest votes if anything.
Sure, when Sanders does start to support her, and he will, there are plenty who won’t go along unless the Democrats actually give and make concessions that they haven’t seemed willing to incorporate. Their idea of universal healthcare is the ACA, which has been good, but is not a universal system. Raising the minimum wage to a set wage is something Democrats can’t even agree on, so how do they ever plan to get Republicans to go along with them?
Even if he works hard to back her despite the lack of many concessions, and she loses, he and his followers will be forever blamed for the loss. That sort of thinking though is completely disingenuous. Democrats still blame Ralph Nader for 2000, but Nader didn’t win a single state or a single county. Al Gore lost, because Al Gore was a bad candidate.
It’s pretty obvious I am a left-leaning independent, and sometimes fairly far left for some folks or a tad right on other issues. I agree with Al Gore on a lot of his issues, but I never ever voted for him, not even when he was a VP candidate, because he wouldn’t stand up for the First Amendment in the 1980’s. The time where he stood with his wife to ban certain types of music because it was bad for society told me immediately he did not hold the Constitution in high regard, or our rights.
Hillary faces a lot of the same problems, and it will help to have someone like Sanders out there supporting her. Then again, I have read many posts that say now that Hillary is going to have a landslide victory because of her opponent. Some people have the opinion that the Party doesn’t need to concern itself with Sanders supporters or his ideas. I would caution Democrats to ignore these people. Your true race has only started, and Sanders fought with one hand tied behind his back.
Do you really think the Republicans and anti-Hillary crowd aren’t going to come out swinging for the fence soon? They can’t rely on Sanders or his followers to slow down Clinton, so they will have to go to the well worn tropes and scandals that were avoided. We have until November to be inundated with conspiracy theories about Benghazi, Vince Foster, her own possible racism, the stock market scandal, her speech transcripts, and their belief of many times she has broken the law and gotten away with it. Then of course, we have the current scandals she is being embroiled in – her emails, the FBI investigation and the IG report.
For most people, Gore was just a wooden and an uninteresting candidate. However, both Clinton and Donald Trump have a terrible reputation and often optics. I think if you ask most Americans they would say that the country deserves someone better than both of these people, but it isn’t going to get it. Why should it? Some of us can rightfully point out to them, but that’s who the Democrats and Republicans thought were best for the country.
One a blowhard with absolutely no political experience at all, who thinks his money and entitlement is enough to let him get the most dangerous and important job in the world. The other is a woman who was once a serious progressive, but who has become so part of the corrupt, political machinery that she has lost perspective and it is hard to tell if there is any part of that original person there. It is nearly impossible to trust either one of them.
And that is what is necessary to get people to vote FOR you. Otherwise, they are just voting against someone else. That seems the strategy for both sides this election, and I hope it backfires in their faces. These strong-arm tactics are what despots use. “If you don’t do this something terrible is going to happen to you, your family, or the country.” It’s essentially the lesser of the two evils tactic in its truest form. Remember, though, choosing the lesser of two evils means you are still choosing evil.
I would have liked for Sanders to win, but I am not going to delude myself. I have known for some time it was over. Since I live in a swing state, I will support Hillary Clinton if she is chosen as the nominee. I only do this because I live in a swing state and I will do everything I can to keep Trump away from the White House. I don’t need a lot of convincing because I will not let our country fall into the hands of a Fascist.
However, Clinton and her supporters can delude themselves that it is Sanders’ job to convince his followers to back her, but that isn’t the case. Al Gore couldn’t convince the country he was better than George W. Bush and look where that got us. Relying on Sanders to do her work is a bad idea. Hillary has to go out there and convince America that she is right for them, and not just try to have them fear Donald Trump. Rational people can only be jilted into fear for so long before they realize it and get really pissed off at the person doing it to them.
