Hillary Has No Choice, She Has To Pick Bernie Sanders Or Elizabeth Warren For Veep

Earlier this month, stubby-fingered Cheeto-dusted fascist Donald Trump essentially wrapped up the Republican nomination when he dick slapped mansuit-wearing lizard Ted Cruz in the Indiana GOP primary, forcing the Joe McCarthy doppelganger to drop out. Since that time, we’ve seen the Republican base largely coalesce around the former Apprentice host, despite the bleatings of #NeverTrump conservatives and supposedly respected voices withing the GOP.

Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, while the math pretty much shows that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has the Dem nomination sealed, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has continued on with his zombie campaign. And he should, honestly. Hillary did the same thing in 2008 when she was down to Obama, pushing on through June before finally calling it a day. Also, Bernie is still raising a lot of money (though not as much as before) and will win many of the remaining states.

But, it is a zombie campaign, and I’m pretty sure he knows it, even if he won’t publicly concede it. This is why he’s ratcheted down his personal attacks on Clinton over the past few weeks, ever since it was apparent after the Mid-Atlantic primaries that he wasn’t going to beat Hillary. Sure, he’s still targeted her a bit, but not with the same level of vitriol that highlighted much of the primary. All in all, he appears to just want to get his policy agenda pushed to the forefront of the Democratic platform, which is why he’ll take his campaign all the way to the convention.

However, many Bernie fans aren’t following their idol’s lead, and have decided to up their aggression and bad behavior under the guise of fighting oligarchy and massively corrupt and rigged system. Which is why we’ve seen Berniebots verbally attack and excoriate attendees of a Hillary rally in Los Angeles, many of whom were women of color. And that is why we saw what we did in Nevada Saturday night, where a bunch of Sanders supporters raged against the machine and acted like spoiled children who didn’t get their way.

Much has been written and discussed about the Nevada convention, so I’ll just quote Wonkette’s Rebecca Schoenkopf and Ralston Report’s Jon Ralston. From Wonkette’s article:

Hillary Clinton won Nevada’s caucuses by almost five points, and both candidates were awarded delegates to the county conventions. Bernie Sanders’s delegates out-appeared Hillary Clinton’s delegates at the county conventions, where delegates would be awarded for the state convention. (This process is so dumb you guys. So fucking dumb. JUST GIVE THEM THE DELEGATES BASED ON HOW MANY CAUCUS VOTES THEY GOT JESUS H FUCKING CHRIST.) But at the state convention, about an equal number of Hillary Clinton’s folks showed up as did Bernie Sanders’s. And of the Bernie folks who showed up, sixty had unregistered as Democrats. Whoops that meant they were not allowed to vote at the DEMOCRATIC convention! So fixed! Many corruptions! Oh god I hate everyone.

So then they went insane. They screamed at Barbara Boxer that she was a sellout bitch and did their best to boo the four-foot-nothing liberal grandma lion off the stage. They did their goddamndest to shut the whole thing down, because how is it even kosher for Hillary Clinton to get more delegates just because she won, when they had stolen it fair and square?

Afterwards, they posted the chair’s address online, called Barbara Boxer a “neolib witch” — when did we all become “neolib”? I think when Barack Obama forgot to put all of Congress in Guantanamo — and probably threatened to primary Elizabeth Warren again, because someone somewhere in the world had the gall not to do what they said, when they said it.

Take a moment, if you please, to imagine the opposite scenario: that Bernie wins the caucus, Hillary supporters show up when Bernie fans don’t at some secondary event, and she wins all the delegates. I think we might (rightfully!) have a lake-full of steaming pigshit on our hands. But in this scenario — the one where reality is happening — not being able to overturn the democratic results via machine chicanery is, in Bernie supporters’ fever dreams, the day democracy died.

And from Ralston’s Twitter timeline:

1695 Hillary; 1662 Bernie, final.
Reminder: Hillary won Feb. 20 caucus.
This is how it should work.

— Jon Ralston (@RalstonReports) May 15, 2016

Final delegate count shows 20-15, Hillary, as projected after caucus. pic.twitter.com/ONKlcGIVip

— Jon Ralston (@RalstonReports) May 15, 2016

What, Bernie delegates were not registered Dems? Why, that would be as crazy as Bernie not being a registered Dem. pic.twitter.com/D1SxUu0fh5

— Jon Ralston (@RalstonReports) May 15, 2016

Timeline:
Bernie loses vote that matters — NV caucus.
Berners flood local conventions.
Berners lose state convention.
Berners go nuts.

— Jon Ralston (@RalstonReports) May 15, 2016

And that was the thing. A portion of Bernie’s delegates didn’t follow the rules. They needed to be registered Democrats by May 1st and knew this. Yet, they didn’t bother to take care of it, showed up, and then pitched a fit when they were told their votes wouldn’t count. In the end, as Ralston pointed out, the delegates were appropriated pretty much in line with the caucus results, as it should be.

And this is where we get to the crux of this story. At this point, Hillary has absolutely no choice but to pick either Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren as her running mate. NO CHOICE. She can’t try to use conventional political thinking here, which would be to pick a younger rising star within the party, preferably a minority such as one of the Castros or Cory Booker.

No, due to how many Berners view her, with them taking to social media to share right-wing media hits about her emails, using Twitter to proclaim that they’re #BernieOrBust and they can never vote for Shillary, the Clinton campaign has to extend on olive branch to this group. And the only way to do this is to join hands with Bernie, or select Warren (with Bernie as lead surrogate), the next best thing to the far-left.

Let’s face it, there’s a reason why polls show Bernie faring much better against Trump than Hillary. It’s because ardent Sanders supporters won’t vote for Hillary if she’s the nominee, either picking Jill Stein, not voting at all, or choosing Trump to bring the revolution faster. And now that the GOP has embraced Trump, most Republican voters have fallen into line, making the polls even closer.

Therefore, this section of voters needs to be brought back into the fold. And it needs to happen sooner rather than later, before the hard feelings and emotional outlashes are too ingrained.

In the end, it isn’t about Bernie Bros’ or Clinonites’ personal feelings over their chosen candidate. The GOP has fully backed a fascistic demagogue who is willing to destroy this country in order to feed his narcissism. They’ve backed open bigotry and know-nothingism because they don’t want to take responsibility for the decades of dog-whistles and conspiracy theories that led to their willfully ignorant and racist base.

We are on the edge of electing a woefully ill-prepared and dangerous individual who will set America back decades while possibly undermining the entire federal government, all so he can puff his chest out and claim that he’s a WINNER. This can’t be allowed to happen. AT ALL.