Time for Bernie to Do the Right Thing

Of course, I personally will lose nothing if Trump becomes president. I will probably stand to gain a pretty solid amount of cash if he wins because once he removes sanctions against Russia, we will be able to sell N’s apartment in Moscow, and that’s $160,000-$180,000 right there.

In the unlikely case I want an abortion, I’ll travel to Canada. Another global economic crisis doesn’t scare me because I did fine in the wild capitalism era of the post-Soviet bandit economy, and after that everything is child’s play. I’m neither Hispanic nor a Muslim.

But even with my lower-than-average capacity to empathize, I can’t say, “Ah, just screw them all while I scream pretty slogans and engage in pleasant fantasies.” If there was ever a time for solidarity, it’s now. I hope Bernie’s supporters realize this and start pushing him to quit the race and start campaigning for Hillary.

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33 responses to “Time for Bernie to Do the Right Thing”

Steve

May 4, 2016

I’m not in the US, and I can’t claim to understand US politics, but I suspect that even if Bernie does quit now, it does not mean that his supporters will vote for Hillary. I suspect that quite a high proportion of them will vote for Jill Stein.

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Clarissa

May 4, 2016

You are absolutely right. This is why doing the right thing would include actively promoting Hillary.

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Evelina Anville

May 4, 2016

I agree with you for the most part. I actually do think that my life is better in a country with a functioning infrastructure, healthy economy, and stable international standing. But I agree that I’m probably not part of the group that will be most hurt by a Trump presidency. I think Sanders is going to take this all the way to California in June–which is unfortunate. But I do believe that he will eventually support Clinton. I hope so anyway.

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Evelina Anville

May 4, 2016

Did you see this? I can’t believe that “Drop out Hillary” is trending. Shocking. People really can’t stand to have a woman president. I can’t think of anything else that would remotely explain this. I’m not the biggest Melissa McEwan fan but I’m glad she’s pushing back on this. If I were on Twitter, I would join.

http://www.shakesville.com/2016/05/teaspoons-ahoy.html

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Clarissa

May 4, 2016

Absolutely. There is no other explanation. How sad for all of us.

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cliff arroyo

May 4, 2016

“People really can’t stand to have a woman president”

just now figuring this out? How do you think Obama won the nomination in 2008?

An even mildly charismatic male politician with far less political experience beat her for the nomination in 2008 because so many in the media wanted to punish her (she completely trashed Obama in the 2007 debates and it counted for… nothing).

A wildly charismatic (for the least common denominator voter) male like Trump could easily beat her in the general. Even if she wipes up the debates with him it might not be enough if the Bernsters don’t give up their socialist fantasies.

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Steve

May 6, 2016

You don’t think Jill Stein is a woman? Or is it perhaps that you don’t like Bernie Sanders because he;s an old white mail, and it doesn’t matter how many kids you kill by dropping bombs on them as long as you’re thye right sex?

Trump is scary, but so is Hillary the Hawk.

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1. Evelina Anville
  
  May 6, 2016
  
  “You don’t think Jill Stein is a woman?”
  
  Supporting Jill Stein isn’t real. There is no way in the world she’s going to get elected. In some ways, voting for Jill Stein represents a particularly insidious form of misogyny and self delusion: one that allows the voters to claim the moral high ground of voting for a woman even they are casting a vote that helps ensure a women won’t be elected.
  
  And I agree: Clinton is too aggressive in regards to foreign policy for my tastes also. But again, she is worlds and eons away from Trump who wants to ban all Muslims, build walls, and boasts that he would force the US military to commit war crimes.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    May 6, 2016
    
    “In some ways, voting for Jill Stein represents a particularly insidious form of misogyny and self delusion: one that allows the voters to claim the moral high ground of voting for a woman even they are casting a vote that helps ensure a women won’t be elected.”
    
    Exactly.
    
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  2. Clarissa
    
    May 6, 2016
    
    “And I agree: Clinton is too aggressive in regards to foreign policy for my tastes also.”
    
    Less aggressive than Clinton would mean isolationism. I’m failing to see any difference between what Pat Buchanan (whom I read assiduously) says and what the “Hillary is too hawkish” crowd says.
    
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    1. Evelina Anville
      
      May 6, 2016
      
      “Less aggressive than Clinton would mean isolationism.”
      
      I don’t think that’s true. Clinton tends to favor military intervention more than I would like. And, in a way, military intervention serves isolationist ends. You aren’t actually dealing with other countries when you are fighting them and wars rarely present permanent solutions to geopolitical problems.
      
      I think the trick to maintaining a secure and stable world is via diplomatic and economic negotiations. (I am far less critical of “trade deals” than most liberals because I think they help foreclose the necessity of military intervention. Economically interdependent nations rarely go to war with one another.) That being said, I find the fact the Clinton helped negotiate the Iran deal really promising.
      
      At any rate, I think there is a good deal of room between isolationism and avoiding unnecessary military conflict.
      
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      1. Clarissa
        
        May 6, 2016
        
        “Economically interdependent nations rarely go to war with one another.”
        
        I only wish this were true. Nobody was more interdependent economically than the former Soviet republics and they can’t stop being at war with each other. Things are especially bad between the most interdependent among them.
        
        As for Clinton, many people believed that the Arab Spring was going to lead to something good. I’m pretty much the only person I know who was highly skeptical of it from the start. Clinton followed the general mood of support for the Arab Spring – as she should do as a politician – and now that the Arab Spring proved to be a waste of enthusiasm, everybody blames Clinton (and Obama). And it’s the same with the Iraq war. Voters supported it en masse. Now, of course, everybody has chosen to forget that and claims to have been against the war from the start.
        
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2. Clarissa
  
  May 6, 2016
  
  “it doesn’t matter how many kids you kill by dropping bombs on them as long as you’re thye right sex?”
  
  We maintain a more sophisticated level of discussion on this blog. Thank you in advance for understanding that infantile outbursts have no place here.
  
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delagar

May 4, 2016

I support a lot of what Bernie says, but I think (I hope) he’ll do the right thing in the end.

And I hope (boy, do I hope) most progressives aren’t too short-sighted, or too misogynistic, to switch their allegiance to Hillary, especially when the alternative is Trump.

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Editor (Retired)

May 4, 2016

Clarissa, I tend to agree that the time for Bernie to suspend his campaign is near. Nothing is gained by criticizing Hillary at this point, and Trump is dangerous. I know it’s unorthodox, but I would support a unity ticket. That is, Hillery should ask Bernie to be her running mate. A unity ticket would make it absolutely clear that Bernie is with Hillary and most of his supporters would follow. I hope they would follow regardless. In this strange election year, emotion trumps everything! A Clinton-Sanders ticket is a sure winner, IMO.

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adrianaurelien

May 4, 2016

I think that’s a brilliant idea! It would change the mind of many of the “boo hoo, I will only vote for my SOULMATE” crowd.

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Dreidel

May 5, 2016

Hillary is a cynical realist who wants to win the general election. There’s no way she’s going to put a radical leftie or another woman on the Democratic ticket.

As a practical matter, Vice-Presidential candidates essentially NEVER matter in U.S. Presidential elections, since voters know that VPs are nobodies. Remember the difference that Dan Quayle and Lloyd Bentsen made in 1988? Me neither.

The more interesting question is who Trump will pick as his running mate, and which Republican will agree to be on the ticket.

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1. Clarissa
  
  May 5, 2016
  
  Trump should tap Sarah Palin to be his running mate. He’ll lose either way but what a show that will be!
  
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Clarissa

May 5, 2016

The only problem with a Clinton / Sanders ticket is age. How will voters feel about a ticket that is advanced in years?

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Benjamin Band

May 4, 2016

Trump wants to deport illegal immigrants not all Mexicans, Hispanics, or immigrants. The only people that he said he would ban temporarily are Muslims.

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Laie

May 5, 2016

Come November, it will be impossible to distinguish between votes for her and votes against Trump. The time to make clear that Hillary is not your preferred candidate is now, in the primary.

Bernie’s voters are not his to give away — the way things have developed, he now has a duty to make his case in front of the convention. His job is to represent the 30-45% of democrat voters who are decidedly to the left of Clinton. The burden to “bring them back into the fold” falls on Hillary and the Democratic Convention. Though realistically, they can probably ignore the Bernie crowd completely and will still get most of their votes, just because the specter of Trump is altogether too scary.

Which is kinda sad and even more of a reason for progressives to make as much of a ruckus as long as they can, and for Bernie to pick up every vote that he may still get.

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Clarissa

May 5, 2016

It’s sad that Republicans are managing to unite around even as flawed a candidate as Trump while Democrats can’t get over childish obsessions with “making a ruckus” and throwing tantrums about whose turn it is to approach whom.

One thinks that it isn’t humanly possible to lose to Trump but then one hears some of the Democrats, reads The Nation, and realizes that it’s not that impossible.

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1. Laie
  
  May 7, 2016
  
  Sorry, I can’t let go.
  
  It’s not Bernie’s (or his followers’) fault that apparently all they’ll ever get out of this is the shared experience of at least having made some noise.
  
  Their campaign is now back where it started: a kind if intraparty census of how many there are to the left of Clinton. As anti-establishment revolts go, this one has been very tame: they are taking their grievances through the proper channels, namely voting in the primaries.
  
  The only right thing for Sanders to do is to keep going, and make the best of it at the convention. He can’t just abandon the voters he’s already got, nor can he afford to give up on those who are still to come.
  
  I also don’t see how it should benefit anybody if the democrats, feigning unity, were to paper over the obvious rift in the party. They can’t even try to mend it if everyone at the has to pretend that it doesn’t exist.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    May 8, 2016
    
    Is this rift and these grievances worth letting Trump get elected president of this country? Won’t it be a crying shame to see him sworn into office in January because Democrats were too busy nursing their rifts?
    
    There should be at least a modest capacity to prioritize tasks. Why not defeat Trump first, and then start changing the party? One venue of change might be energizing the voters to start kicking Republican governors out of office.
    
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    1. Laie
      
      May 11, 2016
      
      I get your anger. Against Trump, the democrats should be able to nominate a sack of flour and still win in a landslide.
      
      Problem is, they’re putting that hypothesis to the test. Clinton has been unpopular with a significant fraction of the democratic base since, like, forever. People were wooing Elizabeth Warren for years; all they got was Sanders, but the anti-Hillary sentiment isn’t his invention, nor would Trump (or any R) have needed that cue to come up with the Crooked Hillary trope.
      
      The one thing that probably is true about her is that she can’t possibly become more unpopular than she already is, no matter what anyone throws at her. That’s why I don’t see how it makes one iota of difference whether Bernie drops out now or later, at least as far as it concerns Clinton’s standing. But his credibility would suffer greatly if he were to drop out before it’s over. He will eventually campaign for Clinton, and I want his voice to have some weight when he does. Don’t you?
      
      It would also help greatly if Clinton were to acknowledge his band as part of her coalition. Treating them as misguided kids is no way to get out the vote.
      
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Laie

May 5, 2016

Marching in lockstep is not exactly a leftist trait. Incidentally, that’s why Bernie cannot order his voters around.

After the convention, even his most ardent followers will have to admit that this is over; then is the time to either go home or fall in line. Sanders will certainly campaign for the latter. We’ve done everything we could, this is as good as it gets, now let’s get together and stop Trump. There will still be another three months for everyone to cool down and come to their senses.

But that is then. If he were to abandon his campaign before the convention, this would only alienate his voters even more and not help Hillary one bit.

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adrianaurelien

May 5, 2016

I made a facebook status about how Bernie supporters should be switching to Hillary now, and the positive response was overwhelming (almost everyone on my facebook was for Bernie.). I think the #bernieorbust people are just very loud, while the vast majority of us are willing to be realistic.

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Clarissa

May 5, 2016

That’s great news! I’m very glad to hear this.

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1. adrianaurelien
  
  May 5, 2016
  
  Then again, I just read a “voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil” post from a Muslim man. Seriously.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    May 6, 2016
    
    Christ. People are truly stupid.
    
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    1. adrianaurelien
      
      May 6, 2016
      
      It was someone I normally respect too. Time to start digging up all the negative info on Jill Stein that I can.
      
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Dreidel

May 6, 2016

Looks like Bernie isn’t going to play nice and just go away like a good little boy:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/06/politics/bernie-sanders-letter-dnc-convention/index.html

What a shame! 🙂

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Clarissa

May 6, 2016

I’m hoping that if I’m fortunate to reach Bernie’s age that God will bless me with the capacity to preserve an adequate grasp on reality. Or, to put it more bluntly, the fellow’s gone all dotty.

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