Summary: having left the door open to a possible Clinton-Sanders unity ticket, Bernie Sanders should not resist a Hillary Clinton embrace. A unity ticket of the two of them could potentially be unstoppable. This is an “all hands on deck” moment for the Democratic Party. The dangerous breach that is opening within our ranks could be sealed and healed with the unity ticket. We must have such a ticket. The risk of allowing Donald Trump to steal the election, or worse, allowing our own democratic incompetence to fumble the election away, is too great. We know what Donald Trump would do this country, and that’s not an acceptable outcome. We can’t let the country go to hell for four years, or bern it down on the off chance that something better might emerge from the wreckage. We have an opportunity to create a coalition that can win 538 electoral votes, sweep all 50 states, and lay the groundwork for permanent progressive majority.
A couple of days ago, Bernie Sanders gave an interview in which he supposedly “left open the door” to accepting a vice presidential slot on a Hillary Clinton ticket. Secretary Clinton should fling open that door, charge through it, and offer Bernie Sanders the vice presidential spot on the ticket.
Structurally, it bears resemblance to Lyndon Johnson’s acceptance of the vice presidential nomination on John F. Kennedy’s ticket in 1960. It’s not that long ago that Lyndon took a meeting with the man he called “Mr. Sam,” Sam Rayburn, the great House Speaker from Texas, and let Mr. Sam talk him into accepting the number two spot on the Kennedy ticket. LBJ’s acceptance of the vice presidential nomination gave the Democrats a measure of unity they had not enjoyed in a number of years. It also delivered the Democratic solid South.
Now, 56 years later, the opportunity presents itself again to forge a unity ticket that can unite North and South, moderates and progressives, young and old, and heal the incipient divisions in the Democratic Party before they assume the proportions of the divisions which currently threaten to break the Republican Party.
By uniting all the various constituencies that form the fractious Democratic Party, we can guarantee ourselves victory in November and possibly lay the foundation for a permanent progressive majority in Washington city. We must make common cause within the Party.
We know that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee. We also know that we dare not assume that just because Donald Trump has the intellect of a five-year-old he will be so objectionable to the American public as to be unelectable. The American public has an unfortunate history of electing nincompoops, crooks, and egomaniacs. The American public is quite capable of electing Donald Trump, and we cannot discount the possibility that an election of Donald Trump could mean the end of our system of constitutional government as we have known it these last 220 years.
Nor can we assume that in the event of a close election, the Republican national committee would not do everything in his power to steal the election for Donald Trump. We live in a very dangerous Weimar time in our country’s history. Trump may or may not be equivalent to Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, or Francisco Franco, but he certainly scares me, even if the fascist dictator he calls to mind isn’t Hitler, Mussolini, or Franco, so much as it is Argentina’s Juan Peron.
I compare Trump to Peron because like the Argentine dictator, Trump has no coherent or consistent ideology. Like Peron, Trump makes it up as he goes along. Like Peron, and unlike the other dictators, Trump possesses a trophy wife whose background is, candidly, somewhat checkered: Melania Trump, meet Eva Duarte de Peron.
Trump, while enjoying all the perquisites of power, will quickly allow it to slip from his hands. America under Trump will be an America in which lobbyists, oligarchs, and short fingered vulgarians will treat the country as a sheep ripe for the shearing, a nation full of easy marks waiting to be ripped off.
Because I think we are better than that and because we deserve better than that, I do not hesitate to express an absolute conviction that this is an “all hands on deck” moment for The Democracy. A Clinton-Sanders unity ticket would not only unite the party, but it would also create unstoppable electoral math momentum. And because we know what horrors await us under Trump presidency, we cannot afford the feckless undergraduate leftist foolishness of believing that a Trump presidency would be acceptable because it would accelerate the coming of some undefined revolution.
There is simply no moral case to make for berning the country down or blowing up our public institutions of self-government on the off chance that something better might arise from the ashes. That kind of nihilistic nonsense must have been okay last year, but it’s not okay today. The stakes are too high, the risks are too great, and the horrors of a Trump presidency too horrible to contemplate.
So yes, it’s. All. Hands. On. Deck.
As my good friend the late George Zander used to put it, “we are in the fight of our political lives.” Whether we are gay or straight, tall or small, pale or polychromatic, make or female, we cannot afford a Trump presidency. The most powerful weapon in our arsenal to avert such a possibility is a Clinton-Sanders unity ticket. Now I know that there will be aggrieved Hillary supporters who will find it difficult to forgive the Senator for some of the excesses of which his supporters are demonstrably guilty. I also know that there are some diehard supporters of the Senator who will scream "sellout!" if the Senator takes second position on a Clinton-Sanders unity ticket. But for those of us who have been activists in Democratic politics for a long time, and have watched Democrats lose elections we should have won because of ego, a breach-healing, balm-of-Gilead, let’s-chop-the Republicans’-nuts-off, winning unity ticket is really the only option that makes any sense.
Bernie having left the door open to a possible unity ticket, Hillary should rip that door off its hinges, charge through it, sweep Bernie Sanders onto the ticket, and charge home to a 538 electoral vote, 50-state, victory this November.
Clinton-Sanders 2016!
Saturday, May 7, 2016
Tuesday, May 3, 2016
BERNIE SANDERS AND THE FIVE STAGES OF GRIEF
Summary: Bernie Sanders’ supporters have been modeling the five Elisabeth Kübler-Ross stages of grief as their candidate’s momentum begins to fade. Those five grief stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Sanders supporters have been confronting the first two grief stages, denial and anger. The Sanders camp will soon divide into two factions. One, composed of reasonable people, will make their peace with Hillary Clinton as the nominee of the Democratic Party, accepting her primacy and working to get her elected. Senator Sanders himself appears to be a member of this group. The other group, the irreconcilables and the intransigents, will never reconcile themselves to Sec. Clinton as the nominee of the party, and so they will pitch a fit and migrate into the camp of that other insurgent candidate, Donald Trump. The Democratic Party would be well rid of them.
In the wake of recent East Coast Democratic primaries in which Hillary Clinton scored a number of substantial victories in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and New York, one can sense a certain shifting of the tide.
The insurgent, once-imagined-to-be-unstoppable, campaign of Vermont Senator Bernard Sanders seems to have encountered a metaphorical roadblock or two. The so-called path to nomination has materially eased for Sec. Clinton but has narrowed significantly for Bernard Sanders. It now appears, if not inevitable, certainly strongly likely that Hillary Rodham Clinton will be the nominee for president of the Democratic Party.
And as the tide begins to run in Sec. Clinton's favor, supporters of Senator Sanders find themselves modeling Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s well-recognized five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and ultimately, acceptance.
But right now, what we're seeing from the Sanders campaign is an almost perfect recapitulation of the first two stages of the grieving process.
First, we’ve seen a great many Sanders supporters engaging in vociferous, vehement denial both of Sec. Clinton’s electoral momentum, and in some extreme cases, of her essential legitimacy as a candidate.
For example, every time Bernard Sanders has been victorious in a small state caucus ---with a largely white electorate participating in a fundamentally undemocratic process--- Senator Sanders’s victory in such a caucus has been spun by his campaign as a game changer, as an event of earth shattering magnitude demonstrating his manifest entitlement to the Democratic nomination.
By contrast, when Sec. Clinton has won fair and square, supporters of Senator Sanders have come out in droves to attack Sec. Clinton and to assail the legitimacy of her electoral victories. When Sec. Clinton was victorious in the Arizona primary, the Sanders team and his supporters pitched a fit, claiming that Hillary Clinton had been personally responsible for an unprecedented campaign of voter suppression, going so far as to post a petition on change.org demanding a “do over” of the Arizona Democratic primary.
The same howls of dismay were heard in New York State when Hillary Clinton trounced the Senator there by double digits. Moreover, many supporters of Senator Sanders fell back on the risible “rotten borough” argument that because more acres had supported Senator Sanders, acreage should outweigh people in the election, and that thus, Bernie had “won” New York State.
According to the Sanders supporters, Hillary’s decisive victories in New York, Bronx, Kings, Queens, Richmond, Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Orange, Rockland, Onondaga, Monroe, and Erie Counties should not count because Bernie Sanders carried more land area.
The fact that Hillary carried the Five Boroughs of New York City and that to carry the Five Boroughs would itself alone be enough to carry the state seems not to have dawned on the angry diehard supporters of Bernard Sanders. It reflects a political truth that we have always understood in this country, even if the United Kingdom continued to seat acres, not people, in Parliament until “Rotten Boroughs” were abolished in the great electoral reforms of 1832.
In short, the fact that Hillary has been winning bigger primaries and amassing greater numbers of delegates then Sanders has become unacceptable to his diehard, intransigent supporters, who have been engaged in the unproductive enterprise of denying the legitimacy of Sec. Clinton’s victories in the loudest and most earsplitting way imaginable.
Of course, if the Sanders supporters are in deep denial about the way in which their candidate is starting to lose, they are also angry. Vein-poppingly, friendship-sunderingly, lawsuit-inducingly, apoplectically, angry. In fact, they’re so angry that they are now engaging in organized libel and slander, as well as organized efforts to silence Hillary supporters on social media.
All one has to do is look at social media to see the almost stupefying degree of anger being displayed by certain of those more intransigent supporters of Bernard Sanders. Now I think it’s probably fair to suggest that a majority of Sanders supporters will pass through all of the five Kübler-Ross stages of grief and finally accept that an imperfect friend, as Bill Maher has said, is light years better than a deadly enemy.
And when that happens, that reasonable portion of Sen. Sanders's supporters should be accepted into the ranks of Hillary Clinton supporters without anger or recrimination. We should remember the counsel of sometime Texas Agriculture Commissioner and longtime Democrat Jim Hightower, who observed that on primary election night there comes a time when supporters of the loser need to take the so-called midnight train over to the headquarters of the winner. On arrival, Hightower suggested, they need to engage in some fence-mending, have a helping (or two) of humble pie, and then they need to put their name on the volunteer list and work their hearts out for the nominee of the Party.
Several months ago, I suggested that no matter who the nominee of the Democratic Party turned out to be, Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, neither candidate would have the luxury of conducting extensive background investigations and loyalty tests. The Democratic Party, I suggested, would need to take a leaf from Spain’s book. When Francisco Franco died in 1975, and Spain began her long journey back to democracy, Spanish society developed a so-called Pacto de Olvido, or “pact of forgetting.”
It was agreed among Spaniards at the time — and up to the present day as well — but who one had supported during the Franquista years was simply no longer be a legitimate or admissible subject of discussion. Spain, the consensus ran, could not afford the recrimination and backbiting attendant upon some sort of purge of Franco supporters now that the apparatus of falangism had been dismantled.
The Democratic Party, having been almost as badly fractured this year as Spain was during the Franquista years, should avail herself of a similar Pact of Forgetting. We cannot afford, nor should we embrace, a policy of vetting fellow Democrats on the basis of their support during the primary season.
Now, I know that this will not sit well with certain hyper-partisans on both sides the primary divide. I have served on numerous Democratic boards and committees that got themselves altogether caught up in trying to enforce pre-existing loyalties, in trying to determine who has been the truest believer for the longest time.
Indeed, when we see Bernie Sanders supporters attacking Hillary Clinton for having supported Barry Goldwater more than half a century ago, before she saw the light and came over from the Dark Side and opted to spend the rest of her career fighting for causes which any Democrat should be proud to fight, we know that we are dealing with True Believers of the most reckless sort.
These True Believers are the people who are the most angry right now. These True Believers are the people who want to bully Sec. Clinton and her supporters. These True Believers are the people who will engage in all manner of libel and slander, who will engage in orchestrated efforts to silence Hillary Clinton supporters, uncaring of the enemies they make. These True Believers are the people who blow a gasket if someone has the effrontery to say “I am voting blue, no matter who.”
And these “Truly Believing” Sanders irreconcilables should perhaps constitute an exception to the amnesty which I have suggested would be the better course of action. For the irreconcilables, by engaging in nihilistic, “burn-the-country-down” behavior have rather sacrificed any claim to our consideration.
Because, in truth, the irreconcilable faction among Sanders supporters, what we may call the Green Tea Party, bears a disturbing resemblance to that other insurgent candidate in the presidential race, Donald Trump. And if the Republican Party can find the hardihood to cast out The Donald and The Donald’s supporters, we should not fear to take a leaf from their book and do the same in our Party with the irreconcilable supporters of Bernard Sanders.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was wrong to suggest that all differences of opinion are irreconcilable, but Ilyich was right to suggest that the unity of the Party is something worth defending. Even among Democrats, we should be able to require a basic consensus as to who is entitled to be called a Democrat. Right now, I don’t see that the irreconcilable Sanders supporters have earned the right to be called Democrats.
In the wake of recent East Coast Democratic primaries in which Hillary Clinton scored a number of substantial victories in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and New York, one can sense a certain shifting of the tide.
The insurgent, once-imagined-to-be-unstoppable, campaign of Vermont Senator Bernard Sanders seems to have encountered a metaphorical roadblock or two. The so-called path to nomination has materially eased for Sec. Clinton but has narrowed significantly for Bernard Sanders. It now appears, if not inevitable, certainly strongly likely that Hillary Rodham Clinton will be the nominee for president of the Democratic Party.
And as the tide begins to run in Sec. Clinton's favor, supporters of Senator Sanders find themselves modeling Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s well-recognized five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and ultimately, acceptance.
But right now, what we're seeing from the Sanders campaign is an almost perfect recapitulation of the first two stages of the grieving process.
First, we’ve seen a great many Sanders supporters engaging in vociferous, vehement denial both of Sec. Clinton’s electoral momentum, and in some extreme cases, of her essential legitimacy as a candidate.
For example, every time Bernard Sanders has been victorious in a small state caucus ---with a largely white electorate participating in a fundamentally undemocratic process--- Senator Sanders’s victory in such a caucus has been spun by his campaign as a game changer, as an event of earth shattering magnitude demonstrating his manifest entitlement to the Democratic nomination.
By contrast, when Sec. Clinton has won fair and square, supporters of Senator Sanders have come out in droves to attack Sec. Clinton and to assail the legitimacy of her electoral victories. When Sec. Clinton was victorious in the Arizona primary, the Sanders team and his supporters pitched a fit, claiming that Hillary Clinton had been personally responsible for an unprecedented campaign of voter suppression, going so far as to post a petition on change.org demanding a “do over” of the Arizona Democratic primary.
The same howls of dismay were heard in New York State when Hillary Clinton trounced the Senator there by double digits. Moreover, many supporters of Senator Sanders fell back on the risible “rotten borough” argument that because more acres had supported Senator Sanders, acreage should outweigh people in the election, and that thus, Bernie had “won” New York State.
According to the Sanders supporters, Hillary’s decisive victories in New York, Bronx, Kings, Queens, Richmond, Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Orange, Rockland, Onondaga, Monroe, and Erie Counties should not count because Bernie Sanders carried more land area.
The fact that Hillary carried the Five Boroughs of New York City and that to carry the Five Boroughs would itself alone be enough to carry the state seems not to have dawned on the angry diehard supporters of Bernard Sanders. It reflects a political truth that we have always understood in this country, even if the United Kingdom continued to seat acres, not people, in Parliament until “Rotten Boroughs” were abolished in the great electoral reforms of 1832.
In short, the fact that Hillary has been winning bigger primaries and amassing greater numbers of delegates then Sanders has become unacceptable to his diehard, intransigent supporters, who have been engaged in the unproductive enterprise of denying the legitimacy of Sec. Clinton’s victories in the loudest and most earsplitting way imaginable.
Of course, if the Sanders supporters are in deep denial about the way in which their candidate is starting to lose, they are also angry. Vein-poppingly, friendship-sunderingly, lawsuit-inducingly, apoplectically, angry. In fact, they’re so angry that they are now engaging in organized libel and slander, as well as organized efforts to silence Hillary supporters on social media.
All one has to do is look at social media to see the almost stupefying degree of anger being displayed by certain of those more intransigent supporters of Bernard Sanders. Now I think it’s probably fair to suggest that a majority of Sanders supporters will pass through all of the five Kübler-Ross stages of grief and finally accept that an imperfect friend, as Bill Maher has said, is light years better than a deadly enemy.
And when that happens, that reasonable portion of Sen. Sanders's supporters should be accepted into the ranks of Hillary Clinton supporters without anger or recrimination. We should remember the counsel of sometime Texas Agriculture Commissioner and longtime Democrat Jim Hightower, who observed that on primary election night there comes a time when supporters of the loser need to take the so-called midnight train over to the headquarters of the winner. On arrival, Hightower suggested, they need to engage in some fence-mending, have a helping (or two) of humble pie, and then they need to put their name on the volunteer list and work their hearts out for the nominee of the Party.
Several months ago, I suggested that no matter who the nominee of the Democratic Party turned out to be, Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, neither candidate would have the luxury of conducting extensive background investigations and loyalty tests. The Democratic Party, I suggested, would need to take a leaf from Spain’s book. When Francisco Franco died in 1975, and Spain began her long journey back to democracy, Spanish society developed a so-called Pacto de Olvido, or “pact of forgetting.”
It was agreed among Spaniards at the time — and up to the present day as well — but who one had supported during the Franquista years was simply no longer be a legitimate or admissible subject of discussion. Spain, the consensus ran, could not afford the recrimination and backbiting attendant upon some sort of purge of Franco supporters now that the apparatus of falangism had been dismantled.
The Democratic Party, having been almost as badly fractured this year as Spain was during the Franquista years, should avail herself of a similar Pact of Forgetting. We cannot afford, nor should we embrace, a policy of vetting fellow Democrats on the basis of their support during the primary season.
Now, I know that this will not sit well with certain hyper-partisans on both sides the primary divide. I have served on numerous Democratic boards and committees that got themselves altogether caught up in trying to enforce pre-existing loyalties, in trying to determine who has been the truest believer for the longest time.
Indeed, when we see Bernie Sanders supporters attacking Hillary Clinton for having supported Barry Goldwater more than half a century ago, before she saw the light and came over from the Dark Side and opted to spend the rest of her career fighting for causes which any Democrat should be proud to fight, we know that we are dealing with True Believers of the most reckless sort.
These True Believers are the people who are the most angry right now. These True Believers are the people who want to bully Sec. Clinton and her supporters. These True Believers are the people who will engage in all manner of libel and slander, who will engage in orchestrated efforts to silence Hillary Clinton supporters, uncaring of the enemies they make. These True Believers are the people who blow a gasket if someone has the effrontery to say “I am voting blue, no matter who.”
And these “Truly Believing” Sanders irreconcilables should perhaps constitute an exception to the amnesty which I have suggested would be the better course of action. For the irreconcilables, by engaging in nihilistic, “burn-the-country-down” behavior have rather sacrificed any claim to our consideration.
Because, in truth, the irreconcilable faction among Sanders supporters, what we may call the Green Tea Party, bears a disturbing resemblance to that other insurgent candidate in the presidential race, Donald Trump. And if the Republican Party can find the hardihood to cast out The Donald and The Donald’s supporters, we should not fear to take a leaf from their book and do the same in our Party with the irreconcilable supporters of Bernard Sanders.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was wrong to suggest that all differences of opinion are irreconcilable, but Ilyich was right to suggest that the unity of the Party is something worth defending. Even among Democrats, we should be able to require a basic consensus as to who is entitled to be called a Democrat. Right now, I don’t see that the irreconcilable Sanders supporters have earned the right to be called Democrats.
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