Summary: The insurgent campaign of independent socialist Vermont senator Bernard Sanders is reaching endgame. Despite an unsurprising victory in the Oregon primary, the Sanders effort has come to resemble that of Imperial Japan in the spring and summer of 1945. Senator Sanders at this point has two choices. The first choice, and the one desired by some of his more unhinged supporters, is, in effect, to bern the country down and guarantee a Donald Trump presidency. The other, more statesmanlike choice, is to learn from the history of Japan’s Shōwa Emperor and find a way to bow out gracefully, on the best possible terms he can obtain. If a Clinton/Sanders ticket is obtainable, then the moral case for such a ticket is unanswerable.
The Democratic primary campaign is shuffling and shambling toward its untidy conclusion. Hillary Clinton, the uncharismatic but amazingly solid former Secretary of State, has methodically built a winning coalition and now stands within roughly 100 delegates of victory.
By contrast, the insurgent candidacy of Vermont Senator Bernard Sanders, the sometime socialist from Burlington, has not fulfilled much of its early promise. In those early days, it seemed like Bernie had tapped in to the frustrations of many Democrats. But as his campaign progressed, and he racked up the victories in small, largely white states that choose their delegates not in a primary election (like God intended) but through the amazingly undemocratic mechanism of a caucus, his supporters, in their enthusiasm and their messianic sense that Senator Sanders was some kind of Savior, transformed his campaign into an ugly cult of personality.
Their response to any expression of doubt or any expression of support for Sec. Clinton started to resemble that of Daesh, the Islamic terrorist organization most people know as ISIS or ISIL. Their response to any expression of doubt or of support for Sec. Clinton was to treat such expressions of doubt or support for Sec. Clinton as some kind of apostasy. It produced a phenomenon much commented upon in the press, a phenomenon whose sheer thuggishness has largely derailed the Senator’s campaign.
This thuggish behavior manifested itself the better part of a year ago, and this blog may have been prophetic when it warned, as early as last June, the Sanders was beginning to show signs of having a woman problem. The misogyny directed not only toward Sec. Clinton, but toward any woman showing the effrontery to support Sec. Clinton or express doubts about the Sanders campaign, opened up a serious rift within the Democratic Party.
That rift took several forms. One of the most common was the belligerent tendency of Sanders supporters to insistently and loudly discount the legitimacy of any Hillary Clinton victory, trying to tar any such victory with claims of voter suppression or voter fraud. By the same token, Sanders supporters were swift to treat any Sanders victory, even victories in small, nondiverse, mostly white caucus states as earth-shattering, world-changing, demonstrations of the Senator’s essentially divine entitlement to the nomination of a party of which he was not a member until last year. The rift, largely unknown outside of Democratic activists until last week, became visible in Nevada, where Clinton and Sanders supporters almost came to blows at the Nevada Democratic convention.
Death threats, misogynistic rants, the shouting down of Senator Barbara Boxer, and law enforcement responses characterized these events. The fiasco created by Sanders supporters at the Nevada Democratic Convention blew the rift within the party wide-open. It also has Republicans and Trump supporters salivating at the prospect of recruiting Bernie Sanders and his supporters as spoilers for the Republican campaign.
In short, the Democratic primary has begun to resemble the closing stages of the Pacific War, specifically in Tokyo in May and June 1945.
By May and June, 1945, the war had turned decisively against Japan. Saipan, the front gate of the Empire, had fallen almost a year prior. Okinawa Prefecture, in far southwestern Japan, was almost gone, and Iwo Jima, and island under the direct jurisdiction of the city of Tokyo, had also fallen. Overhead, the Imperial skies were now the happy hunting ground of American aviators, while on the ground, Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Kumamoto, and other Japanese cities lay helpless under American bombardment as the B-29s roared overhead.
The Japanese public, fed a steady diet of victory propaganda during the war years, had no idea how badly things were going for Japan. They had no idea that “the general war situation had developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.” They had no idea that the allied armies were drawing closer to the homeland, and that the Empire could not hold out much longer.
The similarities between the Sanders campaign and the Japanese war effort are close. Both have fallen into a posture of desperation. The Japanese had fallen back on the kamikazes and the Sanders campaign appears to have fallen back on appeals to violence. Both the Japanese and the Sanders campaign have also fallen back up on magical thinking and desperate efforts to quell any speech that does not “support the war effort.” Moreover, both the Japanese and the Sanders campaign have begun to take a dangerously nihilistic view of the situation.
Among the Japanese high command, the mantra “100 million die together,” basically advocating national suicide, while among the Sanders campaign, the approach may not be that of “100 million die together,” but it certainly does seem to be one of “if we can’t have the nomination, we’ll go down and take you down with us.” Indeed, many Sanders diehards have indicated a willingness to vote for Donald Trump rather than support Sec. Clinton. Indeed, several recent articles have noted that, in West Virginia at least, an estimated 40% of Sanders primary voters will vote for Trump in the general.
These are serious figures, and they raise serious questions about the moral compass of some of Bernard Sanders’ more diehard supporters. When Sanders surrogate (and 2000 Ralph Nader surrogate) Susan Sarandon said that she would vote for Trump if Bernard Sanders were not the nominee, she justifiably came in for a great deal of criticism. After all, Sarandon is white, well-connected, and well-off. She’s a part of that privileged Hollywood elite that doesn’t really have to contemplate the consequences of its foolishness.
Many Sanders supporters, particularly millennials, are similarly situated. Either because they have not been well raised or because they lack the experience, many millennials feel themselves privileged to engage in the political self-destruction of supporting Donald Trump if Bernard Sanders is not the Democratic nominee. Like Sarandon, they have too much privilege to understand the importance of empathy. They can’t or won’t understand the ramifications of a Trump victory for Latinos and other communities of color, for women, for queerfolk, for Democrats and those who don’t like Donald Trump in general, for the poor, for Muslims and other religious minorities, and for those who otherwise don’t fit into Donald Trump’s fascist Weltanschauung.
But Bernie, we may hope, still has about him a few vestiges of statesmanship left. Bernie, we may hope, understands that facts are stubborn things. A few weeks ago I suggested that a Clinton Sanders ticket could make a lot of sense, producing an unstoppable political phenomenon. That window of opportunity to remake America is still open, but it is starting to close. Now is not the time for Bernie to impose purity tests that the Clinton campaign may be unwilling or unable to meet. Now is not the time for Sec. Clinton or her supporters to think in terms of retribution.
If The Democracy is to have any realistic prospect of victory this autumn now is the time to explore the possibilities for unity ticket. Both sides will need to climb down from their positions. For Sanders, this will mean abandoning his longshot presidential bid, following in the example of the Shōwa Emperor, and being willing to “endure the unendurable,” acknowledging Hillary Clinton’s primacy while nonetheless trying to engineer his yielding pride of place in a fashion that saves face and otherwise permits him to exit on the best terms he can obtain.
For Sec. Clinton, it will mean finding a place for Bernard Sanders on her team and in her campaign. For her supporters, who have put up with the thuggishness of the Sanders diehards for months, it will mean being willing to be magnanimous and forbearing, of searching within themselves for reserves of forgiveness that may be hard to locate but which will have to be found. It’s a formidable undertaking, and one that will place great demands upon their friendship for, and loyalty to, Sec. Clinton.
Yet, politics, particularly partisan politics, is about loyalty to party, loyalty to partisanship, and loyalty to persons. But more than that, it’s about loyalty to the vision of America that finds its truest expression in the Democratic Party. Ours is not a perfect party, but compared to the Republicans, we are light years ahead. We cannot afford to allow the unity of the Democratic Party to be sacrificed on the altar of foolish personal animosities.
The moral case for a Clinton/Sanders unity ticket becomes stronger as we move toward endgame. As I suggested last time, it may be the only way to heal the rift, seal the breach, and save America from Donald Trump. Indeed, the moral case for a Clinton/Sanders unity ticket is virtually unanswerable.
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