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!
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