Establishment Democrats, Hillary Clinton supporters and the presidential candidate herself believe the Democratic primary race is over. Such a belief in and of itself means nothing. Before Sanders — or any other opponent who dared to enter the 2016 race and deny Clinton her year — put in their bid, they believed this. Each of these factions of the moderate left has believed this race was over before it began.
Clinton’s huge delegate lead has only intensified this pre-existing feeling, ramping up the Democratic machine’s argument that Bernie Sanders should not drag out the inevitable; that he concede. “Not dragging out the inevitable” is code for: Sanders should start encouraging his supporters to shift their attention and loyalty to the candidate with the best chance of winning the primary race, the candidate they have spent the past several months rejecting and lobbing stinging criticisms at. Unity, these people say, is the great need of the moment. Unity at the expense of political integrity and better conscience. False unity.
Alongside this, they contend, supporting Clinton is all the more necessary given what’s unfolding in the rival’s camp. Real-estate mogul and hate-mongerer Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee for president, and Donald Trump is the second wind of Adolph Hitler, or at least the material embodiment of Satan. But, as I’ve stated elsewhere, Donald Trump is merely the culmination of traditional, tried-and-true Republican beliefs. He is not an anomaly. He is an American-made commodity, produced and marketed by The Right, Inc.
The need to defeat Trump has always been there and will play a role in the motivation of left-wing voters in this year’s election. A few weeks ago, Slate reported that some Sanders supporters had decided to pledge allegiance to Clinton should Sanders loose the primary.
What’s significant about their decision is that it has nothing to do with any sudden or fundamental change of opinion about Clinton, but strictly with barring Trump from the oval office. One man’s reasoning aptly summarized the thinking of just about every Sanders supporter mulling over whether or not they should back Clinton in the fall: “I’m terrified.”
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Fear is the predominating factor here. Clinton and her acolytes know this and exploit it. What a horrifying state of affairs we’ve reached in our national politics — in our politics, period — when a democracy operates strictly on stoking the fears of its citizenry, when fear could put a hack politician in office.
Not everyone has given in to fear and recommendations to forge a false unity — to the lesser-of-two-evils mode of politics. Polls reveal that some Sanders supporters have no intention of helping to send the Clintons back to the White House. These voters, mostly millennials, are proclaiming #NeverHillary, #AlwaysBernie, and #DropOutHillary. They have amassed signatures (63,000) for WontVoteHillary.com. They are quite comfortable voting for a third-party candidate or avoiding the ballot altogether.
But, if the poll cited in this article is any indication, their percentage is low. For the majority of Sanders supporters, the fear and “we need to unify to defeat Trump” arguments are winning, leaving us back where we started.
Here’s the thing. I’m going to be as blunt, immoderate and notgivingashitish as Clinton is when she’s sparing with and dismissing Black Lives Matter activists. Clinton is a liar. You know it. I know it. Some folks call it fluctuating. Maybe I have before. But, the truth is, she’s a liar. Plain and simple.
Liars like Clinton doublethink their ass off. They be like, I’m against $15 minimum wage, but I’m for it. I’m sorry for the Crime Bill, but I’m not sorry. I’m for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), but I’m against TPP. I’ll release my Wall Street speech transcripts when my opponent does, but my opponent doesn’t have Wall Street speech transcripts to release. I didn’t mean to call Blacks and Hispanics “superpredators,” but actually I did mean to. I got Red Lobster cheddar biscuits in my purse (excuse me, “swag bag”) because “Formation.” I will do and say whatever the hell I need to do and say to get your vote. Point blank. Even if I don’t believe one word of what I’m doing or saying.
I fear that quality about her more than anything Trump has ever said or promoted.
Related: Hilary Clinton Belittles #BlackLivesMatter
Someone so deceitful and manipulative does not deserve your vote, no matter the circumstances. She can’t be trusted. She will, under the pretext of political tactics, stab voters in the back. Do we really think that voting out of fear or for the sake of appeasement or to keep Donald Trump out of office will change that?
We can do better. We must. Electoral politics is not the be-all and end-all. An essential part of claiming this moment as a political revolution means that we not settle. That we have the strength to think outside the box. That we make decisions on behalf of, not against, our conscience.
If this is truly a political revolution, no Sanders supporter should vote for Clinton. Instead, all of us should invest our energy into strategizing alternative ways of taking the reigns of our political destiny into our own hands.
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