Another week of national convention television, this time, the Democratic party. Different from last week, to be sure. Less venom, less doom and gloom – in some ways, more similar to what Republican conventions used to be. That’s not surprising: the Republicans have officially vacated the hyper-nationalist territory they have occupied pretty much my entire life, heading decidedly off to the reactionary end. So now, Democrats are a mixture of Eisenhower/Nixon/Reagan Republicans, with some elements of center-left muddle in the middle politics and labor-left sensibilities. The most energized base is certainly on the left, but from what I’m seeing this fourth and final night of the DNC, they are shooting for these centrists and disaffected Republicans.
This is not a great strategy. They’re risking turning off some of their most ardent activists with the bluster, the hyper-patriotism, the parade of military officers, etc. Chants of USA, USA, USA! It’s pretty horrifying on a certain level to see them resort to overt jingoism. But Trump has given them that opportunity, and politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum.
That’s the bad news. The good news? A lot of Bernie Sanders’s core issues are represented in the major speeches, including the one Hillary herself delivered. Her speech was pretty slow to get started, but she got on track about halfway through, when she started talking policy specifics. A lot of the economic points were good. National security stuff is giving me heartburn. So … someone got Bernie on my Hillary. Someone got Hillary in my Bernie. It’s a mix, for better or worse.
I’m not going to tell people what they should do. Everyone needs to work this out for themselves. But it’s pretty clear to me, from watching these two conventions, that as binary choices go, this one is pretty much a no-brainer. It only takes five minutes to figure that out and actually vote (unless you’re a person of color, in which case the latter part might be more like five hours). One of those two people is going to be president. Among the many, many things we need to involve ourselves in politically, we need to take that handful of moments to make certain we never let somebody like Trump lord it over us.
So in my world, it’s yea. What say ye? Get back to me.
luv u,
jp
What I have to say about the “Bernie or bust” tendency, however, differs from what a lot of people on the hard left are saying these days. Working to defeat Trump by, among other things, supporting Clinton if she’s nominated is simply not that hard a pill to swallow for me – a person for whom a vote for Bernie was a kind of compromise. I want to take a moment to look at some of the main contentions I have heard from Bernie or Busters, none of which (spoiler alert!) I feel has any real merit.
The most important component in the argument against “Bernie or Bust” is simply that we cannot afford eight years of one-party rule under the Republicans. This would have a hugely negative impact on the most vulnerable in our society, on the environment, on our brothers and sisters in other countries around the world, and more. The fate of the Supreme Court alone is enough reason to vote for the Democratic nominee, no matter who it is. Scalia’s replacement is only just the first slice; three or four more justices could step down in the coming years. If Donald Trump or Ted Cruz ends up being the person replacing them, say goodbye to any hope of social justice for decades to come. A Cruz court would make Roberts seem like Earl Warren.