Yeah, I know. California didn’t go the way we’d hoped. But then neither did New York. Or Ohio. Or Pennsylvania. Or Massachusetts. Freaking Massachusetts! Still, Bernie Sanders did an amazing thing. The last true progressive candidate, Dennis Kucinich, won maybe 20% in one state (I think Oregon) and that was cause for jumping up and down (or at least up). That was eight years ago, and back then we could never have imagined something like the Sanders campaign. This is a rising movement, as I’ve said before – it’s political, it’s generational, it’s policy-focused … it’s freaking amazing. And it came within a whisker of stealing the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination away from the biggest name in party politics.
Anyway, Hillary Clinton has won; that’s what the voters have said. I won’t quibble with the numbers – the horse race is over. However, the real project of 2016 continues – that of pushing a more energetic progressive agenda forward and finding effective ways of holding Hillary accountable to the activist wing of her party. My hope is that my fellow Sanders supporters will not resort to cynicism; a fear underlined by the ridiculous decision of the AP and NBC News / MSNBC to declare Clinton the “presumptive nominee” of the Democratic Party hours before the polls opened in California. That irresponsible act will, for many, throw doubt on the outcome of the California primary. We need to maintain the activist energy of the Sanders campaign and mobilize it behind a set of policies while working to defeat Trump in November. We can’t afford a radical Republican presidency. We just can’t.
I’ve said it here before and I’ll say it again: my disagreements with the Clintons are profound. I am opposed to her foreign policy positions, with very few exceptions. Her closeness to Wall Street augurs well for them and not so hot for the rest of us. And I am not convinced that she is the strongest candidate to defeat Trump this fall. But leave us face it – she will be the Democratic standard-bearer, barring disaster, and we need to take the five minutes (in favorable states) needed to cast our vote for Hillary where needed, then get back to the real work of politics – namely improving the prospects for our neighbors and our planet. That’s the work that made the Sanders campaign in inevitable. That’s the hope for a livable future.
That’s our choice. Choose wisely, friends.
luv u,
jp
Best remind ourselves that the Russia we have today is the one we worked toward building yesterday. Putin is the beneficiary of a strong presidency established by Yeltsin in the 90s with our enthusiastic support (back when we had them privatizing state assets for pennies on the dollar and creating what was then the most dramatic demographic self-implosion in many decades). Remember how he shot the Russian Parliament full of holes? Well, now we’re just staring our own blinkered foreign policy in its beady eyes. The authoritarianism, the anti-gay laws – it’s pretty disgusting. But then, have we broken with Saudi Arabia yet? Their laws are worse.