Will Bernie Supporters Sabotage Hillary?
Sanders supporters at Philly protest run over and cheer a "Hillary for prison" van sponsored by InfoWars. pic.twitter.com/o5nA939ngL
— Kayla Epstein (@KaylaEpstein) July 25, 2016
Clare Foran reports from Philly on Green Party nominee Jill Stein’s effort to court Sanders supporters:
So, can Stein really lead a political revolution? Her diagnosis of the problems plaguing the country isn’t so different from Sanders’s assessment. Like the senator, she sees a country overrun by big money and corporate power. She wants to make health care a right, break up big banks, and ensure that high-quality education is accessible for Americans. Stein has also embraced positions that put her to the left of the senator. At the Bernie-or-Bust rally, she called for reparations as part of a conversation on fighting racism rooted in the “criminal institution of slavery.”
A reader writes:
One of the Jill Stein supporters in Foran’s article says, “I won’t vote for Hillary....There’s no unity.” Except there is. Clinton won the popular vote and the delegate vote. She’s won over most Bernie voters. [According to Pew polling, 90 percent of Sanders supporters say they’ll vote for Clinton.] She’s winning some Republicans who are terrified of Trump. [According to a new WaPo/ABC poll, Clinton is getting 13 percent of Republicans.] She’s got a powerful endorsement from our beloved president. There is a growing sense of the dramatic difference between her and Trump, and between the Democratic and Republican visions for the country, and Clinton is taking the baton from Obama to carry ours forward.
Stein and the dead-enders who support her are living in a dreamworld. They are the mirror image of the Sarah Palin/Michelle Bachmann tea-partiers—disconnected from reality and the rest of the the country—just coming from the other end of the spectrum. If Stein runs and helps Trump win, she will be the pariah of my lifetime.
A reader debate in May over the Green Party is here if you’re interested. Here’s another reader on Clare’s piece—which is titled, “Can Jill Stein Lead a Revolution?”:
She CAN lead a revolution. But, like most revolutions, it will fail if she insists on working outside the current system. The purists on the left are helping Trump.
We’ve seen this before.
When Hitler was running for Chancellor, the only credible force to oppose him were the Social Democrats. The Russians told the German communists not to work with the Social Democrats because they were insufficiently pure and were corrupting the revolution. So the left lost, Hitler was elected.
BTW: The Conservatives thought Hitler was a racist buffoon and, while he might be useful against the leftist government in power, that they could control him. They thought he would not be able to exert much influence in the largely ceremonial role of Chancellor. They were wrong too.
After Hitler took over, he purged all opposition, especially the left. Christians with strong faith were also targeted. And, when he invaded Poland, he cut a deal with the Russians to divide it up.
If you see any holes in that historical analogy, especially if you work in academia, drop us a note—and likewise if you have any thoughts in general about the third party risk to Clinton. Meanwhile another reader, responding Alex Wagner’s new piece, “When Bernie Bros Become Hillary Bros,” predicts “what’s going to happen this election”:
A lot of Bernie supporters will hold their noses and vote for Hillary. She'll get elected and then flipflop on TPP, push for regime change in Syria, reduce regulations on the banks, etc. Progressives will be angry and threaten to primary her in 2020.
But then Democrats will say, “If you do that, Hillary will emerge a weaker nominee and lose to Republicans.” And once again, the left will be forced to hold its nose and vote for the Democrat, even though their first term ended up being a big letdown. If she wins, we’ll get another four years of disappointment. But the Democratic party will say the same thing in 2024: “If you don’t vote for whoever we put up, Republicans will win.”
Does any of that sound familiar? It should. It’s called the Obama years. We’re stuck in a vicious cycle because too many people vote for the lesser evil and then act shocked when that lesser evil breaks their promises.
Update: A group of Atlantic readers debate and discuss that last reader’s comment, largely centered on the question, “How do you hold [your preferred candidates] accountable and make them live up to their promises when the alternative candidate is always going to be ‘worse’?”
