So… I just read yet another Facebook thread where “good Democrats” ganged up to shame someone for not being willing to support Hillary Clinton, should she be the Democratic nominee. I had, not three weeks ago, given the same arguments to my smart, savvy, grown son, when he claimed himself to be a Bernie-or-Buster.
But that was three weeks ago. I’ve been down with a bug, so I’ve had a lot of time to read, watch, research, absorb. And all those certainties with which I addressed my son, of which I was so… well, certain, as solid as sturdy, worn furniture inherited from my folks... well, I could feel my conscience and beliefs starting to nudge around them, surround them, pushing at them and feeling them wobble. And suddenly, with this thread tonight, something shifted. Hard.
Here’s what came out when the dust of those old certainties settled, and I let my conscience and deeper, core beliefs take the reins.
I've been a Democrat all my life... and I feel like my eyes are finally wide open to what’s no doubt been going on for much of my life, but which I hadn’t been compelled or inspired enough to really grok. This time around, I’m compelled and inspired — and fired up as never before — and I'm deeply appalled at what I see. I’ll take that further: Outraged. An enormous number of smart, passionate, good, patriotic Democrats are being treated by their party like cattle herded into a chute, with no choice of where to go but wherever those with the prods in their hands want us to go.
This Democratic primary has been, purely and absolutely, an anointing of and a circling of the wagons around the chosen queen by establishment insiders. They gave — and she accepted — the jeweled tiara of a shameful advantage right at the get-go, with the wildly undemocratic superdelegate scam (how was I so accepting of this in the past as “just politics”??); this system being intentionally effective in creating a public perception from the outset of an insurmountable lead and thus dampening the vote, with the corporate-contributors-owned media's willing participation in daily dissemination of the intentionally misleading numbers. The insiders responsible are the party elite, who have long-time, cemented and congenial relationships with industry lobbyists and backers, and who have much of that comfortable, establishment power to lose with the kind of quantum shift Sanders would bring to the table.
In these three weeks of awareness leaps, I've come to abhor the glaring machinations, the mistruths and intentional deceptions, misdirections, "mistakes" and setups. The rigged game gets more blatant and nastier as the power structure gets more threatened, by the longer Sanders stays in the race and his message catches fire. There is no doubt in my mind now, nor in many millions of others' minds, about the rigging, it's clear for all to see, and seems to be widely accepted as “just politics” because it’s been in place for decades, after all. Why have we not cared how hugely it’s all affected the integrity of our democratic process, by taking away the equal playing field of a truly fair election — both from a valid, worthy candidate and from the American voters? How on earth have we not demanded better long before this? How did we get so inured to our elections being so crooked and corrupted by money and power, our media so blatantly biased towards the special interests of its owners?
Right now, I am so disgusted by the understanding of how it's been and is being played, I find myself rapidly aligning with my son. I’m finding it all but impossible to think of giving into and perpetuating this ugliness that takes us further and further away from anything that can truly be called a democracy, and more firmly into the hands of corporate power over everything that happens within our economy, our environment, our education, our healthcare, our government and our judicial system.
I see one person -- and ONLY one -- who will not only not perpetuate the decline, but will actively fight with every fiber of his being to find us a path back to being an ethical country; who has, through sheer will of character and principle, stayed “clean” and steady on his path despite decades in the mire of American politics. And here’s what I’m finally hip to: After allowing it to get to this disreputable place, this time the election is no less a battle than that of fighting for the very soul and conscience of our country.
So... when you understand how deeply that feeling goes for so many people, deriding them, chiding them, shaming them to support anyone but that one person willing to change the paradigm, is like asking them to sign their assent to accepting a political system that is both morally unacceptable and destructive to its claimed purpose -- essentially asking them to willingly consign their country to an ugly death by a cancer we’ve all collectively decided not to treat. Maybe one of the other choices would extend the lingering and the inexorable end result, but render it no less inevitable. This, not the comparisons being made of allowing Trump to become our Mussolini (or Hitler, or...), is how I believe a country succumbs.
All this said, it is completely reasonable -- and moral and ethical and sound -- for those feeling this way, this strongly, to say, "NO. I won't be herded. If you want my support and my vote, earn it. Don't manipulate it."
I'm waaay over being told we must fall in line behind Clinton to avoid the horror of Trump or Cruz. If the prime goal of the DNC is to beat the Republican nominee, then it's not even operating towards the best chance of that -- by every poll being reported. So that’s obviously not the Prime Directive. What’s completely clear is that the priority is to MAKE SURE the person wins that most supports their agenda of keeping themselves in power and comfortably unthreatened by change — democracy and ethics be damned. If, instead, those who would call those unpatriotic and shortsighted who choose not to support her and the Democratic Party as it exists care about their country's future and that of its impact in the world as their first priority, they will take a giant, penetrating look into their own hypocrisy and tone-deafness. No matter how much they wag their fingers in admonition with threats of dire consequences, they know full well that they will lose even more support within their own party, and against the Republican candidate, by using a bought media and an undemocratic, rigged setup... only to end up with a Democratic candidate who would come into the generals with the lowest approval rating ever within her own party. For the true good of the party and their country — and in the name of finally showing some actual respect for the Democratic process — they need to stop all the machinations now, and reconsider the real, true, undeniable ramifications of their stance and their actions… not the absolutely justifiable rebellion of millions of frustrated, resentful, disgusted voters. The DNC and their operants and “elites” are every bit as responsible for "giving votes to Trump or Cruz," by so doggedly trying to suppress and preempt a deeply valued candidate of the people — who has risen through decades of consistent, effective, passionate service to his country with ethics intact, and is a friggin' miracle within the political world right now — and stacking the system they've engineered in favor of their Chosen.
As well as capturing the minds, hearts and consciousness of millions of progressive Democrats and Independents, Bernie Sanders has brought with him and drawn to him into these Primaries an enormous amount of voters who are new to the party, have been previously uninspired to vote, and/or who would never been motivated to vote for an establishment candidate within a system they see as broken and not serving the people. These voters came because they were inspired by a vision never offered to them before, and have come to support a candidate they wholeheartedly respond to and believe in. THEY ARE IN NO WAY OBLIGATED TO STAY. None of us are, especially with the options sure to open up following this mess. And the more political manipulation they see that is purposefully hindering the candidate they've come for, the far less likely they are to stick around. Why would they feel any compunction to support or further enable a party that has worked so visibly against what brought them here? The Democratic Party can welcome the people who see in Bernie Sanders what they've looked for and never found up to now, listen to enormity of what it is they're signalling, and earn their loyalty by deciding to clean up their act and run a fair system that supports the will of the people, without scheming to get it through dishonest and clearly undemocratic tactics. Or... they can disenfranchise them via Politics As Usual, and lose them for good... and watch them likely move toward establishing an actually progressive, new party free of old-school cronyism and corporate bedfellows. And take a whooole lotta longer-term Democrats with them. And, in the doing, significantly up the risk of losing the Presidency this round to the Republican Party.
Pretty simple, when you really step back from all those old certainties and look at it. The DNC is choosing to let its own party fracture, likely beyond mending; like the GOP, they seem intent on engineering their own demise. If this is the mode of operation they stick with... then that's probably for the best in the long run. It’s that belief that keeps me from staying in the cattle chute out of fear.
The momentum for the kind of change that needs to happen is simply not going to be stopped no matter how dearly the party clings its power center, now that so many citizens have "seen beyond the mountain;" and the rising generation will, of course, eschew a paradigm they see far too clearly as corrupt and inequitable. What is happening, and how the party reacts to it in this election cycle, must take that into account... or it will surely doom itself, and likely put the country through the chaos that the current GOP crop would bring upon us.
The DNC needs to decide which of the two priorities above are true. What absolutely needs to stop is the villainization of citizens -- during the primary, no less -- who do not see any goodness of enabling and consenting to four or more years of a system they know to be unacceptable, and which will do nothing to lead our country or our world to a better place. Just who, in this picture, is being "short-sighted"??
This is a major crossroads for America, a decision point that ultimately goes far, far deeper than defeating Trump or Cruz.
I think I’ll call my son now.