05.07.2016
Bernie
for VP?
Senator Sanders has not suspended his campaign. He
pretends that he has the momentum to overtake Secretary Clinton’s lead in the
delegate count; in the remaining contests. Bernie makes these pretenses even
though he loses ground even as he chalks up wins, like the win he posted in
Indiana last week.
Bernie Sanders Suggests that he will arrive at the
convention with the hearts and the minds of the Democratic Party behind him. He
makes this suggestion even though Hillary Clinton has won more statewide
contests, has won more votes, has won more pledged delegates, and has more
support among the so-called “super-delegates” the free agents of the Democratic
Party; the roughly five hundred delegates who are selected from among the
parties elected officials and other party officials. To overcome Hillary’s lead
among both pledged and “super” delegates, Bernie would have to earn 101% of the
remaining delegates before the convention; an impossibility.
Bernie’s plan, the plan of the BS campaign, is to come
to the convention floor and make an argument for electability, not based on the
votes he has earned, the states he has won, the support he has garnered from
his colleagues, but based on some demographic polling from organizations like
Gallop, and Rueters, etc…
I understand the desire to not give up, to keep
fighting until the fighting is done, I cannot fault BS for this, but I do take
his denial of the present realities as evidence for the claim that I have been
making all along, that BS is just another ordinary politician, who cares more
for his own ego than he does about the future of the progressive movement. BS
stands by while his supporters attack his opponent, he refuses to ameliorate
the situation. He effectively endorses the criticism of HRC, that she is
corrupt, that she is no better than a Republican; by doing nothing he fuels it.
That is wrong.
I support the desire of the BS campaign to compete
until the convention, and use the support he has earned to shape the rules, and
influence the platform, the is the appropriate place for the idealism he championed
to be channeled. It would be disingenuous and disastrous for him to come to the
convention still fighting and vilifying HRC.
The latest news from the campaign is that Bernie has
intimated that he would consider a place on the ticket with Hillary as her Vice
President. I am wondering if his followers and supporters like that idea?
Would it be a good idea? Would Bernie be a good
soldier in a Hillary administration? If Bernie is willing to serve under Hillary,
what does this say about him, and her? Dos it suggest perhaps, that all of the
critique he has issued about her fund raising and her speeches, that it was all
a smoke screen and political nonsense? If Bernie is willing to come on board,
to participate in that organization, he must not really be opposed to it.
Does Bernie think he would enter Hillary’s
administration as her VP, and then perhaps force her to some higher moral
standard than she would otherwise adhere to? Is that where he now sees his path
to power?
Money may be the root of all evil, though to put the saying
in it proper context, it is not money itself but the love it that feeds the evil
in the human heart. But it is power that corrupts, or to put it more
accurately, it is power that attracts the corruptible.
Is this where the BS campaign is now, on the precipice
of real power, with that power nearly in its grasp. It tilts toward the corrupt,
it is willing to ally itself with its opponent for some purpose, either to be
co-opted by her, or perhaps to undermine her?
I find the whole thing troubling, and I would sooner
leave his idealism in the Senate, or elevate it to the Supreme Court, than I
would have it anywhere near the HRC administration which I hope will be governing
the country come January.
