Bernie for VP? - Editorial, The Week in Review – Analysis, Commentary, Opinion

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.