Bernie’s Path to the Nomination

The Clintons at Trump’s wedding in 2015

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Bernie Sanders’s path to the presidential nomination just got a lot more difficult tonight. He won just one state – Rhode Island – out of five. Clinton has far more delegates than Bernie and more super delegates, that UNdemocratic rule in the Democratic party that makes sure the party – rather than the people – have the final say about who becomes the nominee.

Trump swept all five states by huge margins.

Unless something nearly miraculous happens, Clinton and Trump will be the nominees. I would love to see a woman as president, but not Clinton. She’s part of the political machine, entrenched in establishment politics, in bed with Wall Street, and I’ve yet to hear the kind of passion from her that I hear continually from Sanders.

Yes, she’s smart and experienced and, thanks in large part to Obama appointing her secretary of state, knows her foreign policy. Unfortunately, her foreign policy is business as usual – the U.S. as world cop, endless war in the Mideast, take out dictators whom we helped put into power…well, we all know this story by now.

Her vote for the war in Iraq helped propel the chaos in the Mideast, the rise of Isis, and terrorism and did not, as one of Bush’s boys predicted, end with the people of Iraq welcoming us with open arms. Instead, with the fall of Baghdad, the seething cauldron of hatred and fear and poverty blew wide open and here we are in 2016, trillions of dollars later, thousands of Americans dead, countries decimated, and millions of displaced people on the move.

Clinton claims she would rein in Wall Street, but her super pacs of banker boys have raised millions for her. Her speeches to Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street organizations have earned her sums that most of us won’t see in our lifetimes.

When pressured to release transcripts of her speeches, she gives that annoying Hillary laugh and says she would be glad to release them if all the other candidates do the same. That means the Republicans. Sanders doesn’t have any transcripts to release. He doesn’t have any super pacs. Yet, he has raised more money than any other candidate through small online donations from ordinary people, several million of them. She is losing among young voters who realize what they may gain through a Sanders presidency and what they stand to lose with a Clinton presidency.

Tonight in Philadelphia when she gave her victory speech, I was struck by just how far to the left her rhetoric has moved since this campaign started. At some points she sounded like Sanders – but just the words not the genuine passion of convictions. Like Claire Underwood in House of Cards, Clinton is a strategist, an opportunist whose instincts are so sharply honed she’s able to sniff out the political climate and play to it.

My neighbors, whom I’ve known for 11 years, are Republicans. And for the first time, we are on the same political page. If Sanders is the nominee, they will vote for him because what he says about big money in politics, about the hold corporate America and the banking industry have over the rest of us resonates for them. If Clinton is the nominee, they will vote Republican – i.e., Trump. I have friends who are Clinton supporters, friends who are supporters of Sanders. And I doubt that the Sanders supporters will vote for Clinton just to keep a Dem in the White House. They will probably choose to sit out this election.

In a recent town hall, Sanders was asked how he would unify the party if Clinton was the nominee. I thought his response was terrific, that it wasn’t incumbent on him to convince his supporters to vote for Clinton. She was the one who would have to win them over by moving farther to the left in her platform. Free college tuition at public universities. Health care as a right for all rather than a privilege. Overturning Citizens United. Not engaging in endless war. Moving rapidly away from fossil fuels. She would have to embrace more of his truly progressive platform. After all, Clinton needs the youth vote and the independents who embrace Sanders if she is to win the presidency.

If she is the nominee, I don’t think she can beat Trump. He appeals to angry racists who must have an enemy- the Mexicans, the Muslims, ISIS, take your pick. Hatred is often just as powerful as love. In spite of my hope that we are moving into a new, more progressive paradigm, the old guard is alive and well and turning out in shocking numbers for Trump.

I recently told a friend that I would be sitting out this election if Clinton is the nominee. Her response: But we can’t have a President Trump! Well, maybe Trump is the exclamation point at the end of a long haul since a movie star named Ronald Reagan won the White House. If we are incapable of connecting the dots, if we continually vote against our best interests as a nation and as individuals, then perhaps he is the president we deserve.

At the very least, Bernie has changed the dialogue in this country and made people more aware of the existing disparities and inequalities. And, in the larger scheme of things, that’s no small feat.