Bernie Or Bust.

There is and will continue to be a lot of discussion about Sanders supporters that won’t support Clinton if she wins the nomination, which looks very likely at this point. It is quite possible that up to 30% of Sanders supporters won’t vote for Clinton. Many people feel that this is rather treasonous, that if you are a Democrat you should support the elected nominee, especially if it means helping to deprive candidates as bad as Cruz or Trump the White House.

To start with I believe that worry is misplaced. That 30% probably aren’t hard core Democrats anyway. A lot of Sanders support comes from independents and first time voters. In fact one of the reasons Sanders did so poorly in the recent New York primary was that it was a closed primary. So those voters shouldn’t be counted as a loss necessarily. In fact what happens here is that it isn’t so much that the Democratic party is losing voters as it is failing to bring in new supporters. By having Sanders as the nominee you pull new people into the party.

Now the Ralph Nader effect is often brought up in relation to this. In the year 2000 Ralph Nader ran for president and pulled in 2.7% percent of the popular vote. It is widely felt that he cost Al Gore the election. What people fail to acknowledge however is that Ralph Nader ran for president a lot, he ran when Bill Clinton was running, he ran when Obama made his first run for the presidency, and usually he pulled in about .7% percent of the vote. So what happened in 2000? Did he offer a substantially different message? No. What happened was that Al Gore was weak candidate. Not many people will remember the smarmy eye rolling in debates, but it was shocking to a lot of people how poor of a candidate Al Gore was.

Not that it was entirely his fault, there was a lot of Clinton fatigue in 2000. Sure the country as a whole had done pretty well under Clinton, but real standards of living were already stagnating then. There was fatigue over the investigations, (warranted or not), the lying, as in the Lewinsky scandal, the constant compromising with the Right, and questions over the value of free trade deals. These worked to weaken the case that the Clinton legacy should be continued. Still a more skillful politician should have been able to forge his own path, building on the positives while striking out into new ground.

Hillary faces many of these same hurdles. There is a degree of Obama fatigue for the far left. The bailing out of bankers, the seeming preference to see the financial sector do well as opposed to labor, the wars, and more free trade deals has caused the left to fell hungry for someone who represents their priorities. She is also a weak candidate. No matter what her qualifications she has come into these primaries with everything in her favor, organization, money, name recognition, and political pedigree, and she somehow allowed an elderly Jewish Socialist from Vermont to run her ragged. Sanders didn’t even engage in harsh personal attacks. That indicates a weak candidate.

So perhaps the Nader effect is a valid concern, but the solution to that concern is not to ask everyone to climb on board the wagon of a weak candidate, it is to nominate a better candidate. The Democratic party is guilty of bowing to its own royalty, and those who fail to join in shouldn’t be demonized for that.

It is also unreasonable to expect some people to make that big of a leap. The differences between Clinton and Sanders are not minor. If you are concerned that our military involvements are out of control and money plays far too large a role in politics then Hillary is a pretty hard pill to swallow. While issues about Supreme Court nominations and immigration weigh heavily, the choice between making a stand for less military involvement and more military involvement is pretty stark. Take a quick look at the misery in Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq to have some idea of what that choice means. Not to mention that our destabilizing influences have actually increased the frequency of terrorist attacks.

But, perversely, these things are never presented as about what the person you are voting for would do, they are about what the person you aren’t voting for would do. In this case we must do anything possible to stop Trump. Never mind that this country somehow managed to survive 8 years of Reagan and 8 years of W, you must give away all hopes of voting for what you want to stop Trump. Just look at the Republican party, it is a disaster, Trump is the weakest potential candidate in memory, he makes George Wallace look like William F. Buckley Jr. Party bosses openly speculate over the wisdom of running a third party candidate. After all what they worried about isn’t losing the White House, what they are worried about is losing congress, the senate, and governorships due to low voter turnout driven by a Trump candidacy. If they do contest his nomination, which looks less likely as time goes on they also risk losing the base Trump has energized.

Honestly if Hillary Clinton, the widely proclaimed best qualified nominee ever, can’t beat Trump even without the backing of a percentage of Sanders supporters then there is a problem with her.

The basic question is should Hillary still work to earn the support of Sanders supporters, or should they just fall in line and support the winner of the nominating process. While historical norms would favor the latter of the choices I think given how close the race has been she should try to earn that support. Remember that many of her “victories” such as Massachusetts and Missouri were really closer to ties than outright victories.

Still that percentage of hard core Sanders supporters who wouldn’t vote for her will not be given enough to make the leap. That and she should, by basic logic, work to secure the support of moderate Republicans uncomfortable with Trump. That should be fertile ground for her, especially Republican women. Her natural policy stands, which focus on self reliance, and national security should be a strength there, and it is a far more believable sell than picking up watered down Sanders positions.

So people really need to give this a rest. Let Hillary energize her base, work to pick up disaffected voters, and rely on the astounding weakness of her candidate to propel her to the White House. Let that percentage of Sanders supporters who choose to forge a workable platform for the values of the far left do so. They have worked very hard to advance their cause, don’t just expect them to sit down and shut up. They have bigger plans.

There is a cruel irony here in that regard also. Moderate Democrats love to talk about how they are able to advance legislation by working with willing Republicans, yet when it comes to dealing with their own rank and file they expect obedience. Really there wouldn’t be so many disgruntled Democrats or left leaning independents if the Democratic party could extend the same respect to them as it does to moderate Republicans.

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