Tom Rinaldo
Tom Rinaldo's JournalWorking for, or Voting for, our eventual Nomiee.
There's a huge difference between voting for someone and actually supporting them. I support Sanders for President, so in my case what I'm writing about here concerns weighing the merits of a Bernie or Bust position, but some Hillary supporters may ponder similar thoughts if events should somehow turn dramatically and Bernie seemed poised to become the Democratic nominee for President.
In my case I am not now and never will be in a Bernie or Bust camp in the 2016 election. In short there is nothing plausible that Hillary Clinton could now do that she hasn't done already that would keep me from voting for her over Trump. There is nothing plausible that I can still find out about Hillary Clinton that I don't know about her already that would keep me from voting for her against Trump. I consider voting to be a low impact but minimal expenditure of energy activity. I don't need a long list of compelling arguments to persuade me to vote for one person over another. I don't have to believe in or even like the person I vote for in order to vote for them. If Hillary is more likely than Trump to minimally slow down the advance of global warming that's reason enough for me to vote for her. If she is more likely to appoint a Supreme Court Justice who will protect a woman's right to choose, or eventually roll back Citizen's United than would a Trump appointee, that's reason enough for me to vote for her. If she is less off her rocker crazed with megalomaniac narcissism to the point of being fundamentally unstable than is Trump, that too is reason enough for me to vote for her.
Voting is meaningful, more people should do it and I always do, but it really doesn't mean all of that much in the big picture. My individual vote can get cancelled out in a matter of moments by the jerk down the street - my energy however is much harder to counter when I become fully invested in any campaign. I hear the arguments made by Bernie or Bust folks, I respect their reasoning but don't buy the conclusion. I will be voting for the Democratic candidate in the 2016 election regardless of who it is. Simply put, it will take me less overall effort, and not significantly more time, for me to cast that vote in November than it does for me to write and edit this OP. The Democrats can count on that much from me minimally, when the only viable alternative to a Democrat becoming our next President is Donald Trump becoming our next President.
The act of voting for someone does not deplete my energy or resources, so in the final analysis I am willing to vote for the lesser evil when that day of reckoning comes. But I will say this for the Bernie or Bust contingent, and for those with like minded sentiments regarding different Democratic politicians: I will only fight for the people and causes I believe in. Energy and money are both too finite for me to tie up indefinitely in struggles that divert me from the fights and causes that are most important to me. They certainly are too precious to be drained in efforts that at best only mitigate my and others ultimate oppression rather than fundamentally work to reverse it.
I am a Democrat but I no longer believe in the Democratic Party. I almost always vote Democratic in a general election, but I am far more likely to invest my energy into transforming the current Democratic Party than I am into helping elect the type of Democrats who typically secure the Democratic nomination for higher offices. And I am by far most likely to invest my energy and resources directly into the issues and causes that I believe in. Campaigning for establishment candidates barely makes it onto the bottom of my list of priorities now. Strong movements move politics - when politicians feel compelled to chase after them for votes.
Operation Chaos in West Virgiinia? That's crazier than Trump Talk.
Mass numbers of voters do not behave that way, never have and never will. Small numbers at the margins, yeah sure maybe, two or three percent perhaps. And people who act that way are rarely registered as Independents. They tend to be hard core partisans and way more caught up in insider election dynamics that typical voters. And even then that relative handful of voters need strong motivation to vote tactically rather than show their support for someone they actually believe in. They might do so if they truly thought that a nomination was literally up for grabs, and could go ether way, then perhaps they would vote for a candidate they didn't like who they thought might make a weak ultimate opponent to whoever they did like.
I've seen some on this board try to spin that Sanders only won West Virginia because Trump supporters backed him to hurt Clinton's chances. Anyone who thinks that explains why Sanders got the support he did in the West Virginia primary is dangerously delusional. Delusional because it makes no sense and runs contrary to all evidence from the Democratic contests to date; dangerous because it feeds into a state of willful denial about what really is happening, which should be of serious concern for anyone who cares about the fortunes of the Democratic Party in America.
I am not surprised to see that a significant minority of those who supported Sanders in Virginia are currently more inclined to vote for Trump in November than Sanders, if Bernie won the nomination. West Virginia has elected its share of Democratic Governors, State Legislators and U.S. Senators in recent decades, but it has become reliably Republican in Presidential elections. There are still slews of registered Democrats in West Virginia, many are people who vote Democratic locally and Republican nationally, who couldn't vote for Trump in the Republican Primary. Trump has been running as a right wing populist and Sanders has been running as a left wing populist. Populism appeals across the political spectrum when average people feel like they are getting screwed by the elites. Given a primary when they either could only vote for Bernie or Hillary (if they were registered Democrats), or where it was obvious that Trump already had the Republican endorsement totally sown up, it makes sense that voters with populist tendencies cast votes for Bernie, even those who preferred Trump most of all.
Here is the sad and very disturbing truth. Many Americans, and much of the white working class in particular, no longer believe that typical Liberal politicians really have their economic interests at heart. The Democratic Party has allowed much of its prior working class base to be stolen out from under it. Liberalism has to a large extent successfully been rebranded by the right as another form of elitism, centered around snobs in trendy urban areas with Hollywood values who look down on common people who lead "normal" lives.
Bernie Sanders has strong cross over appeal because so many Independents and so called Reagan Democrats don't identify him as another stereotypical liberal. They believe he actually cares about regular struggling folks like them and that most standard liberal Democrats don't. They don't have the same working definition of "liberal" that progressives on boards like this use, so it doesn't surprise me one bit that in Virginia Bernie won a lot of votes from people who say that they want less liberal policies, not more.
Bernie Sanders has been having success reaching a lot of those people all year, whereas Hillary Clinton has struggled. They are true swing voters. Given a full campaign to work on them, it's likely some of them would end up backing Sanders over Trump in a final November match up. It will be very had for Hillary to do the same.
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Member since: Mon Oct 20, 2003, 06:39 PMNumber of posts: 22,912
