jasonlmorrow.com
On the day that Bernie has suspended his campaign, here are some of my thoughts. Instead of just letting it get me down, which it has, I'm also using it as inspiration to do more.
1. The media may not continue being so nice to Joe Biden. They were desperate to make sure a Progressive didn’t win, and so went extremely easy on him. But they also fall all over themselves to present Republican points of view in a positive light, because they don't want to appear to have a liberal bias. So now I predict that the media will start to report more seriously on Joe Biden's negatives, both real ones and whatever weird conspiracy theories will be invented about him. They will give a voice to Biden's general election competitor, which they refused to do for his primary competitor. On the other hand, the media also hates Trump so we can hope this won’t happen.
2. Biden has now accomplished what he got into this race to do, so I think there’s some percentage chance that he leaves the race before the convention for health reasons, leaving the nomination open for a last-minute tap in by someone like Cuomo who would fare better against Trump.
3. Unless Biden leaves the race before the convention, we are going to have either Biden or Trump as president. Therefore, just like now, if we want to have any progress in America we’re going to have to do it despite the president. If we want universal healthcare, if we want racial justice, if we want gender justice, if we want economic justice, and if we want human society to survive climate change, it’s going to be up to private citizens. We just lost our chance for top-down progress. So what are we going to do?
4. There were many people, who were never Democrats but rather were Independents or Republicans, who were willing to cross the aisle in order to vote for Bernie Sanders. If Biden wants those votes, he’s going to have to figure out how to appeal to those people. I expect that Bernie will work tirelessly to get Biden elected just as he did for Hillary Clinton, but it wasn’t enough last time and might not be this time. Biden’s strategy so far has been to literally yell in the faces of Progressives and invite Republicans to step outside and fight him. If he doesn’t change this strategy he will not get Independent or Republican votes and that will not be Bernie Sanders’ fault.
5. Warren might not endorse, or she might wind up endorsing Biden just like she did Clinton, and just like then she will get nothing for it. An endorsement at this stage won't help Biden one bit so there's no incentive for him to offer her a position. If Biden was smart he could offer her a VP position and try to bring in the few Progressives who still support her, but he isn't likely to. The Party brass can't stand her because she's Progressive. She did get into politics to fight Biden's corruption, after all.
6. Can we finally admit that the Democratic Party isn’t on our side, and hasn’t been since at least the time Bill Clinton took over the party? Progressive policies are what most people want and need, but the party has done everything in its power to fight Progressives. They don’t fight against Republicans nearly this hard. They are in it for the donors more than the people. It’s evident because their preferred candidate has left us with a choice between two pathological liars, both of whom: have been credibly accused of rape, will veto Medicare for All if it passes Congress, likely have dementia, are cruel and dismissive toward voters, are for endless war, against regulating Wall Street, for disastrous trade agreements, for bailing out banks with no strings attached, support fracking and the Keystone XL pipeline, are fine with aiding genocide in Yemen, are against a two-state solution in Israel and Palestine, are against getting money out of politics, will not do anything meaningful about climate change (no, getting back in the Paris Agreement is not meaningful), will be draconian on immigration, and do not want to legalize marijuana. I’m sure I missed a few. If the Democratic Party was really for the people, and if they really wanted their presidential candidate to win, they would not have thrown their weight behind this man. They do not care about you. They care about keeping their money.
But next election we'll play the Democratic Party's game again because there will be another terrifying Republican candidate then too and we won't want them to win.
7. You should still vote Bernie in the primary if it's safe for you to vote at that time, or if you can mail-in vote. He has suspended his campaign, not really dropped out, and so he can still amass delegates (or even conceivably win though it's highly unlikely). But the important thing is that the more delegates he amasses the more say he will have in the convention, and therefore the more he can can fight for you as the Democratic Party sets its rules and priorities for the upcoming years. If you prefer Biden because you think he's more likely to win against Trump, but prefer the more Progressive policies of Sanders, this is in a way the best of both.
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