When it first became apparent that Bernie Sanders would not win the Democratic nomination for President, I was sad. He seemed like the only answer to a political system that has over time put more and more power and influence in the hands of moneyed interests who are motivated by greed and privilege, not the greater good.
The question at this point became whether to support the other anti-establishment candidate, the one who could not be bought, the one who did not play the game of quid pro quo politics that has infected our democracy like a cancer, and which every day threatens our lives, our liberty, and our pursuit of happiness.
That’s what I want most of all: I want big money out of politics in America. Big money wants to poison our food, air, and water for profit. Big money wants to rob the retirement funds of millions of Americans and gamble with those funds in money markets, for profit. Big money wants to militarize the police and incarcerate millions of Americans in private prisons, for profit. Big money wants to squeeze every drop of productivity from labor while paying starvation wages, for profit. Big money is completely unscrupulous in the means that it employs towards these objectives, and so the prospect that our nation could put forward a Bernie Sanders, or even a Donald Trump as an antithesis to the big money in American elections was the best thing that I could have hoped for.
But that option is not really on the table this time, and I have made peace with that now. Sanders has failed to reach that standard politically. Trump has failed to reach it ideologically.
The problem with Donald Trump is that he presents outwardly as a man of principle who speaks truth to power and who does not get pushed around by donors or by special interests, which leaves him free to govern in the general interest of a nation that is struggling in many ways and which needs confident leadership. He appears unencumbered by the decorum of polite Washington life where one thing is said and another is done, and where the only ones who truly benefit from the entire process are the elected officials themselves and their benefactors. This is why so many people respond positively to him, and that part of him is a refreshing change from typical politicians. He had an opportunity to do something positive with that, and he blew it. Digging deeper reveals a suit full of smoke, a poison pill that can not possibly deliver on its braggadocious promises, and which would likely make us sicker as a nation rather than cure, or even alleviate the most pressing ailments of the current state of the current Union.
Critics of Donald Trump call him a xenophobic, racist, bigot who insults Mexicans, Muslims, African-Americans and women. While he most certainly has insulted racial and religious minorities, and women, I don’t necessarily think it stems from true, genuine bigotry. I think it stems from a depraved kind of opportunism that could possibly be even worse than true bigotry, and which serves no principle whatsoever because it can only have one master: ego. Donald Trump’s campaign is about ego. It’s about him seeing how far he can take his Art-Of-The-Deal strategy and whether the American voting public will take the same leap of faith on a Trump presidency that many investors have taken over the years, despite a record that is spotty at best and unethical, perhaps criminal at worst. I’m not discounting the bigotry for being insincere, however; bigotry doesn’t need to be sincere to be harmful to the central principles upon which America is founded or by the targets of its inquisitions. The opportunistic blaming of Mexicans for unemployment, Muslims for terror, and Blacks for crime does plenty to get White Anglo-Saxon Protestants fired up, especially the ones who are looking for someone else to hate because they’ve grown tired of hating themselves. It just doesn’t help the Country. It can’t. If everyone is blaming one another for the country’s problems, then nobody is actually working on solutions to those problems because they’re seen as the responsibility of someone else to mitigate, and if a solution does come along, it will almost certainly work to the detriment of the perceived guilty party instead of the benefit of everyone. That is zero-sum politics, and that is the foundation of Donald Trump’s campaign. And that is why I must oppose it.
I don’t want to get all wonky on policy matters and Trump’s official positions on all the various issues, because that would be kind of boring. He has a website. The platform is available there. There’s not much content, actually, and that’s concerning in itself. I like some of the ideas about Veteran’s Affairs but the rest of it is a lot of fluff, with sprinkles of free-market and trickle-down economic policy throughout that I do not support. Spending more on an already bloated military while gutting the protection of our air, food, water, labor, and diversity of creed and color here at home I also do not support at all.
The only other choice is Hillary Clinton, and as sympathetic as I am to Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, or whatever other third-party candidates are out there, they are not realistic contenders for The White House in 2016. I get it. I liked Ralph Nader. I liked Harry Brown. The system is broken and the only way to protest that might be to vote for a third-party candidate or abstain completely, but there will be a general election in November and there are only two candidates that have any reasonable chance of winning this election with this electorate: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. I’ve read that choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil, but that’s what being an adult means, and that’s why adults are the ones who get to vote. I will therefore not use my vote as a personal statement to express my individual, delicate, petulant, left-leaning nonconformist displeasure, because the electorate does not care about my personal displeasure and it is going to choose between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in November. That is reality. I can either participate in that or not. Any other choice would be about me, and not the Country. I will use my vote to do my duty as an American citizen and hopefully succeed in electing the candidate who would keep us moving forward, albeit more slowly perhaps than I would like, because the alternative, chosen either directly by me or indirectly through my abstention, I find to be unconscionable.
The speech given in tandem by Bernie Sanders and then Hillary Clinton gave me much hope, that, as Senator Sanders proclaimed, this would be “the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party.” While Bernie is still my dream candidate, his failure to secure the nomination is not a failure in wholesale, and in fact there is plenty for me to be happy about as a Sanders supporter. His great success in moving the party, and Clinton with it, towards a more progressive platform is cause for celebration, and a cause to mobilize behind now as Bernie suspends his campaign and turns his attention towards helping Clinton defeat Trump in November. Clinton has recognized that there is a movement behind Bernie Sanders and she has been moved by it. Hillary Clinton has moved on minimum wage, moved on trade, moved on campaign finance, moved on healthcare, moved on Wall Street, moved on energy, moved on the environment, and moved on virtually all of the foundational elements of the Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign. That is success for a Bernie Sanders supporter and I will follow his endorsement. While people will continue to debate whether changes in Clinton’s positions are an opportunistic grab for votes in the general, it remains the best realistic chance any of us have for the advancement of that platform over the next four years. Anyone who trusts Senator Sanders (as I do) will see his endorsement of Clinton as an indication that it’s important to move forward towards the common goal, and the more pressing goal, of defeating Trump.