The Democratic battle for the nomination for President has come to New York, and on back to back days, I got to be at the Hillary Clinton rally at the Apollo in Harlem and the Bernie Sanders rally in the Bronx.
The appearances reaffirmed my belief that of two great candidates Hillary Clinton would be the best choice because she brings the experience, smarts and skill to all the responsibilities— domestic and foreign, economy and national security— that are vital to the biggest, most complex job on the planet.
I had little to report from Bernie’s rally on his policies or agenda in his speech, which was virtually word for word the same as he has been making since he entered the race, but what I did draw from the rally was a concern about the Bernie supporters.
You see, in 2008, when Hillary Clinton realized she would not win the Democratic nomination, she stood back, tearfully acknowledged she had made 18 million cracks in the glass season, but encouraging her supporters to put their passion for her into electing Barack Obama.
Without the Hillary votes, I doubt Obama would have won and we would have a very different world history with President John McCain and Vice President Sarah Palin.
Bernie Sanders — directly and especially through his surrogates who have taken an increasingly nasty tone — is poisoning the well against Hillary Clinton.
This was obvious at the rally in the South Bronx, where Sanders claimed 18,500 people showed up (I was there and question the number).
While being termed “diverse” in order to counter a impression that Sanders’ followers are white men (the Sanders’ Bros.). In fact, the people who attended were overwhelmingly young and Latino with a smattering of older white people (Jewish liberals). It looked like a coming together of Occupy Wall Street and 1960s hippies.
I can understand Sanders’ ’Feel the Bern’ appeal to young people. It was us during the anti-Vietnam era which coincided with the fight for civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, the peace movement and overall Anti-Establishment furor — the same era when Sanders came of political age.
All Sanders has to do is call someone an “establishment politician” to generate massive boos from the crowd, and their Pavlovian reaction will be to reject anyone who is so branded.
There’s a reason why there is such a generational split in support for Bernie Sanders.
It’s because his supporters were not alive during the George McGovern campaign. And older (yes, wizened) progressives also are a bit more inclined to wince in hearing Sanders rail against corporations and banks and Wall Street, essentially branding the totality of capitalism as evil (I wonder if his supporters would consider Apple and Google, the great disrupters, now the most valuable companies in history, among the enemy ranks) — even if he doesn’t go quite so far, Republicans would brand him the Anti-Capitalist in the general election.
Bernie feeds on the 30-year propaganda campaign against the Clintons, which have created an image of “untrustworthy”, “dishonest” — with his haranguing about her speaking fees and campaign donors (apparently misleading on “oil and gas” industry, as the Clinton campaign points out — this is three Pinnochios worth, with Clinton saying that this money comes from individuals who happen to work in this industry, $308,000 compared to $54,000 that Sanders has collected from individuals in oil & gas industry).
The caricature was clearly ingrained in the Sanders’ minions. Everyone I asked — the mostly young people at the rally and the rare older person— said they would not vote for Hillary Clinton if she is the nominee, and in most cases were in denial that they would essentially be electing the Republican president.
Why not Hillary?
Overwhelming they used the same phrases: “She’s dishonest. I don’t trust her.”
When probed for an example of dishonesty, they all raised the emails. I counter, “That was stupid, but she didn’t lie.” They were unmoved. They said there were other examples, but couldn’t really recall any.
They also said she was too political – that she changed her position for political purpose. Example? Gay marriage. Fracking.
What they like about Sanders?
He’s honest, steady. You can count on him. He is above politics. I raise an example to counter this notion: how Sanders’ policy on guns seems to reflect a political calculation of not antagonizing the NRA, which torpedoed his first campaign for Congress, but NRA support put him over the top to go on and win his seat in Congress; he hasn’t gone against the NRA ever since and he’s never lost an election.
That does not faze these young idealists, like a couple I meet on the subway after the rally who first learned Bernie Sanders’ name six months ago.
The Bronx rallyers — overwhelmingly Hispanic and enthusiastic about his plan to bail out Puerto Rico— also seemed unaware of Sanders’ record on immigration reform: he voted in favor of expedited deportation in 2006, against immigration reform six times in 2007, voted instead with right wingers to protect the Minutemen and armed militias. (He also has been exaggerating his involvement in civil rights movement— for example, a surrogate, creating a new mythos around Sanders, asserted he had marched with Martin Luther King, when actually he attended the March on Washington along with hundreds of thousands of others).
His minions dismiss any skepticism about whether a President Sanders can accomplish any of his campaign promises as a failure to embrace a bold vision. “When did ‘Yes We Can’ become ‘Don’t Even Bother’?” asked one speaker at the Bronx rally.
Hillary Clinton offered a rejoinder at her Apollo rally: “Now my opponent says we’re just not thinking big enough. No, this is New York. Nobody dreams bigger than we do. This is a city that likes to get things done, and that’s what we want from our president too. We need a president who will help break down all the barriers holding back Americans, not just some.”
None of this critical analysis enters into the mind of anyone at the rally or the tiny little detail that Sanders can’t achieve any part of his bold agenda without first and foremost achieving the Political Revolution — essentially sweeping clean the House and Senate so that progressives get a filibuster-proof majority.
“If Hillary is the candidate, I will write in. I don’t believe that will make a difference (if that gives the election to the Republican],” says Noah Biron, a young fellow from Connecticut who works as a waiter, carrying a Bernie Sign, who will vote for the first time in 2016.
Riding the subway back to Queens after the rally, I meet a young man named Angel, originally from Berkeley, Calif., now living in Queens, who said he would vote Green Party if Hillary were the nominee.
He was not worried if Trump becomes President because, he said, “Hillary is the same as Trump.”
That reminded me of Ralph Nader telling his followers that Al Gore was no different than George W. Bush (we know how that turned out).
Meanwhile, in a demonstration of cognitive dissonance, Angel suggests that “Trump doesn’t really believe those things he says — he used to be in favor of universal health care. He’s just saying it to be appeal to Republicans.”
That is really making a huge assumption that as president, Trump would do anything but rubber-stamp the Republican Congress.
Not to mention who he would name to the Supreme Court, to head Treasury, Commerce, Defense, Joint Chiefs, and on and on and on.
When I insist that a Republican president would set back progressive policies so hard fought over the last century, and then add that Sanders would be destroyed in the general election by the Koch Brothers and the billion dollars in attack ads that they plan to spend on branding Sanders (New York. Jew. Communist), Angel insists that the Republican won’t win because of social media, which will counter the onslaught of paid media and will bring about the political revolution that Sanders is calling for.
What these young people fail to realize is that the only thing standing in the way of a complete reversal of policies — eviscerating climate action, civil rights, voting rights, access to health care, Social Security, Medicare, and on and on — has been Obama’s veto. They don’t see the bills that are coming out of the House and Senate as I do.
So to suggest that a Trump or Cruz presidency wouldn’t be that bad because it would trigger “the revolution” — as actress and ardent Sanders supporter Susan Sarandon has said — is scary.
By the end of a Trump or Cruz first term, we would have the oligarchy that Sanders rails about– voting suppression, gerrymandering, campaign finance, overhaul of tax system to give even more financial and political power corporations and wealthy, overturning financial and environmental regulations, and Big Brother intrusion into political opponents on the pretext of fighting terrorism (a la Bush/Cheney, Nixon)- all the mechanisms in place to erase any possibility of deposing Republican control.
Sanders and Trump may be polar opposites as candidates and what they stand for, but their supporters have more in common than not— a disdain for anything that smacks of being Establishment and a cynical disregard for “lamestream” media and for that matter, facts. It’s not cool to be anything than under the spell of an idealistic utopia in which the meek have inherited the world.
Like Trump, Sanders sows and taps hatred for “Others” — but in his construct, the enemy is Wall Street and Big Business and his tactic is to tar Hillary Clinton as an agent.
But if Sanders— and his surrogates— maintain this tone and he is not the nominee, his act of political revolution would be to give this pivotal, transformative election to the Republican, especially if the candidate turns out to be a White Knight plucked at the convention, like Paul Ryan, who would have been subjected to presidential-level scrutiny for only a matter of a few months before November.
