I need to discuss the Bernie or Bust movement now, I think, because in a few more weeks, the Donkey Party nomination will be over and either a) Bernie will be the Donkey Candidate in a “surprise” turn-around1, in which case Bernie or Bust will become a moot point, or b) Hillary will be the Donkey Candidate, in which case Bernie or Bust will throw a loud temper tantrum and then fade away — and though it probably won’t actually have much effect on the election, if Hillary subsequently loses the election, the media will pull it out and polish it up to a fine sheen as the reason for Hillary’s loss.
I recently watched Susan Sarandon’s interview with Chris Matthews; she’s a Bernie supporter, and though the interview is now two months old, she was at that time on the fence about whether she would vote for Hillary.
Much as I despise Donald Trump and everything he represents, I’m also on the fence about Hillary. I’d like to talk this through.
There are a lot of people out there who think Hillary would be a horrible President. They see the three major contenders in the race at this point as a choice among FDR, Hitler, and Stalin. If FDR is thrown out of the race, they are compelled — if they vote at all — to choose either Hitler or Stalin, and they don’t want to participate in that process.
Should Hillary be nominated, people who feel this way about Hillary probably should conscientiously abstain from voting for President. They aren’t so much Bernie or Bust, as they are Never Hillary, and probably Never Donald as well, so there’s little point in them casting a vote for President. They can write in Bernie as a protest, but no write-in candidate is going to do well. I’d still encourage them to vote for the local and Congressional races — it will make a bigger difference, anyway.
I agree with Robert Reich: Hillary is the best choice for the government we have, while Bernie is the best choice for the government we need. Because I think our government is broken, with massive corruption from legalized bribery that is driving us toward collapse as a nation, I want to see changes that Hillary will not even try to bring about.
But in simple choice between Hillary and Donald, there isn’t much contest. Donald is a pathological liar and a narcissist, and has risen to his current position on the coattails of a movement that is brutish, ugly, ignorant, and nihilistic. Because he is a narcissist, he attracts sociopaths and flatterers to his circle of power. As a narcissist, he’s easily managed by sociopaths who have power. In four years’ time, he’ll be the prisoner and puppet of the machinery he surrounds himself with; being a narcissist, he won’t even know it has happened, and won’t believe it if he’s told. That machinery will be pure evil.
But it isn’t just a simple choice between two candidates. There’s the deeper issue of how we find ourselves in this situation, and that inevitably leads us back to core defects in our election process.
These have come garishly to light in this election cycle.
The Elephant Party was taken over by a brutish mob, following a demagogue. The Party barely resisted. The candidates they put up against the demagogue were — I don’t like using the word, but it fits — pathetic: pale shadows of cartoon cutouts of real candidates, rigid ideologues preaching a failed and increasingly unpopular ideology.
This happened because the Elephant Party made a deal with the Devil back in the 1970’s, to pander for votes, and in two generations, it has destroyed the Party. It may have tarnished the brand beyond redemption: the Republican Party may well vanish in the next generation. If it doesn’t, it will have to rebirth itself.
The Donkey Party has been corrupt — meaning bought-off — for a long time: it was seduced by union money in the 1960’s, and then switched allegiance to the bankers in the 1990’s. I’m sure its love of money goes back to the beginning: it was, after all, originally the party of the Antebellum South, the wealthy Southern land and slave owners whose ancestors came to the US to get rich.
The thing is, this love of money has led the Donkey Party into a lot of stupid behavior over the years, including the widespread vote-tampering in this primary election. If Hillary had been as strong a candidate as they want us to believe, none of that would have been necessary, or even tempting. The problem was, she wasn’t a strong candidate to begin with, and Bernie became a legitimate, and then serious, threat to her campaign. The Donkey Party leadership all across the country panicked and started vote-rigging.
That was a stupid move, because we’re not living in the 1800’s any more: that kind of open-handed vote-rigging gets easily caught and exposed.
Now, in defense of the Donkey Party, I have to point out — again — that it’s a club, and neither Bernie nor the Independents he pulled into this primary are (to put it delicately) their kind of people. They gladly took our money, and our votes for one of their own, but they really, really didn’t want to put out our candidate. They thought Bernie would be a fringe candidate who would bring in a few extra bucks, and it blew up in their faces.
This brings us close to the real problem: an arguable plurality of people in the US do not have any political representation at all. It isn’t that this group can’t vote — though there is a lot of overt vote suppression — but that the entire election is rigged. We routinely are forced to choose between Hitler and Stalin. It’s how the system is set up, and it’s been that way for generations.
Even then, though it’s a horrible shock to anyone who has grown up with the idea of fair elections in a democracy, that’s still not the real problem. In fact, we can argue that rigged elections are necessary to protect us all from the mob. Even if you don’t buy that argument, our flawed system of vote-rigging has been getting by, more or less, for quite some time.
The real problem is that the Parties — the vote-riggers — have lost touch with reality in a changing world.
The point of elections is not to give the people control, but to give the people voice. It is the job of the elected officials to listen to that voice: not to pander to it, nor to “help their constituents” line their pockets, but to pay attention to what is really going on in the country. That’s what representation means.
What’s perfectly clear right now is that they are not paying attention. They are paying attention to the money, and nothing but the money. As the money leaves the middle class and goes to the rich, the government has become an oligarchy. The unrepresented masses are getting restive.
The dysfunctional political parties are creating a disgruntled mob.
So let’s bring this back to the Bernie or Bust movement. A lot of people wouldn’t vote for Hillary on a bet. That’s fine — then they shouldn’t. But if the Donkey Party nominates Hillary, a lot of people who don’t really have such strong feelings about Hillary herself, will still want to punish the Donkey Party for being a Jackass. They want to confront the Jackass Party with an existential crisis, by pulling out their financial and political support. They want to make Hillary lose, to punish the Jackass Party for their failure to listen.
I know: I feel that way, too. But it’s the wrong way to go about this.
It’s time to form a new political party. One that will kick the Jackass Party from here to the moon, and give it a real existential crisis, and nightmares, and weak bowels. We need a true and enduring threat to their oligarchy and their corruption and their smugness. We need a party that offers us the kind of government we need, not the broken and out-of-touch kind we have.
Let’s call it a Progressive party.
In that context, we have to ask the question. If Hillary is nominated for the Jackass Party, which will aid the most in supporting the creation of a Progressive Party? President Hillary? Or President Donald?
Arguments can be made for either approach.
Electing President Donald will, if we survive the experience, unite a lot of people with a common enemy, but I think it will strengthen the Jackass Party in the end. And we might not survive the experience.
Electing President Hillary will buy time to set up a political party that has some clout. It will give people four (or eight) more years to see the flaws in the Jackass Party and its candidates’ policies. We still might not survive the experience, because our continuing out-of-touch oligarchy is actually destroying the country by inches: but I think we probably have eight years left.
I’m still waiting to see what happens at the Jackass Convention. The superdelegates should promote the stronger candidate, and that’s Bernie. I suspect they won’t. If they do nominate Hillary, I’ll probably vote for her. Just to buy some time.
But I’m good and ready to put the Jackass Party out of business. Who’s with me?
[1] Meaning a result other than the one the corporate media has been trying to push on us.
Themon the Bard 