Full disclosure: I was against Hillary Clinton before the primary season even began, before I had any inkling that Bernie Sanders would run. If that bothers you, kindly stop reading now, get yourself a delicious cup of coffee, and may the rest of your day be happy and hassle-free; please refrain from jumping into the comments to derail discussion of what I’m about to say.
Despite an outbreak of wandering goalposts, despite the fact that he is at this point far enough behind in the delegate count that his chances of winning are converging on zero, Bernie Sanders has outperformed expectations. As his campaign powered up, kos predicted that he would hit his “ceiling” at around 30 percent support. He’s broken through that ceiling in all but four states and won many of them outright, including Michigan and Wisconsin. There is a loud and clear message in his performance, for anyone who cares to listen: A lot of voters who care enough about the Democratic Party to vote in its primaries are deeply dissatisfied with the party’s recent direction. Never mind how you feel about her or about him, never mind what they’ve said on the campaign trail, what’s true and what’s not quite true and what’s true-but-misleading; the fact of these voters’ dissatisfaction is a problem that the party has to deal with in order to survive, let alone succeed.
However much we may flatter ourselves to think otherwise, none of us is purely a creature of reason. We are all driven by emotions, whomever we support. These emotions include righteous anger, sympathy, anxiety, despair, disgust, satisfaction, excitement, hope, joy. And also some that are in some cases generated, in some cases worsened, by the animosity between camps: resentment, bitterness, loathing.
As Sanders’ chances of victory recede yet he soldiers on, those last three feelings color more and more interactions between his supporters and Hillary Clinton’s. Her supporters resent his unwillingness to get out of the way and his supporters’ refusal to stop criticizing her. His supporters resent her supporters’ dismissal and mockery of their concerns, being called blackmailers and extortionists for sticking to their values, being admonished that losers are entitled to nothing and get nothing.
But as both sides have pointed out (each, of course, holding the other responsible for making the first concession), at some point, Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents have to reunify in order to fight off the resurgence of right-wing authoritarianism in November. And, crucially, whether voters are willing to take part in this reunification will be a function not of how serious a threat Donald Trump or Ted Cruz poses, but of whether their feelings, the reasons why they chose a candidate to support in the first place, are acknowledged and respected. That’s just how people are, and you can deplore it, but if you want to win, you can’t disregard it.
How will this reunification happen?
As a Sanders supporter, assuming he doesn’t win, this is what I hope for most:
- Sanders and Clinton arrange a rhetorical cease-fire. Sanders continues to push, right up until the convention, for as many votes as he can get, returning to the empathetic and aspirational themes that he began his campaign with. Clinton stops campaigning against Sanders and just campaigns for herself.
- Sanders enters the convention with between 40 and 50 percent of the pledged delegates.
- The delegates draft a platform that returns the party to a full-throated defense of progressive values. A couple of Sanders’ policy prescriptions are included, or not; what’s vastly more important is that the platform is an unhedged affirmation of equal rights and dignity, justice, security and opportunity for all Americans. It’s a bold and fierce repudiation of the Republicans’ right-wing authoritarianism on every front; there is no longer any issue on which a critic can say the Democrats are no different—or even not different enough—from the Republicans.
- Clinton chooses a vice presidential candidate from the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
- Sanders, in a prominent speaking slot, delivers an address extolling these progressive values as the values of the Democratic Party and declaring his intention to remain a member of the party to see them put into practice.
- Clinton and Sanders hit the campaign trail, she as the nominee, he as a surrogate, letting Americans know that the Democratic Party sees and acknowledges their struggles and will fight to give us a future in which we can be safe, happy, healthy and untroubled, as much as any mortal human being can be.
- The party kicks the neo-Confederates’ ass in November. Clinton announces her cabinet choices, and at least two-thirds of them (including, at a minimum, State, Justice, Labor, Education and the EPA) are genuine progressives who will carry out the party platform faithfully. She becomes the next FDR.
Lest we all get too caught up in the spirit of kumbaya, however, this is not what I think will happen. Based on past experience as an observer of the Democratic Party and of Hillary Clinton herself, not to mention recent experience observing her supporters (oh, yeah, I’ve got my own share of resentment, bitterness and loathing going on right now), I’m pessimistic about the outcome of the convention. No matter how well Sanders performs between now and the convention, here’s what I fear will happen:
- Rhetoric between Clinton and Sanders, and between their respective supporters, will get even more testy and harsh than it’s been. Resentment, bitterness and loathing will increase. The positive message of Sanders’ campaign will get drowned out, and his supporters will feel dismissed and alienated by the Clinton campaign, while Clinton’s supporters will feel disrespected and frustrated.
- Sanders enters the convention with between 40 and 50 percent of the pledged delegates.
- The delegates draft a platform that bears a strong resemblance to the 2012 platform, with vaguely progressive hand-waving alongside commitments to free-trade agreements, “all of the above” energy policy and corporate education reform. Sanders’ delegates are snubbed, given no input into the platform, and vote against it as a bloc, fueling Clinton supporters’ accusations that they’re disloyal to the party.
- Clinton chooses a running mate who is a person of color but also a neoliberal—a Cory Booker or Julian Castro type.
- Sanders is given the most undistinguished block on the speaking schedule. The news channels don’t air it.
- Clinton hits the campaign trail; Sanders makes a lukewarm statement about supporting the Democratic nominee, then goes back to the Senate. Some of his supporters vote for Clinton out of a sense of obligation or a fear of Republican victory; a few vote for Jill Stein; many others, disgruntled, tune out and don’t vote at all.
- With turnout depressed, Clinton possibly loses to Donald Trump, giving rise to a new Democratic Dolchstoßlegende (“Sanderista” becoming the new “Naderite”), but more probably ekes out a narrow victory. Her cabinet is full of Summers, Geithner, Rubin and Duncan types. The Republicans hold both houses of Congress and tighten their grip in 2018 as even more Democratic voters stay home on election day.
There are Clinton supporters who will read this as some kind of threat, as an attempt at blackmail or extortion. This is nothing of the kind. This, rather, is what I genuinely fear will happen, whether I want it to or not. I hope it doesn’t, but right now I have no basis for believing that my hope will be fulfilled. And while there are a whole range of possibilities in between these two scenarios that may come to pass, I believe that if we really want what’s best for the Democratic Party, if we really want what’s best for the people of this nation and the world, the hopes and fears of this large bloc of voters who’ve chosen to support Sanders over Clinton, our anger and anxiety and disgust, our joy and excitement and love, must be understood, must be taken seriously, must be treated with respect.
Yesterday, pollwatcher asked (whether sincerely or rhetorically, it was hard to tell), “You say over and over that the Senator's supporters need to be persuaded in order to vote and work for the party. OK, what will persuade you?”
This was my answer:
Acknowledge why Sanders voters feel the way we do. (Hint: It’s not because we’re all privileged white kids who don’t understand the real world. Listen to some James McMurtry if you need an explanation.)
Acknowledge why we don’t trust Clinton the way you do.
Acknowledge that that trust has to be established in a meaningful way.
Acknowledge that the issues we’re talking about are real issues, that the status quo has caused real harm and that in many cases Democrats have been complicit in creating and maintaining that status quo.
Acknowledge that what we’re pushing for is something fairer and kinder and that it’s worth it to aim high even if the only advances you can make are small.
Dismissiveness and disdain have no part in any of this, and will only undermine whatever sincere efforts you believe yourselves to be making.
Clinton supporters don’t have to believe we’ve made the right choice in whom to support, but they do have to recognize (a) that our concerns, both about Clinton as a candidate and about the state of the nation, are legitimate; and (b) that we make up a large part of the vote that Hillary Clinton will need not only to win in November but to win with a mandate large enough to shake the conventional wisdom out of its Reaganite torpor.
Writing us off as losers who failed, treating 40 or 45 or 49.9 percent as equal to zero, giving us the Willy Wonka treatment—
—is a recipe for estrangement, withdrawal and defeat.