Sanders Supporters Are Not Sheep... They’re the Future

[eridani]

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/03/23/sanders-supporters-are-not-sheep-theyre-future

When it comes to their take on Bernie Sanders supporters, there's a strange congruity between those who see themselves to the left of his campaign and the Clinton supporters to its right. From the one side, among the maybe two per cent of American socialists who do not support him, comes the peculiar charge that what Sanders is doing is acting as a “sheepdog” who is leading an idealistic band of mostly youthful supporters into the realm of the Democratic Party, where they will be corrupted and vote for Hillary Clinton in November. The other side seems to fear that Sanders isn't a “sheepdog.”

The Sanders campaign actually poses a couple of problems for his critics on the left. The first is that what Sanders calls democratic socialism often varies substantially from the versions found in their publications and on their websites. But even more importantly, for many of them the Democratic Party enjoys an almost metaphysical status as a sort of near occasion of sin – go near it and you never come back and you’ll never be the same. In one debate about the Sanders campaign that I participated in, the leader of one of the socialist parties went so far as to say that if Karl Marx himself were to come back from the grave and run for president of the United States, he wouldn’t vote for him if he ran as a Democrat – the triumph of ideology not only over reality, but even over imagined reality! In all, the disdain some of these organizations and individuals display for one of most successful mass movements of the left in this country’s history has to make you wonder if they haven’t become so used to being marginal to the nation’s political life that they’re now simply more comfortable with things staying that way. After all, they were a lot more special before this campaign brought the discussion of socialism into mainstream politics.

So far as many Clinton supporters go, on the other hand, the problem seems to be that they fear that Sanders won’t “deliver” the votes of his supporters to Clinton in November, should she win the nomination. Let me be clear: If Clinton wins, I expect that Sanders will endorse her – if you throw all in for the nomination of a party, it’s reasonable to expect that you’ll support the winner of the process. And personally, while I view Clinton as being more a part of the problem than a part of the solution, I have no trouble saying that she is nonetheless a decidedly better option than the likes of Donald Trump. At the same time, I’d say that in assuming that everyone that Sanders has brought into politics for the first time will or should just automatically flock to Clinton, her supporters are, not surprisingly, failing to understand what lies at the core of the Sanders campaign.

[hopemountain]

1. eridani~

thank you for all of your posts/work in support of bernie and the bernie sanders campaign.

go bernie!

[Scuba]

2. Yeah, it's not "Bernie or Bust", it's a rejection of the corruption within our system. These ...

... folks may not be able to advance Bernie to the nomination but that doesn't mean they're going to abandon the ideals that led them to support Bernie in the first place.

The genie is out of the bottle, and shouts of "you gotta pull for the blue team" just ain't gonna get him back in there.

[Rebkeh]

3. Thanks for posting this nt

[GreatGazoo]

4. A supporter of a 3rd term for the Clintons said yesterday that they hoped Sanders' base

didn't join because they "are toxic."

Would it be so hard for HRC, assuming she becomes the Dem nominee, to commit strongly to at least some of the ideas that Sanders' supporters are championing, rather than asking them to shut up and just throw the lever?

[farleftlib]

5. Great article!

A bit farther down I found this:

Likewise, Sanders cannot “deliver” his supporters to Clinton or any other candidate. If Clinton wins the nomination, she will have a lot of explaining to do to persuade them as to why they shouldn’t look on her as the same old same old.

I do believe that Bernie could still pull it out, but if he doesn't I'm curious to see if he will persuade his followers to support Clinton because I don't think many will do so, especially those who only became engaged in politics because of Bernie's revolution. Likewise, the loyalty oaths in GD-P (and the MSM) would stop, I think, if Clinton's supporters realized that there isn't going to be a massive influx of support for her from that quarter. There will be some, but not amount that fill auditoriums to the rafters in city after city. November is a long way off and if she keeps shooting herself in the foot I'm not sure she can seal the deal in the GE unless it's close enough to steal. http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/poll-hillary-2016#56789

[eridani]

6. He'll probably point out that losing one battle doesn't mean that y0u should give up, and--

--that pursuing issues that are politically revolutionary would be easier under Clinton than under any Republican. I agree with that--this is not going to be a re-run of the Obama years. Sanders supporters will support Clinton when she is on the right side of their issues and oppose her when she is not.

[in_cog_ni_to]

7. If they continue to steal primaries and caucuses

with their election fraud and voter suppression, come November, they deserve what they get. Bernie is OBVIOUSLY the chosen Democratic candidate, of WE THE PEOPLE and the DNC, DWS and TPTB continue to embrace one of the most, if not THE MOST, disliked presidential candidates (according to polls), so when she loses in November, that's on THEM and Clinton supporters. Polls clearly show Bernie supporters are NOT voting for another corrupt candidate. They've been warned. They ignore those warning at their peril.

If you keep voting for corrupt politicians, how do you ever rid the government of them? You don't!

PEACE
LOVE
BERNIE