The stark differences

[JDPriestly]

41. It isn't intraparty friction. It is the process of picking a candidate.

Bernie is relying on volunteers to do some of the work on his campaign that Hillary is hiring people and buying ads to do.

That means that we Bernie supporters are responsible for getting Bernie's message out as volunteers. And that is what I am doing. Getting Bernie's message out. Organizing. Speaking (writing actually) my mind.

The Hillary faction wants to stop Bernie and the way they are doing that is by trying to silence Bernie supporters.

Rather than telling Bernie supporters to shut up, Hillary supporters should explain why they want to vote for a candidate who changes her mind so often and so easily on issues on which Bernie has always been on the morally and socially correct side.

The "flip-flop card" is important to me because one of my doubts about Hillary is her ability to make good decisions on the issues. I think that she has poor judgment, that she is not morally grounded on social issues. That moral grounding that Bernie has is really important to me. He just takes the high road when it comes to things like human rights, making sure everyone is safe and OK, when it comes to loving others and having compassion. He just has the values that I was raised with. His economic stances come from those values. That's why he is concerned about the silent, hidden unemployment, about the college debt our children are facing, about fair immigration laws that don't throw good people out of our country, about fair treatment of minorities, especially in our justice and police system, about the TPP courts, about all the issues that I care about.

I will explain to you where I come from. My father was a Methodist minister and a social worker. I care about justice. That is why I am a Democrat. Justice means fairness and respect for all not only with regard to jobs and economics (especially with regard to discouraging fraud and the taking advantage of people by the very rich), race, poverty (I worked raising money for a large homeless project for years), equality (gender, age, race) and other social issues. I'm with Bernie on these issues. He is much stronger say on the idea of single payer insurance than Hillary is. He is stronger on protecting Social Security than Hillary is. I care about the poor. I was actually raised to be a Christian. I don't know where the so-called religious right comes from, but they certainly have not read the same Bible I was raised on.

So that is why Hillary's flip-flopping is important to me. How can anyone favor the death penalty? It makes no sense to me. How could she have? It looks like political expediency on her part to me. Supporting the death penalty got you votes in 2000. Not such a big issue now, so maybe she will have her pollsters check the national pulse and change her mind. I have no idea, but I do know that Bernie stands solidly on issues even gun laws where I and most Americans do. And that is why I think he stands a very good chance of being our next president.

Bernie has not had to change his mind on every other issue because he made his mind up in the first place based on certain moral principles and not on the polls or what he thought people wanted to hear. And that is Bernie's greatest strength. In this time of social upheaval, this time of great change, Bernie has steadfast moral principles that are very, very American. He speaks for the country in that moral sense. That's why people are so excited about hearing him speak. He speaks for the best that is in our nation.