Sanders needs to do "Golden Rule" thing, now that Clinton is presumptive nominee

Today is historic. The New York Times headline says it all.

Hillary Clinton Has Clinched Democratic Nomination, Survey Reports.

Hillary Clinton became the first woman to capture the presidential nomination of one of the country’s major political parties on Monday night, according to an Associated Press survey of Democratic superdelegates, securing enough of them to overcome a bruising challenge from Senator Bernie Sanders and turn to a brutal five-month campaign against Donald J. Trump.

Almost eight years after she ended her campaign against Barack Obama before a crowd with many teary women and girls, Mrs. Clinton signaled the news to a jubilant crowd at a campaign stop in Long Beach, Calif.

“I got to tell you, according to the news, we are on the brink of a historic, historic, unprecedented moment, but we still have work to do, don’t we?” she said. “We have six elections tomorrow, and we’re going to fight hard for every single vote, especially right here in California.”

It would have been nice if the Sanders campaign had acknowledged the historic nature of a woman finally being the presumptive presidential nominee of a major party.

A spokesperson could have said something like, "We congratulate Ms. Clinton on gaining enough delegates to be the apparent nominee of the Democratic Party. We hope to change the minds of some superdelegates, but we know this will be very difficult to do. Still, we will try, since so many people have supported Senator Sanders. If we fail, rest assured that we will be strong supporters of Ms. Clinton in her race against Donald Trump."

But the quotes in the New York Times story were nothing like this. Instead, I read:

“It is unfortunate that the media, in a rush to judgment, are ignoring the Democratic National Committee’s clear statement that it is wrong to count the votes of superdelegates before they actually vote at the convention this summer,” said Michael Briggs, a Sanders spokesman, in a statement.

“Secretary Clinton does not have and will not have the requisite number of pledged delegates to secure the nomination,” the statement continued.

“She will be dependent on superdelegates who do not vote until July 25 and who can change their minds between now and then.”

This reeks of sore loser -- especially since Sanders has railed against the ability of superdelegates to overturn the will of voters in the Democratic primaries. Who, it turns out, gave Clinton millions more votes and hundreds more pledged delegates than Sanders. 

Yet now Sanders is signaling that he will try to overturn the will of the clear majority of primary voters by getting superdelegates to give him the presidential nomination that he wasn't able to win in a fair fight with Clinton. 

I understand how tough it is to go through a bruising race for the Democratic presidential nomination and come up short. I also realize how passionate Sanders supporters are about their favored candidate. 

Both Sanders and his supporters need to do the Golden Rule thing, though: imagine how they would feel if things had turned out differently, and today the Associated Press had declared Bernie Sanders to be the presumptive presidential nominee of the Democratic party -- having won enough pledged delegates and the support of enough superdelegates to put him over the top.

They would be freaking outraged if a spokesperson for the Clinton campaign had said something like:

"Sure, Sanders has gotten the majority of votes and delegates. But this doesn't matter, because we're going to do our best to convince superdelegates that Clinton is the more electable candidate. America isn't ready to elect a socialist as president, no matter how many Democratic voters think otherwise."

They'd be screaming about the unfairness of Democratic party insiders being able to overturn the will of the majority of primary voters. 

Yet this is exactly what Sanders says he is intending to do. 

Along with most other supporters of Hillary Clinton, I have a lot of fondness and respect for Bernie Sanders. His positions aren't hugely different from Clinton's, but I like his unique passion and genuineness. Sanders has brought issues to the nation's attention that needed to be in the spotlight. 

Kudos to him for that. I'm worried, though, that Sanders is going to fritter away much of that goodwill by engaging in a mean-spirited, fruitless battle to achieve through superdelegates what he couldn't achieve through the primary process.

If he spends the time between now and the Democratic convention trying to take the nomination away from Clinton that she has fairly won, this is going to make progressives like me want to shun Sanders -- because it irks when he is trying to do to Clinton what he wouldn't have wanted done to him, if he'd won the majority of primary votes and delegates.

Comments

[Dungeness]

"It would have been nice if the Sanders campaign had acknowledged the historic nature of a woman finally being the presumptive presidential nominee of a major party.A spokesperson could have said something like, We congratulate Ms. Clinton on gaining enough delegates to be the apparent nominee of the Democratic Party..."

In the same spirit of fairness, Mr. Trump's supporters could whine:

It would have been nice if they acknowledged... yada, yada... and said 'we congratulate Mr. Trump on his historic victory in becoming the presumptive nominee... Yep, he won it fair and square. "

But to their credit, they didn't. Mr Sanders' supporters may view Clinton in much the same light. Instead of concentrating on issues, she hurled unconscionable smears at Bernie; refused to share a syllable of those little hundred grand honorariums for Wall Street speeches; ran her own little private servers in clear violation of policy; voted for war in Iraq over WMD and now promises a "no fly" zone over Syria... yep she'll show Obama and the rest of the boys how it's done. Clearly she's a deep well of "foreign policy experience" and unquestionable trustworthiness. Honest as the day is long.

I think Bernie and his supporters' demurral is a good thing for the Party and the country.

[Rain Trueax]

She hasn't clinched it but the media wants to make California, New Jersey etc. think it's over. It takes those super delegates for her to have the magic number. They can still change their minds. While they may not, this whole primary has been about a coronation and the media's resentment and under-coverage of Bernie to help it along. Not hard to see why, since Hillary is pro-Wall Street and pro-wars. Everything the oligarchs like. Although, she probably will get it, I see no reason for Bernie to get out or endorse her. He's an ideologue which means issues matter to him. This has been one of the most disappointing election seasons I remember-- and I'm old enough to remember a lot of them. A lot of Bernie's supporters will vote Green Party or not vote. I will vote for her, but I will do it holding my nose because the alternative is worse... not a lot though!

[Brian Hines]

Rain, in no way was the Democratic primary a "coronation." Clinton and Sanders have fought hard and long for votes and delegates. In the end, Clinton came away with millions more votes and hundreds more delegates. How is that a "coronation"? Blacks and Latinos were big supporters of Clinton. How is that a "coronation"?

Sanders got plenty of news coverage. This analysis says that in 2016 the coverage of Sanders and Clinton was about equal. Sanders supporters believe otherwise, but the facts are what matter.

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-bernie-blackout-20160405-story.html

Again, Sanders did a great job in his battle against Clinton, but almost certainly he has lost. Now he can make his movement into a continuing positive force for change in this country, or he can encourage undeserved bitterness and resentment among his supporters.

[Rain Trueax]

Since the beginning the media has been saying Sanders should get out and can't win. They have undercovered his big events, while not gotten into why hers have brought in so few people. The Democratic party made sure that the debates were when they were unlikely to be watched and limited how many. Hillary has a lot of negatives that the mainstream media has avoided discussing. Democrats are stuck with her because of the horrible alternative on the right (and frankly of all of them), but I won't be happy. I don't trust her. Do feel she favors wars. And her liking of Wall Street doesn't necessarily benefit little guys even who are invested in it. She has favored bad economic treaties and was for XL before she saw that wouldn't be popular. I won't have a choice but I am as disgusted to have Bill back there as to have her president! For liberals, she probably seems better but I am a moderate and there are areas I really don't trust her. The minorities went for her because of Bill. The interesting part will be whether she can beat Trump. He is his own worst enemy but she is so disliked by a lot of us that it'll be interesting to say the least.

[Harry Vanderpool]

Here is my prediction:
The morning after the election in November, the Salem Statesman Urinal and the Daily Dead Fishwrapper (Oregonian) will both have HUGE bold type at the top of the front page that says, "LANDSLIDE!!" for Trump.
Will that happen because he is the most highly qualified person in the world?
Hardly!
Like it or not, it IS going to happen. So get ready for President Trump.
Maybe after the election you will need a companion to Salem Political Snark:
"American Political Snark"

[MicahDavis]

Brian, I think there are a few things you’re missing.

The first is the timing of the AP call. Sanders and his supporters have consistently pointed out that the media has treated Clinton as the presumptive nominee. The timing of this call (the day before she actually did clinch the race with pledged delegates) only serves to suppress turnout and boost the AP’s profile. Announcing this allows AP to be the organization that called it first rather than waiting one day and letting the primary decide the race. This only benefits Clinton and the right. Primaries aren’t just about Presidential races but the Presidential races are important in driving turnout for down ballot candidates and issues. California uses a Top Two primary system so there have been cases of Republicans winning the top 2 spots and being the only options on the General Election ballot (and there are many cases of Democrats winning both top spots). Low turnout is bad for Democrats in general but it's even worse for progressive candidates. It also gives Sanders supporters another reason to believe that Sanders not only had to defeat Clinton but also the collective media apparatus and Democratic Party leaders. Sanders should absolutely be disappointed in the early call.

Another thing is that many Sanders supporters are not actually Democrats and have no loyalty to the party. Supporters range from moderate centrists to far-leftists many of which despise the Democratic Party so the Sanders campaign is smart to not immediately concede and piss off the movement. If the Clinton campaign wants to have any success wooing these voters, it needs to recognize that many of them are not susceptible to the party loyalty/unity argument or the lesser-evil argument.

One main counter-point to your overall argument is that Clinton didn’t concede immediately after Obama clinched either. It took her almost a week after the last primaries in 2008. Ultimately, I believe that Sanders will ultimately drop out and endorse Clinton just like she did with Obama. Sanders still has to caucus with the Democrats in the Senate and I doubt he’ll do anything to diminish his voice in that caucus. He knows that there is a movement behind his campaign and didn’t want to suppress the good that the movement could do in California by dropping out the day before the largest primary.

One more thing: I am interested in why you, as a self described progressive, would prefer Clinton over Sanders? Have you written a post on this subject?

And since you recently reviewed Thomas Franks recent book, I will leave you with his comments from a few hours ago at The Baffler:

“For the affluent professionals who are the Democratic Party’s truest believers, what is unfolding today is a scenario of fulfillment and triumph. They have always suspected that politics is really just a battle between the stupid and the smart, the ignorant and the enlightened, and every morning for the next five months their newspapers will tell them how very right they are. This election will pit their kind of person against a snarling, porcine Republican who might well have been assembled from spare parts in an MSNBC laboratory. The affluent will get to shake their heads in disbelief at the dumbshits who don’t understand how foreign policy is done, or don’t know how well the economy is really doing. Every one of their right-thinking biases will be confirmed. Every stereotype will be fulfilled. Every straw man will be propped up for their smackdown pleasure. For them, this will be an election to celebrate and commemorate for decades to come.”

[Harry Vanderpool]

Micah asked:
"One more thing: I am interested in why you, as a self described progressive, would prefer Clinton over Sanders? "

Many people of Brian and my generation have "self brainwashed" themselves into thinking that they are liberal when in fact they are not.
Brian is not a liberal.
He is a very well grounded, common sense moderate, that has not yet broken the bonds of the early years of cockamamie liberal nonsense that was so pervasive in the 60s.

The hard task for us all as we age and have a chance to put forth wisdom to a world that needs it more now than ever, is to BE HONEST WITH OURSELF!!

Brian is not a liberal. He is a moderate. All of us reading his blogs see that clearly.
He just has not realized it yet.
So for now, we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater.....

[Jack Holloway]

Brian, the other day I wrote to you and suggested that you might want to inform yourself about national political affairs, and recommended some excellent information sources. You replied that you don't care about national issues because you “prefer to think globally and act locally,” a statement that actually doesn't make sense.

But here you are, pontificating on national political matters that you don't know anything about. You clearly don't know anything about all the vote-rigging, all the targeted vote-suppression, and all the media disinformation campaigns, all aimed at reducing Sander's vote totals and elevating Clinton's.

You haven't seen the video compendiums of Hillary's strings of deliberate lies, all in her own voice. You know nothing of her terrible history of destroying entire nations, and slaughtering thousands upon thousands of innocent people, to protect Wall Street's massive hoard of U.S. Dollars. I'm sure that you don't even understand what that last item means.

As Secretary of State, and in addition to the horrors mentioned above, she has organized violent, fifth-column operations in countries throughout Africa, Central Asia, Eastern Europe and South America, all aimed at overthrowing democratic governments and replacing them with brutal right-wing dictators. She has wiped out civilization and slaughtered thousands in Libya and in Syria, organized the coup against the democratic government of Ukraine that reached its culmination in the violence of 2014, and turned it over to a mob of genocidal neo-Nazis. She facilitated the coup against the democratic government in Honduras and its replacement with an actual crime lord as president, sending thousands of innocent children fleeing for their lives and ending up in private,for-profit prisons in the US whose owners have donated many thousands of dollars to her campaigns.

You probably don't know anything about the money-laundering operations that the Clintons call “foundations,” but a lot of very good investigators are digging into those and the truth is coming out. You may know about the problem with her private computer servers, but I bet you don't understand its import. You can bet the Republicans do. If she gets elected, and if the Republicans hold onto the Congress, she will be impeached. The Republicans will have subpoena power, and they will produce the evidence that Obama has announced that he will sit on until after the November election.

There is a hell of a lot more than the few items I've listed above. Hillary has a long string of crimes and misdemeanors in her history. (And I'm not referring to the absurd Republican charges about Vince Foster's death or other made-up crap.) The evidence is in the public record and is being assembled. She will not be able to continue hiding them.

Now with specific reference to Sanders “doing the Golden Rule thing,” you do know, don't you, that the State Department Inspector General has released his damning report about Hillary's use of her private servers, making it clear that she deliberately ignored a number of laws and regulations, putting U S security, and security operatives at risk all over the world, and then lied about it. The FBI is investigating that matter. It's politically unlikely, but if the law is followed she may be indicted, either sometime between now and the convention, or sometime between the convention and the November election. If you were Bernie Sanders, and you were adequately informed about Hillary's legal jeopardy, would you “do the Golden Rule thing” and drop out, so that the totally corrupted DNC could replace Hillary with some other totally corrupted politician as its nominee? Or would you do as you had promised all your dedicated supporters that you would do, from the very beginning, and take it all the way to the convention, just as Hillary did, incidentally, in 2008?

Once again, if you'd like to know about reliable sources of information that do not include wacky conspiracy sites, I'll be happy to re-send it.

In the meanwhile, I'd suggest that you refrain from commenting about national political affairs until you have learned something about them.

Jack Holloway
p.s. I don't expect this will show up on your site.

[Jack Holloway]

Brian –

I take back my comment about my post not showing up on your site – I believed it, but I was certainly wrong about that.

Also, I salute you for your willingness to publish a post that took you personally to task, and rather strongly, at that. It takes a certain nobility to do that, and most blog owners that I know about would simply have trashed such a post.

So again, I salute you.

Jack Holloway