This post made me very, very angry. And I say this as someone that is a staunch liberal Democrat.
“My Way or the Highway” politics is not a winning strategy. It’s never been a winning strategy for the Democratic Party, even when the Party was dominated by conservatives in the 19th century.
“Voting Blue No Matter Who” is not fealty — it’s reality. Even the 2018 midterm election conclusively proved that the Sanders coalition has yet to mobilize enough to actually win in the places that it matters: the overwhelming majority of Democrats that flipped the House were pragmatic Democrats that reflected the voices of their individual districts.
I am not a fan of Bernie Sanders — as a liberal, I am a staunch anti-populist and anti-paternalist. I want guaranteed, universal health care, but it needs to come via the public option. I am not a fan of fracking, but we are indeed nearly a half-century away from being able to to conclusively say that we, as a society, no longer need to depend on fossil fuels as the primary source of energy — environmentalists be damned. The climate change crisis requires urgent attention, but in a large representative democracy, this still requires enough voters to listen and to care. It doesn’t do us any good to run a candidate out there that could easily be defeated with a sustainable campaign of fearmongering by conservatives, attracting enough independent voters (who broke for Trump over Clinton in 2016) that have severe anxiety about a bullish left-wing policy approach.
And even then, Bernie Sanders would get my vote in the general election if he gets the nomination. He will get my campaign donation dollars. Because the real issue facing our country is not the Democratic Party embracing left-wing populism, but an incompetent, malcontent of a human being occupying the White House as the most undeserving and unqualified person to ever hold the title of President.
Politics is complex. Politics is dirty. Politics isn’t perfect. Politics isn’t pretty. Politics, however, is an exercise in human rationalism and pragmatism. Rationalism and pragmatism win elections — there were enough voters willing to rationalize Donald Trump and back him for pragmatic reasons to swing a narrow election to him in the states that it mattered.
The idea that you would be perfectly fine sitting out an election only because your preferred candidate did not win the nomination demonstrates two things. For one, you do not take this seriously. For two, it illuminates how much damage Bernie Sanders has done to the Democratic Party.
Remember this — if anything else — if you really want to help working class voters, if you really want to help distressed communities, if you really want to help minorities, and if you really want to start the impetus to change, then it takes scoring the victories you can win and let it build towards bigger ones. Sanders might be the one you believe in the most, but Sanders currently lacks pathway to build a coalition to implement most of his ideas: as a 78 year old, he may not even live to see that coalition be built up enough to dominate Congress. This is still a representative democracy.
A vote that does not go to the Democrat is a vote for Donald Trump. And if Donald Trump gets re-elected narrowly because Sanders supporters like yourself unwilling to realize that this is not a battle, but a protracted war against a cancerous form of right-wing politics, then you will be just as responsible for every disgusting policy, every despicable act that Trump and his minions can carry out during a second term as much as the voters whom enable and abet him.
