Last week Allen Clifton, co-founder of Forward Progressives, wrote a column with the terrifying title Bernie Sanders Is Already Making It More Likely Republicans Win The White House In 2016.
How dare Bernie do such a thing! Hasn't Senator Sanders read any newspapers over the last six or seven years? Didn't anybody tell him that Hillary is going to be the nominee? Or is the grumpy old Senator from Vermont under the mistaken impression that the primaries have any other purpose than to reinforce what the party leaders have already determined to be our preference? (note: that was sarcasm you just read.)
Geeeshhh! Give me a freakin' break! What is Clifton so terrified of? This...
... what I ultimately fear Sanders is going to do is get liberals worked up just enough to where when he eventually loses the Democratic primary election to Hillary, it’s going to cause many to become apathetic and refuse to show up in 2016 to vote for the “not liberal enough/basically a Republican” Hillary Clinton.
Well, guess what, Mr. Clifton: It didn't take Bernie Sanders officially entering the race for many of us on the left to recognize that Hillary is no progressive. There were reasons why we didn't support her candidacy in 2008, and nothing since then has convinced us that we were wrong.
Let's get this clear from the start: If Hillary is nominated and loses, she will have lost it on her own accord, and not because she will be forced to debate an actual liberal before facing the Tea Time Circus. As Harry Truman so perfectly put it, "When a Republican runs against a Republican, the Republican will win every time."
(continue after the curlicue)...
Now, Clifton's site is "Forward Progressives," so he feels obligated to start his essay by telling us that "I absolutely love Sen. Bernie Sanders." He claims no such love for Mrs. Clinton, but his fear of a GOP win is enough to give her his endorsement eight months before the first primary ballot is to be cast.
I may already be several paragraphs into my response, but let me say that I, too, absolutely love Bernie - I have since the early '80s when I first started reading about that crazy Socialist winning over Vermont. Even more than that, I love democracy.
As a Daily Kos reader you already know, democracy is under fire. From restrictive voter ID laws, to cutting precincts and voting hours, to outright intimidation at the polls, to the one that no candidate is talking about - Citizens United - every effort is being made to bully citizens into either rubber-stamping the candidates endorsed by the corporate brass or staying home and keeping shut about it.
And into that barrage of anti-democratic activity steps Allen Clifton of "Forward Progressives" to admonish us to ignore anybody who steps in the way of Hillary ascendant. As Lyndon Johnson so perfectly put it, "I may not know much, but I know the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit."
Oh, wait, did I say no candidates were talking about Citizens United? That would be true if the Cliftons/Clintons of the world had their way, but it turns out that Senator Bernie Sanders is talking about it:
If he is elected president, he says, his Supreme Court nominees will have to pledge that they would vote to overturn the Citizens United decision that unleashed huge, unrestricted amounts of corporate and union campaign contributions as dark money into federal campaigns...
Unlike Clinton and the president, who both articulated discomfort with unrestricted corporate campaign money into Super PACs and 501(c)(4)s and (c)(6)s—and then proceeded to take advantage of the dynamic anyhow, Sanders has pledged not to use a Super PAC to raise money for his campaign.
Now you would think that's something that "Forward Progressives" would care about.
This forward progressive certainly does.
So, please, you may be "Ready for Hillary," but when you try to bully others into falling in line, you are not supporting democracy (or winning friends or elections).
For once there's a candidate who I have followed and admired for over 30 years, whose opinions most closely mirror my own, who - like me - is an independent who frequently allies with Democrats, and I intend to support him as long as he remains in the race - "viable" or not.
Yes, I recognize the strong likelihood that in November 2016 I will have to reluctantly get behind Hillary to avoid the Jeb-ernaut, but until then, I prefer to proceed as if we still have a choice in the matter, thank you.