Tomorrow is Super Tuesday, and unless I miss my bet, by the end of the day, it will be well nigh mathematically impossible for Bernie to get the nomination. The fix has been in for a while, given the existence of Super delegates, who are there to make sure that you and I have a limited voice in choosing our presidential candidate. Even if Bernie comes out somewhat ahead tomorrow, his path to the nomination is all but blocked.
There’s been some talk about the possibility that Democrats won’t close ranks around the eventual victor (or should that be victress). See here for example, and Hillary boosters like Krugman (for whom I still have a great deal of respect, despite his flirtations with intellectual dishonesty on Hillary’s behalf) are intent on having us believe that Bernie backers are wild eyed radicals who constantly question the honesty of their intraparty opposition, while Hillary backer are, what else, Very Serious People.
So far, I’ve met no one among my fellow Democrats who would refuse to vote for the candidate they currently oppose, nor have I met anyone who usually mans the phones, etc., that has said they will refuse to work for either candidate. I’m sure there are such people, but I hope and believe they are a tiny fraction of the electorate. Here’s hoping that when and if the time comes, Bernie will bow out gracefully and give Hillary his full-throated support. She doesn’t deserve it, but we do.
I’ll support Hillary. I’ll even give her money, though with all that Wall Street dough coming her way I’m not sure she’ll need it. She is a deeply flawed candidate, who promises to continue us on each path that Obama has wrongly chosen, while probably leading us down new ones we should fear to tread. The .01% will have nothing to complain about should she get elected, nor will the neocons. When she started this campaign she promised to listen, which she’s done. But she listens harder to the folks who pay those speaking fees, and when it comes to doing more than listening, well, in this case past performance is a sure indicator of future performance. Nonetheless, she’s all we’ll have to stop the Donald, and that’s of paramount importance. There is every reason to believe she’s reverting to the Goldwater girl of old, but Goldwater was a progressive compared to the crop of crypto-fascists that are on offer from the ex-party of Lincoln.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to see a way through to a true progressive Renaissance with Hillary as president. We’ll have Debbie Wasserman Shultz or a clone heading the DNC; we’ll have Steve Israel or a clone recruiting closet Republicans to force on local Democrats, which candidates will continue to lose as they have reliably done in the past. The party will likely continue to drift right, not because that’s where the votes are, but because that’s where the money is.
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