Windsor, CA
February 22, 2016
by Rich Scheck
According to the NY times, Hillary Clinton is on the verge of locking
up the Democratic presidential nomination.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/22/us/politics/delegate-count-leaving-bernie-sanders-with-steep-climb.html?_r=1
Such an occurrence will be a shocking blow to the millions of Sanders
followers who entertained the dream that his long-shot candidacy would
be successful and provide them with the results he promised.
If true, that leaves a very serious question: with so much time before the
actual election and such a deep dislike of Mrs. Clinton among most of the
Sandernistas, what will they do now?
They have a bunch of options that will depend in part on what Sanders
himself does. They can form a third party and build for the future.
They can back one of the existing third-party candidates like Jill Stein.
They can call for a boycott. They can support that part of the Trump
campaign that is anti-establishment like 9/11 Truth, audit the Fed and
a sane foreign policy, i. e. work with Russia and no more stupid wars.
They can also withdraw and either drop out or just wait for 2020, having
made their point.
Of course, they can hold their nose and vote for Hillary, despite the fact
that she represents so much of what they hate including her Neo-con
foreign policy record, Wall Street connections and scandal-ridden career.
She’s a woman: that means they can make “herstory” by electing the first
female president like they did with making Obama the first black president.
But what did that get them except more of the same and despair for the
future rather than what they expected: “Hope and Change”?
It is far too early to predict with so many rapidly changing factors. One
thing will be sure to happen and that is recrimination against Sanders for
being so passive.
He missed countless opportunities to go for the jugular against such a
vulnerable candidate as Hillary. He started off badly in the first debate when
he gave her a pass on the e-mail scandal. Rather than sticking the dagger in
on that, Benghazi and her feeble record of countless foreign policy failures
as Secretary of State, he decided to play nice and bemoan the media’s focus on
her potentially criminal e-mails. https://stateofthenation2012.com/?p=31925
You can bet a Donald Trump or any other Republican nominee will not be so
kind. Moreover, Sanders failed to complain loudly about all the funny business
in Iowa and Nevada with her campaign tactics and the vote count. Instead of
tagging her with the cheat label and branding her as completely untrustworthy
to lead the Dems in November, he caved in to his outsider status for fear of
ruffling the feathers of the party faithful.
Sanders also had a unique opportunity to play the blame game aggressively
against the Bush team and less directly against Hillary for the Iraq War with the
resulting mess that followed in its wake. Instead he let that issue be preempted
by the Republican outsider, Donald Trump, who proceeded to exploit it so
powerfully that he dispatched the lame Jeb to the sidelines, likely ending one
of the pillars of recent Republican domination—the Bush family— to the dustbin
of history.
Instead of appealing to the millions of those who doubt the official narrative of
9/11 by joining the few Congressmen who supported release of the 28 redacted
pages of the Senate Intelligence Report on 911, he chose to remain silent on
that critical issue and again allowed Trump to capture it from him.
The question remains: what will Sanders’ followers do in the days ahead as
his quest falls far short, his promises evaporate into thin air and the hard reality
of an ugly political landscape smacks up against their idealism and decency?
Sadly for them, it looks like we are about to find out!
References:
https://stateofthenation2012.com/?p=31966
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44271.htm
http://investmentwatchblog.com/trump-insider-trump-will-audit-the-fed/
http://usuncut.com/politics/the-nevada-caucus-is-a-complete-fiasco/