Ruth
Conniff, editor-in-chief of The Progressive, was a passionate Bernie supporter.
She attended the Democratic National Convention and was mostly disgusted by the
proceedings.
She
writes:
The
purest expression of Clinton’s philosophy came when she described how she
remembered her own mother, who was cruelly abandoned by her parents at a young
age, and how she was reminded of her mother’s story when she met a little girl
in Arkansas who sat on the porch all day in a wheelchair, desperately yearning
to go to school. Clinton set about fighting for the rights of disabled children
to get the same access to public education as their non-disabled peers.
“Simply
caring is not enough,” Clinton stated, in what could be her credo. “To drive
real change you have to understand both hearts and laws,”
“It’s a big idea, isn’t it?” She continued. “All children with disabilities deserve to go to school . . . How do you make it happen?” Answer: getting heavily involved in policy details.
This
is Clinton’s core belief: Life is tough. You want to make things better? Don’t
complain, get in the fray, fight, engage, compromise, persevere.
The
Bernie delegates, God bless them, are not quite ready for Hillary or the
pragmatic, compromising realpolitik she represents. And you can hardly blame
them for feeling whipsawed by their experience at the Democratic convention.
On
Thursday night, no sooner had the great Reverend William Barber finished his
sermon, calling on everyone present to join together to revive the heart of
America, and walking off stage to thunderous applause, than General John Allen
and his military retinue marched in to declare: “America is the Greatest Nation
on Earth.” General Allen endorsed U.S. military ventures around the globe. “We
will oppose and resist tyranny and we will defeat evil,” he declared.
The
Sanders campaign has already achieved a lot, she writes.
To
win, Hillary Clinton needs the Sanders voters. And she knows it.
“Bernie
Sanders and I will work together to make college tuition free,” Hillary
declared in her address. “We will also liberate millions of people who already
have student debt.”
The
interesting question now is not whether Bernie Sanders voters will hold their
noses and vote for Hillary. Most will.
The
more interesting question is whether they will stick it out and stay involved
in electoral politics.
“We
all know that Donald Trump is a racist demagogue,” said Peter Rickman, a Bernie
delegate from Wisconsin and the Working Families Party co-chair in the state….
If
enough Bernie people are willing to work within the party, with the suits and
the hacks and the phonies they detest, long enough and hard enough to take over
the Democratic Party and force it to fulfill its progressive ideals, they could
transform American politics.
And
when they do, their movements against fracking and destructive trade deals and
an end to U.S. military aggression abroad will be edited together with the
heroes of the other great social movements of history into a sappy video
montage at a future Democratic national convention.