by Duane N. Burghard
©2015
Just when I thought I wasn't going to have a politics based blowout this week, Facebook struck again this morning, and I am off to the races.
My target this week is once again the Democratic Party's Presidential Race. I'd pick on the Republicans, but frankly that's WAY too easy, plus, they're doing a much better job of making themselves look ridiculous than I could ever do, so I'll pass on that job, at least for this week. And just to remind everyone where I'm coming from, I was born and raised a moderate, "Rockefeller Republican" ... a group of people who were very unceremoniously exorcised and kicked out by the religious right/neo-conservative movement because, well, basically because we weren't batshit crazy enough for them. There are quite a few of us, and we're now called conservative Democrats but, as you can imagine, it's a marriage that isn't without its disagreements ... which brings us nicely to this week's PROW (Political Rant Of the Week).
The supporters of Bernie Sanders are, at the moment, riding high and being quite "loud and proud" about their candidate in the race. I'd like to first go on record as saying that, like most Americans, I like Senator Sanders. He has a kind of "America's nice grandfather " quality to him. In this way, Sanders is not unlike our current Vice President, although Biden is more like America's slightly crazy Uncle. You know the one, he's the one you love dearly and always want to sit next to at Thanksgiving and whose heart is always in the right place, but who also occasionally says things that are "off the reservation" in strange and usually hilarious ways (which, let's face it, is a big part of why you want to be sitting next to him). But, with no disrespect to Biden, Sanders is different; he's far more of a policy wonk. He also comes off as smarter and, more importantly, he combines that intellect with an overt passion for his ideals. Agree with him or not (and I actually agree with him quite a bit), there is much to like and respect about Bernie Sanders as a politician and a person.
But with that said, I have a real problem with the Sanders campaign. Well, no I don't. I don't have a problem with the Sanders campaign, I have a problem with a lot of the campaign's supporters. What bothers me is how a candidate who is obviously this smart can have supporters, many of whom are otherwise also thoughtful and intelligent people, who can somehow simultaneously be so naive, ignorant and just plain stupid when it comes to the political realities of how our system works. This is especially strange to me because, again, many of them are otherwise pretty bright folks who hold well thought out and logical positions on a variety of issues that we actually agree on. But when you put them in a room with Sanders, or you place them in front of a news feed story showing Sanders addressing a crowd of thousands, it's like they all switch off a huge part of their brains.
To be specific, I'm already incredibly tired of hearing about how Sanders could win and how much Secretary Clinton is "just like those big bad Republicans." Is it possible for Sanders to win? Of course it is. It's also possible that I could decide to run and win. But in order to get from "could" to "will," you need something that America's political left has been short on lately; votes.
Elections are about who gets the most votes. Fortunately, there's not a single Sanders supporter I know who would argue that particular point with me. Now, as I noted in last week's PROW, the 2016 Election comes down to 270 electoral votes, and given that New England and the west coast will certainly go all blue and that the "heartland" and deep south will certainly go all red, in order to be the next President, Sanders would need a majority of the votes in enough of the remaining swing states to reach 270. And here we see the biggest problem the Sanders campaign faces: they lack the money, the organization, and most importantly, they lack the VOTES to win in those states. And, in some cases, it's not because there aren't enough potential voters out there, it's because the overwhelming majority of those potential voters DON'T VOTE. In fact, only about half of the eligible voters in this country bother to even register, and only about half of those people vote. Remember Reagan's win in 1984? Biggest Electoral blowout in history. Well, keep in mind when you think about that victory that about SEVENTY PERCENT of America's eligible voters DIDN'T vote for him. So the bottom line is that those people got the government they deserve (sadly, so did the rest of us, but that's another rant).
The fact is that our system ISN'T broken, at all. It CAN function just fine the way it is. It too often DOESN'T function properly due entirely to the manner in which it is taken advantage of (or, much more accurately, the manner in which it is NOT taken advantage of) by the people.
Since we don't disagree that elections are won with votes and that most people don't vote, hopefully we can all agree that it follows that politicians, in order to get elected, have to appeal to the majority of people who ACTUALLY VOTE. They DON'T have to espouse certain policies so that they will excite the public and get them to vote, that's LITERALLY BACKWARDS to how the system works. This may feel counterintuitive to the way things are or "should be" to many people (including a lot of my Sanders supporting friends), but here in the real world and not in the make believe, fictitious world of how things should be, in order to get elected and change anything for the better (and that doesn't mean all the way, that's in increments, that's "two steps forward, one step back", THAT is how Republics WORK), you have to get a majority of the "highly likely" voters to turn out and vote for you. THAT is what politicians have to do.
The problem facing the Sanders campaign right now is that the people who show up to rallies and cheer on Sanders and complain about Clinton are not in these swing states and are not high likelihood voters (if they were, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in). And the problem for the Democrats as a whole is that the Sanders campaign, contrary to the stated (and I believe VERY sincere) wishes of the candidate himself, stands a far better chance of dividing the party than uniting it. My liberal friends are ALWAYS upset and always complaining about having to "hold their nose" and/or going with the "least worst" option when voting ... but that's literally a necessary reality of living in a society like ours ... because not everyone thinks like we do (and/or not enough people who do think that way vote). Also, while I'm ranting on this particular subtopic, let me add that the argument that "people don't vote because they don't feel they have anything to vote for" is about the dumbest f***ing thing I've ever heard and is a 100% GUARANTEED way to end up in a dictatorship.
So this is what we get back to: liberals want to change the world, but they refuse to understand that elections are about votes and Republics are about compromise. They also have a HUGE problem with understanding that voting once every four years (which is what far too many of them do ... and you can "not like" that fact all you want, but statistics and election results don't lie) and winning the White House is, in the grand scheme, a LOT less important than controlling City Councils, School Boards and, most importantly, State Legislatures (you know, the ones that are currently gerrymandering the shit out of our Congressional districts and are responsible for the lopsided and dysfunctional mess we currently call Congress). The Republicans figured that out a long time ago, and that is how they're screwing up our country. I spent a LOT of time during my last run for the US Congress in 2006 screaming about how important it was to take the State House (and I remain especially grateful to those who credited me with helping some of those people who were "downballot" from me and won while I did not), but the Democratic Party has consistently showed that, when it comes to arrogance and ignorance, the Republicans aren't the only game in town.
Anyway, where liberals go SERIOUSLY astray is when they get all whipped up by the idea that Sanders can win. Senator Sanders has very little chance of winning the nomination and essentially ZERO chance of getting elected. And that's not because of ideas or rallies or anything else, that's because, in order to be President, you need to win 270 electoral votes, and to do that you have to win the majority of votes in battleground states ... and (again, as I went over last week) there's NO political mathematician (e.g. Nate Silver, who called 49 of 50 states correctly in 2008 and FIFTY of 50 states correctly in 2012) out there who thinks there's a snowball's chance in hell of that happening. Sanders DOESN'T now have and isn't ever likely to have the money, the organization, the support or the VOTES (of the majority of high likelihood voters) to win in those states.
So the problem for the Democrats is that when the Sanders supporters eventually get smacked in the face by reality, many of them will become disillusioned and depressed and say "Clinton is no different from the Republicans" (a statement which is, incidentally, about the biggest load of bullshit I've heard lately ... Secretary Clinton is FAR from my ideal candidate and she has some very real negatives that her campaign seems to have a dangerous blind eye about, but she's certainly not in favor of turning our nation into some sort of twisted oligarchical theocracy, and I am CERTAIN that we would be FAR worse off with whichever Republican nominee emerges). And then, as the completely dysfunctional and backwards result of their reality induced depression, they quiet down and stay home ... and then, before you know it, you really are living in a dictatorship.
So, if you want to support Sanders for the nomination, vote your conscience, go for it, have a great time ... but be ready to hold your nose later and support Clinton as the party's nominee. She IS, statistically, VERY likely to be your nominee, she IS better than the alternative, and failing to get on board with those facts WILL leave you worse off than you are now.
I feel like Kevin Bacon in A Few Good Men; these are the facts, and they are not in dispute.
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