The Coming Panic

I want to take a moment and speak on what will no doubt be the almost blind panic that will come from the Democratic Party in the coming months as they realize that in Hillary Clinton will basically be in a dead heat against America's gateway fascist and the narratives they will use to get people to vote for the Clinton/Kaine ticket.

First, we will get multiple moralizing lectures about the dangers of splitting the vote, with an extremely heavy emphasis on the Bush/Gore election.  There are already a shit ton of these posts on Tumblr, and I'm sure they will migrate to liberal media outlets and op-eds about a day to a week after the convention closes.  They will talk, ad nauseam, about how Ralph Nader stole so many liberal voters that it allowed George W. Bush to run the world into the ground and how we need to vote for Hillary to stop that from happening again.  Conveniently left out of this horror story, of course, is the minor detail that the Supreme Court literally told Florida not to count the votes people cast and that when people studied those votes afterwards, they found there was a fair chance Gore would have won the election.  It would've been a narrow win, but a win nonetheless.  If this fact does get included into the talking point, it will only be so that Nader can take the blame for making the vote close enough for a recount in the first place instead of handing Gore a safe, comfortable victory.  Also left out is that the worst aspects of the Bush administration that people cite (the wars in the Middle East, the financial deregulation, the obstruction of LGBT rights) that the split vote cursed us to where all things Hillary Clinton supported.  So it's a bit weird to use the awfulness of the Bush years as the thing which Clinton will save us from when she enthusiastically campaigned to make all of those things happen.

Another push Democratic loyalists will use is how the Democratic platform is the most progressive platform in recent memory and Hillary is running on that platform.  And yeah, the platform has a lot of good stuff in it, but you can't really say that all those things are there because of Hillary Clinton.  I mean, are we really going to forget that she refused to take any stance in the Fight for $15 until she was basically forced to do so?  Do you really think a woman who went around the world championing the virtues of fracking would really put a serious, comprehensive action against climate change if left to her own devices?  Or that a woman who six months ago derided single-payer health care as a pipe dream would pursue universal health coverage?  Or maybe you think that after she used the DNC to work around campaign donation limits she would suddenly feel like money in politics is a bad thing. Please.  The primary reason all of those thing are in there is because of the Sanders campaign and the movement it generated, the same people and principles Clinton and her surrogates have spent the last year dismissing as unrealistic, ignorant of political realities, and dreamers who have no capabilities of accomplishing these goals in the real world.  So trying to use a platform that she has spent a significant amount of time belittling as proof of her progressive credentials basically demands everyone forget everything she said in the primary when those ideas weren't coming out of her mouth.

One other major factor that I think is going to cause the Clinton camp loads of trouble is a fundamental misunderstanding of what Trump is and how he came to prominence in our political culture. Yes, the racism, the total ignorance of global politics, the mendacity, the misogyny are all very real aspects of his campaign and are things to focus on and criticize.  And yes, his willingness to embrace all of those things without any filter has bolstered his support.  But more importantly than that, the core of his message is that the middle class just isn't what it used to be; that they have been sold down the river by political parties who funneled the money and resources of working people to their rich donors.  The sad thing is, he's right.  He's talking to a country where 63% of people are one missed paycheck away form homelessness, to a middle class that used to earn 62% of income in the country in 1970 but now only earns 43%.  Of course, his proposed policies to fix these things aren't going to work, but the simple acknowledgement that there is a problem is incredibly powerful in a political climate that refuses to believe there's even a problem to address.  That simple fact is the strongest factor underlining Trump's support, and if Clinton doesn't develop a strategy to neutralize that, her chances of winning aren't that great.

But since the "Third Way" strategy of selling out core constituencies to big money donors for campaign contributions that Hillary pioneered with her husband played such a major role in creating a status quo that drove people to the point of desperation enough that Trump seems like a solid Presidential candidate, I doubt she's going to come up with a strategy to counter-act his narrative.  Instead I'm sure she will go with her tried-and-true method of just pretending she never did those things and calling out people who remind the world of her own actions.  It's really this attitude that she as done no wrong, that she has nothing to apologize for, that is feeding so many people's reluctance and disgust for voting for her.  That being said, I do think it benefits the progressive wing of the party more to support her.  Not because she's actually inherently progressive, but because of who she is as a person.

Hillary is a political animal that follows the political winds and nothing else.   Whatever positions offer her the path of least resistance to the halls of power and whatever principles she feels the need to espouse to stay there have been and always will be her guiding lights.  The fact that the Sanders campaign has shifted the ground enough where the platform calls for a public option, an expansion of Medicare, the strengthening of Social Security instead of cutting it, is a testament to the power of the people when they actually engage in the political process.  And if you stay and hold her feet to the fire and keep the ground shifting, then you're basically ensuring that for Hillary to survive and thrive, she will have no other option but to fulfill and pursue a progressive agenda.

Because here's the dirty little secret behind all the vote splitting demagoguery and all the grandstanding on the Party platform: To become President, Hillary Clinton desperately needs the progressive block to stay behind her; she needs their votes, their donations, their canvassing, and their activism.  Without those things, there's a better than fair chance that she's going to lose.  So, instead of seeing a vote for Clinton as a capitulation, you should really start seeing it as the leverage that it is.  The best strategy for the people who want the political revolution Sanders has been championing isn't to throw that power away on third-party candidates or doing write-ins of Sanders' name; it's to make sure that your votes carry Clinton into the White House, and then spending the next four years making sure she never, ever forgets that.