I still plan to vote for Bernie Sanders in the Connecticut primary, but I have to say that I am disappointed in his recent defection to the dark side of politics, which have forced Hillary Clinton to respond in kind, though I must admit, with greater restraint than Sanders has demonstrated. Sanders has pulled back some, disavowing his claim that Hillary Clinton is not qualified to be president by "Trumpizing" his original remark: converting claims that she disqualified herself with her Iraq vote and using her PAC to the simple assertion that her judgment is suspect. I agree with him on that point because I have thought all along that her decision to use a private server, purportedly just for her emails, was pointless at best, but more aptly an invitation to exactly what has eventuated: a Republican talking point that won't go away. I still don't understand her motivation, and apparently even those in her political camp didn't either...not from the very start. Yet, if Sanders had just said that at the first debate between Democratic candidates instead of exclaiming that he was sick of hearing about Clinton's "damn emails," he could have made political hay and then let it lie without looking like the cliché negative politician that he has been advised to be. That's the problem. Just like some other Democrats in the past and all Republicans, he has been seduced by what is now his ambition to be president...what used to be just an attempt to offer the American people an alternative to the politically commonplace and get his issues--our issues--out into the public forum. And Sanders fall from grace is a function of just one thing; he hired political professionals to run his campaign instead of relying on his own counsel.
When a candidate gets professional political advisors involved in his campaign, he can't be surprised by the advice they give him. Unfortunately--inexplicably I might add in that everyone you talk to bemoans the bad-mouthing that politics always devolves to these days--negative works with the American people. It isn't enough to stand for something today; you have to be against what the opponent is for, and you have to not just decry it, but desecrate it. Thus, when some of Sanders' campaign staff were interviewed and bespoke their frustration with the fact that their boss is a nice guy despite the fact that he is a politician, they blithely opined that he should have been more of a politician and less of a nice guy. And unfortunately...and this seems to have been just a moment of weakness...Sanders took their advice. He is retrenching now, but frankly, I am a little disillusioned. But in the end, just as in every other respect, I would rather have a Democrat like Sanders or Clinton than any of the Republicans in the race now or in the past, and negativity is the reason.
Think back to the beginning of the Obama administration. Mitch McConnell, then just the minority leader in The Senate, stated publicly that his and his party's goal was to make President Obama a one term president, and they then openly set about the task. They thwarted every attempt to do anything, best interest of the American people be damned. The Republicans killed the single payer option in the Affordable Care Act, which more than 60% of the American people wanted at one point during the W. Bush administration, and they almost prevented the Affordable Care Act from becoming a reality at all. Then, once it was passed, they poisoned public perception of The Act, and ignored that more than 48 million people didn't have insurance or other access to health care, and now they ignore the fact that more than 11 million of them have. They decry the Obama approach to foreign affairs, but they have yet to suggest any plausible alternative to, for example, The President's insistence that a coalition of nations prosecute the war against ISIL, declining to immerse Americans in yet another ill-advised war in the middle east as the chief protagonist who will be colored as the chief antagonist by the jihadists. They already vilify us in order to recruit. Can you imagine what they would do if we did what Ted Cruz thinks we should and "carpet bombed" Syria? Iran has stopped developing its nuclear capacity pursuant to the Iran nuclear treaty, but the Republicans criticize it because the treaty is only binding for a time certain...fifteen or twenty years depending on who is describing its terms. They claim that Mr. Obama has wrecked the economy while they ignore the facts that unemployment is at 5% when it was almost 10% when he was inaugurated, and that we produce more than 200,000 new jobs every month now while we were losing over 700,000 every month in January 2008.
It's no wonder that decent people like Bernie Sanders get drawn into the bleak American style of politicking. Negative works, as the Republicans, who advocate lower taxes for the very few rich people and have yet to propose a way in which to make doctors accessible to those who have been unable to afford them for decades, demonstrate over and over again. It just proves a point that I have made over and over again. On election day, the American people get just what they deserve. God forbid it be a Republican president.
Your friend,
Mike
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