Last night Bernie Sanders made a great speech to his supporters. It was done over the internet (here) and as far as I can tell was not broadcast by anybody else. In the speech he made two very clear points. First, he said that the most important thing in the next five months was to defeat Donald Trump and that he would soon be devoting his time to obtain that result. Second, he said that the political revolution must continue so that we can transform the Democratic Party and our country. He did not endorse Hillary Clinton nor did he drop out of the race but neither did he mention his own candidacy for President or a third party. He focused on transforming the Democratic Party and our country from within the Democratic Party.
Hillary Clinton has continually said during this campaign that she is working hard to earn everybody's vote. The clear implication from Bernie Sanders' speech was that the ball is in her court to earn the votes and perhaps even the enthusiastic support of his supporters. Unfortunately, so far Secretary Clinton has failed to make any attempt to earn the votes of the Sanders's supporters. I can find no statement by her about the speech, not even an acknowledgement that it happened. Ignoring Bernie Sanders will not help her earn the votes of his supporters.
Secretary Clinton was not the only one to ignore him, the media ignored him as well. Rachel Maddow, who has been unable to hide her support for Hillary Clinton, gave his speech just a few minutes of coverage and in that time she ridiculed him and misconstrued what he had said. In the part of the speech where Senator Sanders encouraged his supporters to get involved at all levels of politics to elect progressive candidates, he encouraged them to run for office. What he was proposing was that the Democratic Party work to elect city council members, school board members, state legislators and governors in all 50 states. Rachel Maddow's voice was full of ridicule as she reported that he encouraged his supporters to run for office. This strategy has been incredibly successful for the Republicans. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party establishment only embraces populist efforts to reach out to all people in Presidential elections. Ridiculing what has been demonstrated to be a very effective strategy is not the way to earn the votes of Sanders' supporters.
My advice to Hillary Clinton (and her supporters) if she wants to earn the votes of Sanders' supporters is that she should:
- Truly, passionately and vocally embrace the new positions that she has taken on things like the TPP, Keystone Pipeline and drilling in the Arctic.
- Take the final step to eliminate small policy differences with Bernie Sanders on issues such as (1) fracking (If she is going to regulate it out of existence, why not just ban it?); (2) breaking up the big banks (She says she will consider it. She has had plenty of time to consider it, and she has never made a cogent argument against it, so break up the big banks.); and (3) $15 an hour minimum wage (she says she supports the $15 an hour movement but refuses to endorse it stopping at $12 which while a big improvement falls short of lifting people out of poverty, so endorse a $15 an hour federal minimum wage.)
- Passionately embrace bold plans to transform our country including, significant tax increases on the very wealthy (Her very minimal increases are not sufficient to address our needs for funds or to reduce with the wealth and income inequality.) and meaningful infrastructure spending (Her proposal for $275 billion is without detail and completely insufficient to meet our needs and stimulate our economy. Consider a plan more like Senator Sanders' detailed plan for $1 trillion.)
- Embrace healthcare as a right and lay out a clear plan for how her changes in Obamacare will lead to healthcare for all.
- On issues where she cannot in good faith move toward Senator Sanders' positions, engage in an open dialogue about those issues in which she truly listens and engages even if she does not ultimately change her position.
- Demonstrate her commitment to getting big money out of politics. Even though she takes big money, lay out a clear plan for how she will move from our money tainted and broken system today to a political and economic system not dominated by big money in the future.
- Enthusiastically embrace the reformation of the Democratic Party's primary process: eliminate caucuses; eliminate super delegates; hold open, same day registration primaries; and ban big money contributions to the DNC as President Obama did.
- Do not rely on the "I'm better than Donald Trump" approach. Demonstrate that she is progressive and wants the Democratic Party and the country to transform itself.
- Appoint a true progressive, not an incrementalist, as her vice president.
There are, of course, many other things that Secretary Clinton could, and I hope, will do but these might give the Sanders' supporters the confidence in her that they need in order to vote for her and perhaps even work hard for her election not just against the election of Donald Trump.
Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal
