It’s shaping up to be an election to remember. For one thing, the television coverage is so obsessive you couldn’t ignore it if you tried. But more importantly, I think, the selection is going to be … well … less than optimal, let’s say. All right – downright scary. Had to get that out there. The last group of northeastern states favored the front-runners pretty heavily, and it seems almost inevitable that we will be choosing between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. That situation will set in motion some strange dynamics that will likely cut across the standard notions of what each party stands for. I can picture, for instance, Clinton attacking Trump from the right on some aspects of foreign policy. Hard to predict what the effect of that might be.
The most disconcerting part of this likely scenario is the prospect of living through one, maybe two terms of rule by either an egotistical man-child-billionaire or a corporatist Democrat. Of course, I far prefer the latter, mostly because there is some opportunity to push Clinton from the left, but either way we are likely to see a more bellicose stance towards issues of war and peace. Either way we will be moving to the right of Obama along certain political vectors. And Obama is not even a standard progressive; he is a centrist, and very cautious at that.
What are the options to mitigate this? Same as always. Organize, organize, organize. Bernie Sanders may still be the nominee, but win or lose, he has done a tremendous amount of ground work organizing around core progressive issues – policies he terms socialist but which are much more like liberal FDR Democrat material. Regardless, we need to keep Bernie-ism alive even if Bernie is not the nominee, and that means pulling together on the local level. That’s how you bring these issues to the fore nationally. We’ve got the skeleton of a national organization, and there’s more than a little sinew on the bones. We should keep it marching forward.
I don’t think I have to remind anyone that the Republicans need to be beaten this fall, whoever wins the Democratic nomination. We have to do it to save the Supreme Court and to safeguard the vulnerable. But that doesn’t mean we can’t continue to make demands in a coordinated and effective way. This is the political revolution Bernie Sanders keeps talking about, it seems to me.
luv u,
jp
