.
.
.
Some Presidential candidate’s pre-election polls must be REALLY, REALLY BAD for their media partners to call the whole election on the day before the California primary! VOTE ANYWAY — here’s why!
(1) The Premature Whistles
An embarrassing moment in California’s political history is mercifully coming to an end. For three weeks here in California — and three months, nationwide, and by some measures since even before the first votes of the campaign were cast — Hillary Clinton and her supporters (both within the Democratic Party and the anti-democratic media) have been telling us that the Democratic Presidential nomination contest is over. “Hillary has won” — as the Associated Press either or both moronically and treacherously announced Monday afternoon, based on its survey of superdelegates who don’t actually vote until July 25. Those of us who still want Bernie Sanders to win the state, ideally by a landslide, are told both that we are foolish and we are objectively helping Donald Trump.
Well, the election is upon us, it is ultra-competitive, and Hillary’s people can stop complaining now — and driving down the Democratic turnout that we need to win school board races. Bernie didn’t drop out, and what’s about to be done is about to be done.
That Hillary has been following a “premature whistle” strategy — trying to call the end of the game before it’s over — has been both sad and strategically stupid. Her supporters have argued simultaneously that (1) she was invincible in the primary and (until recently) a mortal lock against Donald Trump in the general election, and (2) resisting her and depriving her of a big California win on her way out of the primaries risked seriously damaging her campaign. She has been acting as if she is literally terrified by the result that will come out of California tomorrow night — leading to yesterday’s shockingly early whistle — contravening the DNC’s own rules for counting delegates. How nice it would have been had Hillary simply exuded confidence (if that’s what she really felt) and invited further debate, welcoming Bernie supporters to throw her any pitches they wanted, which she would then try her best to bat away!
Such graciousness would have been far less alienating for Bernie supporters in California (and, to a lesser extent, a few other remaining states) and made it more likely that the sides could reconcile during (or at least after) the convention. It would have not left us wondering quite so hard about whether she really did have the chops to withstand an assault from Trump — who will try to outflank her not only from the Right, but (on trade, foreign intervention, and a few other populist issues) from what is generally considered to be the Left.
(2) The South Had It’s Say — Why Not Us?
Worst of all, Hillary’s clampdown was all so unnecessary As Bernie concedes, she is the strong favorite at this point, enjoying a lead attributable entirely to pre-Spring votes in states bordering the Atlantic Ocean from Texas to Virginia. The lead is due to an extraordinary and counter-intuitive alliance between liberal/populist Southern Blacks (and some Latinos) deathly scared of anything smacking of socialism and traditional conservative Southern Dixiecrats. Here are the pledged delegate totals of those states, not even bothering to look at the inland South, comprising Clinton’s current 285 net delegate margin (1811 for Clinton to 1526 for Sanders):
Texas: 72 net delegate margin for Clinton (147-75)
Louisiana: 23 net for Clinton (37-14)
Mississippi: 26 net for Clinton (31-5)
Alabama: 35 net for Clinton (44-9)
Florida: 68 net for Clinton (141-73)
Georgia: 44 net for Clinton (73-29)
South Carolina: 25 net for Clinton (39-14)
We can stop right there if we want to account for Clinton’s lead: the margin in those six states adds up to 293. If you don’t think that Texas counts as “the South,” we can subtract its 72 and continue up the coast; a 13-point margin (60-47) in North Carolina, a 29-point margin (62-33) in Virginia, and a 25-point margin (60-35) in Maryland more than make up for Texas.
They all got to vote. And, by design, all except Maryland got to vote early, within an 18-day span, to bring the more conservative candidate out to an early lead and help define the narrative of the election.
They got to vote. And now so do we. And anyone who thinks that the election should be considered over before California weighs in can just stuff a sock in their mouth — they have had their say, and now we shall have ours. We may be last, but we the opposite of least.
(3) We Have More Reasons to Vote for President Today Than Merely Electing Delegates
The biggest reason to vote today, and to cast that vote for Bernie, is that it is the first time in more than a generation that we on the Left — from Democrats to Social Democrats to Greens and beyond — will have had to assess our own numbers, to know our own strength, to ensure that others also know that strength. You will likely be asked, in years to come, what you did in the 2016 Democratic primary campaign — and if you “sat out the war” people will judge you more on that vote than perhaps any other.
This was the year, and this was the campaign, that pushed forward the values of Occupy Wall Street and other anti-rapacious capitalism movements. That is to say: there have been other campaigns, both within and outside of the Democratic Party, that have pushed similar themes — but this is the only one that has had a serious chance to win the nomination since McGovern in 1972. (You could make a case for Ted Kennedy in 1980, but Kennedy was as much like Hillary as he was like Bernie.) This is the only such campaign that has, quite late in the process, actually led in the national polls. Dennis Kucinich, Howard Dean, Jesse Jackson, name who you’d like — none of them had the combination of ideological positioning and sustained electoral success as has Bernie Sanders.
This is the only realistic way to put the fear of God into our powerful corporate campaign donors — to show that people truly are fed up with their devouring every last morsel of economic improvement in our society to show that the public really will elect someone who will raise taxes on the wealthy and put that money to good honest use. The delegate count is one thing, but by no means the only thing. Bernie is exceedingly unlikely to grab the 70% or so of the California vote that would allow him to catch up to Hillary in pledged delegates, true. But every vote for Bernie is a statement by a voter that “I am willing to go further than you pundits have ever imagined — voting for a self-described democratic socialist! — to see the nation’s economic and political system set straight.” And the race is close enough that those votes cannot reasonably be dismissed — as Hillary, if she becomes President, would likely hope to do — as mere “protest votes.” These are people’s votes for who they would really like to see become President!
Taboos are being broken this year. This is not “how many people will show up at a honk-and-wave rally” or “how many people will buy Noam Chomsky’s latest book” or “how many people answered this internet poll a particular way.” This is the core democratic action of our political process — and we get to see, right down to the precinct — how many people in our electorate are willing to take that plunge. This is where we can finally and truly measure our political power in a way that will be difficult for those who disdain us to successfully ignore.
THAT is why you’re showing up to vote today — because you are one fiber in a larger muscle that needs to be able to flex. Every vote matters because every vote is a warning shot across the bow that our traditional exclusion of the Left from access to real power is likely to change sooner rather than never.
This is why so many forces want you not to vote, want you to just give up. And this is why you can’t! Ours is the biggest and most influential state in the nation, and today is when we, each of us, will have our say. The broad front liberal Left in California will count our own numbers — an underestimate of them, in fact, because many who would stand with us support Hillary because of the symbolic import of having our first female President — tabulated for us for free by the state. Through that, we will know our own strength and determination. We will start to see what is within our reach.
Don’t you DARE fail to show up to be a part of such a glorious day!
“This was the year, and this was the campaign…” It was indeed, and somehow our efforts seem to have been too casual in some mediums.
Many of our sisters consider today a historical day. I salute them. At the end of the day, we need to defeat Trump’s bigotry and racism while we continue pursuing a better and reasonable future.
Ricardo speaks wisdom.
As the headline proclaims, “The Left shall know its numbers.”
I am not a “Progressive,” but I would hope it’s now obvious to “Progressives” that the time has come to celebrate yuuuge megaphone Bernie has created and find a way to further the “Progressive” agenda that doesn’t risk putting a narcissistic bigot in the White House.
*word.
That will be for us to sort out. Thanks for the advice.