There was one argument against Bernie Sanders being the Democratic nominee that I most hated: he isn’t even a Democrat. There are many reasons why I hated it. For one, it’s tribal. For another, it has nothing to do with policy — or even electability. But most of all, I just didn’t see that it mattered to the Democratic voter given Sanders has always caucused with the Democrats. Just the same, it is for this reason that I had hoped he would endorse Hillary Clinton once the primary was over.

But Bernie Sanders does not have to endorse Hillary Clinton. As a practical matter, it probably doesn’t matter anyway. But he’s his own man and he can do what he wants. As I’ve stated many times, Sanders managing to get over 40% of the primary vote had little to do with Sanders. It was important because it was a sign of the rise of the left wing of the Democratic Party. And I know enough about the party to know that there are a lot of people in that rising left wing who voted for Hillary Clinton. So there is no doubt in my mind that the Democratic Party is in the process of a long leftward turn.

Sanders and the Long-Term

I’m not sure exactly what Bernie Sanders gets from not endorsing Hillary Clinton — or even what he thinks he gets. And it doesn’t really matter to me. I’m not so much interested in what the Democratic Party does this month or this year as I am what it does this decade. And I’m fine with Hillary Clinton as the leader of the Democratic Party. How she governs will ultimately depend upon us. And to some extent, I’m relieved that I don’t have to put up with four years of liberals gradually figuring out that they had elected President Sanders rather than Emperor Sanders.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not thrilled with Clinton. But Sanders wasn’t perfect either. As for Jill Stein? Why would I make a symbolic vote for someone I don’t agree with any more than I do Clinton? The truth is, in modern America, there is no real difference between Sanders, Clinton, and Stein. The Democratic Party has chosen my second choice and I endorse that choice.

More Than Politics

I have a more personal reason for endorsing Hillary Clinton. Despite the caricature that the right has created of her as some kind of supergenius harpy, she’s actually one of the most abused political figures of my lifetime. I think the treatment of Jimmy Carter is worse, but his is mostly implicit. The attacks on Clinton are explicit and personal. And it has made me sad indeed to have heard many of them from my fellow Sanders supporters.

I have little idea where other Sanders supporters go from here. I know the vast majority of them even now endorse Hillary Clinton because they plan to vote for her. Other than that, I can’t say. Further, I don’t know where Sanders himself is going. But there is a shining city on the hill that we should all be moving toward. The energy in the Sanders-Clinton war is wasted.

In his column yesterday Morning, Paul Krugman was out there dutifully pushing a new Clinton talking point: Sanders lost big. Although it’s technically true, it’s disingenuous. And I hear similarly silly statements coming from the Sander’s side. Krugman is wrong not to admit that Sanders ran a remarkable campaign and did incredibly well; but the primary wasn’t “stolen” from Sanders as I keep hearing.

I Endorse Hillary Clinton

Something Sanders said over the weekend bothered me. He seemed to be implying that because he disagreed with Hillary Clinton about certain things, he couldn’t — at least right now — endorse her. That’s just silly. On 20 January 2017, one of two people will be sworn in as President of the United States: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. If there were little to distinguish them, remaining neutral would be fine. But there is a very great deal to distinguish them.

I endorse Hillary Clinton. That doesn’t mean I agree with her completely. But I largely agree with her (which is all I could say about Sanders too). My endorsement means that I think the world will be far better off with a Clinton presidency over a Trump presidency. And any liberal who thinks that a Trump presidency would lead to long-term liberal gains has not been paying attention to politics over the past four decades.

And Bernie Sanders? He can do whatever he wants. I voted for him because I wanted him to be the nominee. My second choice was always Hillary Clinton. And in the context of the 44 presidents that we’ve had, I think she will be good and maybe even great.

In my continuing adventures of observing the political process in person, I went to the Democratic National Committee’s Platform Committee testimony section here in Phoenix. This is where the Committee asks ordinary people to weigh in on what they think the Platform should say.

Platforms have a long history in the US and elsewhere even though now few people read the ones put out by parties. In fact, you can say that Martin Luther’s 95 Theses were a platform as was the Communist Manifesto even though we don’t really think of them that way. The Democratic Party’s first one was in 1840, and it is slightly different than the one we will adopt in Philadelphia.

Once upon a time, they were a vital tool for parties to help spread the word about them and sometimes, like in 1948, were a way of saying to the world, :This is who we are. This is what we believe in. And this is why all of those former Democrats ran out the back when we adopted this.” The reason I mention that one is because it was the start of a major split of the Democratic Party that culminated in the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Johnson’s declaration that we would lose the South for a generation.

Platform Committee Testimony

I got there in the afternoon around 1:30. The room wasn’t super full since of course everyone could watch this on C-Span, so most people didn’t need to go in person. They were wrapping up the morning session on energy and the environment. While the speakers had 3 minutes each to talk, there was also time for questions and answers so naturally it took a long time.

I was at the Platform Committee meeting for the health and safety testimony in the afternoon session. There were a few stand outs. First was the President of Arizona’s College Democrats[1], Joseline Mata.  She was one of the students stuck in an abstinence only school and was asking that comprehensive sex education be given to students.

The next one was Monica R Simpson, executive director of SisterSong, a national organization devoted to women of color’s reproductive justice. She had an amazing story to tell and she was also one of those people who knows how to work a room — building emotions through the use of her mellifluous voice. She talked about the lack of access to all of reproductive health care, not just abortion, in many states. Later she was able to get a photo with Platform Committee member Dr Cornell West, who she obviously was excited to meet.

There were three women who spoke from the nurses union and they were not having any of this nonsense about the ACA. They want single payer and they want it now. This caused the closest thing to drama we had all day when Neera Tanden asked some rather pointed questions about Germany having a private insurance system that covers everyone. The last woman broke down in tears over how hard it was for her to use her insurance — she has it, but it is too expensive to use. This is one of those things that make policy decisions so difficult as an elected official because you don’t want to tell someone crying no, but…

The final speaker at the Platform Committee testimony was Pam Simon. Pam spoke about guns as she is now one of the members of Everytown for Gun Safety after surviving the shooting in Tucson. One of the things that stuck out to me were her remarks about how fast the shooting was. She said he killed and injured 19 people in fifteen seconds. She also described how ordinary of a day it was for her and her friends on staff — she expected to go with Gabe Zimmerman to help him pick out a place for him to hold his wedding.  She is a nice lady. (We sat next to each other for a little bit and I promised to take pictures of her speaking.)

Conclusion

It took a very long five plus hours to hear everything (started at 2:05, finished at 7:45) but it was interesting to observe. This is part of people having a say in how their country is run. Even though almost no one reads the actual documents anymore, they do stand as a collected statement of where a great deal of Americans are at.  It gives us a chance to give a voice to the voiceless beyond merely voting.  And we got to do it in air conditioning!

One of the guiding principles of my life if that one of the worst things is to be boring. I would much rather deal with someone with wrong but interesting ideas than someone with right but dull ideas. I’m just not going to spend a pleasant hour about how we all should try to be a bit more understanding of each other. But I’ve always thought of it in a personal way. Now I think there is a political aspect to it. And that is nowhere so true as the Friday episode of The PBS NewsHour when Mark Shields and David Brooks come on to discuss the week’s news in way so boring that you won’t have a clue what they talked about five minutes later.

Part of the reason the segment is always so boring is that Brooks and Shields don’t much disagree. And this is due in large part to the fact that The NewsHour thinks that a well-spoken but extremist right-winger like David Brooks should be countered with a man whose own promotional materials say, “Mark Shields is free of any political tilt.” He’s also one who military giant Lockheed Martin seemed to like to have around to give what were doubtless well-paid speeches.

PBS Wants to Be Boring

But you can’t blame it all on Shields not being a liberal. When E J Dionne fills in for Shields, the segment is almost as boring. The truth is that The PBS NewsHour wants the segment to be boring. They want to portray the Overton window to be so small that it really doesn’t matter if you go out to vote. Because if you don’t you’ll either get one of two people who are pretty much the same. This is an amazing accomplishment, when you consider that while Mark Shields really is a Milquetoast, David Brooks is an extremist.

No reasonable person watching Bill O’Reilly thinks that they are getting the objective truth. They know that it is Bill O’Reilly’s opinion just as they know that he has a major anger management problem. But the calm discussion gives the impression of hearing the objective truth. And that’s really dangerous — especially when you consider the kind of people who watch The NewsHour. Because what you get is a lot of, “I agree, but…” I agree we should bomb Canada, but I think we should drop 20,000 bombs, not 40,000 bombs.

Boring Stops Debate

Listening to the first part of the segment last Friday, I learned that Shields thought that Obama’s comments on the Orlando Massacre were better than Hillary Clinton’s. Brooks thought the opposite because Clinton mentioned terrorism. And in so doing he got to go on for some time with the unquestioned framing that Orlando was a terrorist attack, even though there is nothing to distinguish this from any other mass shooting. Oh, except that the shooter was a Muslim. And there certainly wasn’t someone on the left to — even ever so gently — push back.

If The PBS NewsHour were not so intent on being boring, people might see that there are different opinions on these matters. Indeed: people might see that there are opinions at all and not just the God given Truth. So boring isn’t just a waste of time; it is also a deeply dangerous tactic of the power elite.

I generally agree with Scott Lemieux, but I think he’s being disingenuous in his article, The Party Left Me And Other Complaints of the Voter-As-Atomistic-Consumer. It’s an attack on Fredrik deBoer’s article, I Am Opposed to a Hillary Clinton Presidency Because of Her Policies and Her Political Judgment. Martin Longman apparently completely agrees with Lemieux. And it just makes me think, “Didn’t anyone read deBoer’s article to the end?

You see, if you didn’t read deBoer’s article to the end, you would get a skewed view of it. Most of it is a litany of everything he disagrees with Hillary Clinton about. And he has the right. As I’ve often noted, Bernie Sanders is no socialist but just a good old fashioned New Deal Democrat. Fredrik deBoer is a socialist, apparently. He wrote, “I am a lukewarm supporter of Bernie Sanders. I am not much of a Democrat. Sanders would be, in my ideal world, the compromise candidate himself.” So it isn’t surprising that he has lots of complaints about Hillary Clinton’s policies. The majority of it consists of 5 long paragraphs starting, “I am opposed to a Hillary Clinton presidency because…”

Not About Hillary Clinton

But the article is not about his displeasure with Hillary Clinton. His displeasure is with those who he thinks claim that there is something pathological about people on the far left. He is responding specifically to Amanda Marcotte, who wrote in New Republic:

I understand Fredrik deBoer’s irritation. I’ve fought this same battle for a long time. The idea that Sanders supporters like him because he’s a white guy is ridiculous. Young women overwhelmingly support Sanders; are we really to believe that they are racist and sexist? And didn’t these same people vote for a black man in 2008 and 2012? What Marcotte wrote is the result of something that is all too common in the world of liberal punditry: the “I’m the perfect liberal” syndrome. In it, the pundit thinks that they are the most liberal that you can reasonably be. The king of this is Jonathan Chait who is fine with people considerably more conservative than he is but utterly intolerant to anyone slightly to the left of him.

Fredrik deBoer Doesn’t Like Being Called a Sexist

Fredrik deBoer’s entire article is summed up in this passage:

Now it turns out that I don’t agree with Fredrik deBoer on his reasons to not vote for Hillary Clinton. And I reject his argument against voting for the lesser of two evils. It strikes me as elitist. People with secure lives can look at the long-term, but a Trump presidency would be horrible for the weak in the short term (and the long term, I believe). So I’m with Scott Lemieux on those matters.

But despite Lemieux claiming that deBoer was just asking for a substantive debate, he’s being disingenuous. Fredrik deBoer was asking that people not claim that he didn’t have arguments and was just against Hillary Clinton because he was a bigot.

I’m not saying that Lemieux can’t attack deBoer’s arguments against Clinton, but they are a side show in the article he picked, and his article misrepresents beBoer’s argument.

Anyway, Nevada had its primary on June 14th and there were some surprising results for Nevada 03 and 04.

Nevada 03

Going into the primary there was the colorful Michele Fiore v two establishment politicians.  Assemblywoman Fiore has frequently gotten some national press from her various stunts for attention such as when she took a very controversial photo with her family for her Christmas card. For those who are not fans of guns, the fact that the only people not armed were the carried toddlers, was definitely upsetting. The child in the middle is five years old and carrying a Walther P22.

However she lost with only 18% of the vote while Danny Tarkanian got about 31% making him the winner of the primary.  He is facing (and already attacking) Democrat Jacky Rosen who won her race with a comfortable 62% of the vote.

Nevada 04

This race was of particular interest because it was one of the down-ticket races that Senator Sanders endorsed a candidate in. There were three top Democratic candidates but it was mainly between Lucy Flores (endorsed by Sanders) and Ruben Kihuen who was endorsed by Senator Harry Reid.  Kihuen was also endorsed by the local culinary union which is fairly strong in the state but particularly in the district. There has been speculation on Twitter that Susie Lee being in the race led to Lucy Flores losing. Lee captured 21% of the vote and Flores, 26%. Regardless, Kihuen won the primary with 40% of the vote.

He now will face Representative Cresent Hardy and is already eagerly tying him to Donald Trump.

US Senate

I haven’t talked about the Senate race yet because I was focused on the House. But with Senator Harry Reid retiring, it is going to be a major battle for the Democrats to hold on to the Senate seat.

The two expected winners of their respective primaries: Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto and Republican Joe Heck caused no surprises as both won.

Catherine Cortez Masto would be the first Latina woman to serve as a US Senator. She served as the Nevada Attorney General and while she had something of a rocky time as the Attorney General, time heals all wounds.  She is endorsed by outgoing Harry Reid but I am not sure if she has been endorsed by the powerful (and active) culinary union that pushed Kihuen to victory in Nevada 04.

Joe Heck is a doctor/executive, former Army general, and current US Representative. In what may be a bad move, he has endorsed Donald Trump. This will give political observers a chance to see if embracing Trump hurts or helps someone.  Considering Trump’s sinking numbers: I think it will hurt him.  He is otherwise not a remarkable Republican officeholder.

November Outcome

In Nevada 03, Rosen seems to be a quiet campaigner while Tarkanian is ready to go against her.  How this will play out is anyone’s guess. She may decide to let him act like a bully while she simply continues to talk to voters. Meanwhile, in Nevada 04, Kihuen is going to take the fight to Hardy and push him hard.

For the Senate, it is also anyone’s guess.  The last polling that was done was back in December. The two candidates were evenly split with a lot of undecideds. So it depends on how they campaign against one another and how the very top of the ticket plays out.

I went to the hospital to give some blood. So I heard some NPR. Despite what conservatives will tell you, NPR is not liberal. It is the most scrupulous news source you will find in terms of telling you what the two “sides” think on any issue. So I wasn’t surprised to hear the two sides of the debate on gun rights debate well represented. There aren’t just two sides of any issue, of course. And the two sides they presented were center-right and far-right — at least by any any international standard.

The two sides of the gun rights debate are familiar to you all. On the one side, you have the people who don’t want to do anything. They claim that it won’t do any good. The fact is, of course, if making guns slightly harder to buy would completely solve our gun violence problem, they would still be against them. So they are disingenuous. On the other side, you have people who think that “the least that can be done” is whatever. They want to close the gun show loophole or ban assault rifles or stop people on the terrorist watch list from buying guns.

The Least That Can Be Don’t Won’t Do Much

As vile as the pro-gun types are, they have a point: doing “the least that can be done” really won’t do much of anything. Currently, there are more than 3 million AR-15s in the United States. It is sad that we can’t do the least that can be done. But doing the least that can be done is not doing enough. And it is entirely typical of how the left does politics in this country.

Over the last several decades, the left has given into the right on gun rights. And has there been a meeting of the minds in the middle? Have we gotten what President Obama likes to call “common sense gun laws”? No, of course we haven’t! We’ve simply gotten a more radical right-wing. We used to have a right wing that thought that proposals to ban hand guns was tyranny. Now we have a right wing that thinks that any limit to gun rights is tyranny. If a mentally unstable man can’t buy an assault rifle and 500 rounds of ammunition at a gun show, the Nazis are coming tomorrow.

Doing Little on Gun Rights

There’s a bigger problem with doing the least that can be done. When we do the least and it does no good, the right wing can say, “See! Told you it wouldn’t work!” We need to think bigger. We need to think a lot bigger. Zack Beauchamp wrote a great article, Australia Confiscated 650,000 Guns. Murders and Suicides Plummeted. That’s not surprising; that’s what happens when you actually try to solve a problem.

Dianne Feinstein’s assault weapons ban might make people feel better. But it will be the typical American thing: not effective except as a pacifier. Did I mention that that there are more than 3 million AR-15s in the United States? And that was back in 2012. And that’s just one kind of assault rifle. I have no idea how many other assault rifles there are. But if you include guns in general, you find there there is just about as many guns in the United States as there are people.

Guns Won’t Protect Us from Tyranny

I don’t understand the issue either. I remember when I was a libertarian. Everyone was certain that if guns were taken away, then there would be tyranny. But the truth is that military technology has outgrown the idea of people defending themselves with their guns. Give the people all the guns, rocket launchers, and flame throwers they want! If the government wants to take over, it will.

We protect our liberty by protecting our democratic institutions. That means that people like the Bundys actually make us far less safe from tyranny. Are you afraid of government overreach? Fight for a strong media! Fight against funding for the CIA and the NSA! Fight for government transparency! Don’t fight for allowing ever more guns in this country.

But again: I’m not too concerned about the gun nuts. The leftists in the United States have empowered the gun nuts by trying to pacify them. We don’t need to slow the increase of gun ownership in the country; we need to lower the total number of guns Americans own. Because our fanatical commitment to guns is going to lead us toward tyranny. It won’t do a damned thing to protect us from it.

Early this morning, a man killed at least 50 people in the Orlando gay nightclub Pulse. Most of my liberal friends see this as another example of the problem of guns in the United States. And there’s a vague hope that this time maybe we will do something about it. But I think this is all a sign of just how out of touch all of us are with each other. If two dozen murdered children in Sandy Hook didn’t change things, this certainly won’t. But there’s more here. The shooter’s name is apparently Omar Mateen.

If this had just been some white guy named John Smith who went into Pulse and killed so many people, America would react in the normal way, “This is terrible! Now let’s do nothing!” But a bunch of people getting killed by a Muslim does cause action. It isn’t action that will do any good. But it is action. Suddenly, Donald Trump seems to have made a lot more sense when he said that Muslims shouldn’t be allowed in the country until we “figure this out.” This kind of thinking is the very definition of racism, but it isn’t recognized.

Right now at the Fox News website, the top story is, Breaking News: 50 Murdered, 53 Wounded in Possible Act of Islamic Terror in Orlando Gay Club. There’s no nuance here. It’s “Terrorism!” And everyone knows that death by terrorist is so much worse than death by Christian fundamentalist.

Of course, there is no such thing as death by Christian fundamentalist. When a Christian fundamentalist kills someone, we get little but nuance. And rightly so! Because people who go on killing sprees are messed up in the head. They aren’t rational warriors. (Well, most of the time; the 9/11 attacks were part brain washing and part peer pressure.) But when it comes to Muslims, we get none of that.

Check out this Fox News headline, Florida Nightclub Shooter Apparently Made Threats in the Past; Ex-Wife Claims He Beat Her. Now that strikes me as having some nuance, but the lede doesn’t follow, “The gunman who killed at least 50 people at an Orlando nightclub early Sunday was a licensed security officer who claimed more than once that he had connections to Islamic terror groups, Fox News has learned, as the killer’s ex-wife reportedly said he was unstable and would beat her.”

But reading the whole article, I got the impression that Omar Mateen was mostly just a homophobe. Is that based on his religion? Probably, although most men don’t need a religion to be a homophobes. Mateen’s father said that his son became enraged when he saw two men kissing in Miami. It sounds like a hate crime committed by an unstable Muslim man. But in the end, none of that will matter.

In the weeks and months after this, people will remember vaguely that a Muslim killed a bunch of people. The fact it that his Muslim identification will be taken to be as critical, just as Robert Lewis Dear’s Christian identification is taken to mean nothing at all.

But maybe this is how ISIS defeats us. Because this is the kind of attack (even though almost certainly having nothing directly to do with ISIS) that will make Donald Trump become president. See Paul Bibeau’s Trump Tales Of Terror: Weird Stories about a Hideous Man and His Movement for details.

After ever one of these shootings, my gut reaction is, “Didn’t anyone notice that this person was stockpiling weapons and ammunition?” But I catch myself instantly. Stockpiling weapons and ammunition is so common among the paranoid gun freaks of this country, that it isn’t unusual. It’s just a particularly good day Joe’s Gun and Mass Shooter Emporium.

I have a bone to pick with Robert Reich. He put together a great video, Eight Reasons Why Republicans Must Dump Trump. He’s completely right about everything that is wrong with Donald Trump. And these are indeed eight reasons why normal human beings should not even consider voting for Donald Trump. But they aren’t reasons why the Republican Party should dump Trump. If anything, they are eight reasons why almost none of them would ever even consider dumping him.

Let’s go through the list, because it’s telling:

1. He divides us by race and ethnicity and religion;
2. His incendiary lies are inciting violence across this land, but he excuses them;
3. He bullies, humiliates, and threatens those who dare cross him;
4. He spreads baseless conspiracy theories;
5. His hateful and demeaning attitudes toward women and boastful claims of sexual dominance have been filling the airwaves for years;
6. He believes climate change is not caused by humans, contrary to all scientific proof;
7. He proposes using torture against terrorists, and punishing their families, both in clear violation of international law;
8. He wants to cut taxes on the rich, giving the wealthiest one tenth of one percent an average tax cut of more than $1.3 million each every year.

There are only two reasons there that are not complete Republican orthodoxy. Number 3 is still largely true of the Republican Party, but party actors aren’t in general so obvious about it. But listen to Michael Savage some time and you will see that this is still at the core of Republican thought. Number 5 is quite true of the Republican Party, but the way that Robert Reich has presented it, it is too specific to Trump. Reich could have just as easily written, “Trump treats women in a demeaning way and tries to control their lives.” Then that too would be Republican orthodoxy.

Robert Reich Wants to Believe

I know what’s going on. Robert Reich still holds out hope that the “reasonable” Republicans will step up and take over the party. But that just isn’t going to happen. Look at what happened to the segregationist Democrats in the 1960s, they ran screaming for the Republican Party. But as the Republican Party has gotten more and more insane, we haven’t seen a huge exodus of Republicans to the Democratic Party. Instead, we’ve just seen more and more extreme claims from the Republicans.

This is why we heard throughout the 1990s that President Clinton wasn’t just a liberal but a “socialist” and even a “communist.” So there’s always a reason why the Republicans don’t change parties. And the real reason is that the Republican Party is still controlled by those bigots who left the Democratic Party because they didn’t think blacks ought to have the right to vote.

What I’m saying is not new. I’ve said it many times before and so have lots of other people. But as time goes on, people lose grasp of the truth. And that truth is that Donald Trump is not an outlier in the Republican Party. Sure, he has his own style. But what he stands for is what the party stands for. Just because Paul Ryan seems more reasonable than Trump doesn’t mean that he is. The truth is that they are very much the same and if they were in power together, they would get along just great.

And Robert Reich understands this. The only reason that Republicans have for dumping Trump is that he is almost certain to lose. Otherwise, there is nothing substantive that the Republicans can complain about when it comes to Donald Trump.

As you probably know, Bernie Sanders met with President Obama yesterday and then gave a press conference where he said he would work with Hillary Clinton to help the Democratic Party defeat Donald Trump. But he also said that he was still going compete in DC’s 14 June primary. And his reason is one that is close to my heart. He said that he thinks that DC should become a state. I’m with him. Puerto Rico should also be a state. But I don’t want to get side tracked. The speech was more or less a concession.

At the press conference, Sanders looked like his old self: rumpled suit, hair flying everywhere. It makes me wonder. Yes, I am very much in agreement with his policies. But is my commitment to Sanders also more personal? I identify with him. My hair is rarely combed. People often mistake me for a homeless person. But I think that substance matters more than style. And Sanders seems to be the same way. (He’s had that luxury since he represents a small state.)

Of course, Sanders also looked unhappy. And I think he’s allowed. I tend to think that he started his campaign much as Howard Dean started his in 2004: to get his issues more attention in the party. And then things really took off — to the point where he had a chance to win the whole thing. He needs a little time to lick his wounds. But as Robert Reich recently put it, “You’ve already succeeded.”

In a sense, Sanders never had a chance. As I have stated countless times, the Democratic Party didn’t like having to choose between Obama and Clinton in 2008 and this was their chance to have their cake and eat it too. But there was something else. The Clintons have deep roots in the African American community. This morning, Paul Krugman noted that Sanders didn’t get minority group inequality “with his exclusive focus on individual inequality.” This indicates more that Krugman didn’t follow Sanders’ campaign, being, as he was, so busy attacking it.

The fact that Hillary Clinton had a huge reservoir of good will in the African American community (And among older Democrats as well!) was not a trick; it was the result of her work in the Democratic Party over the last 40 years. That has to be applauded. This was a great campaign, even with all the anger on both sides. And now we are at the point that we work together to defeat a very frightening foe.

I don’t like revolutions. They don’t tend to work out well. Bernie Sanders didn’t not bring us a revolution. I think he brought something much better: the fear of a revolution in the Democratic Party. My biggest fear with Clinton is that she will “evolve” on the TPP and sign it into law. And that’s why all of us — not just Sanders supporters, but everyone who is in the democratic wing of the Democratic Party — needs to hold to task Clinton and the entire political world.

In a sense, there is always a war going on. We must constantly fight for the interests of the weak. The powerful never stop fighting for their own interests — they just hire people to do it. Even if Bernie Sanders had become president, we would have to continue to fight. We will continue to argue among ourselves about what the best policies are. But as I found when I tested myself, I side with Bernie Sander 98% of the time and Hillary Clinton 95% of the time. And Donald Trump: 24% of the time.

With Hillary Clinton as president, we will need to apply pressure to her. If Donald Trump becomes president, will with have to fight with all our strength. And we will still lose. So we are all in this together. Kumbaya My Party!