During my unsuccessful campaign for Delegate to the West Virginia State Legislature, I met many young people who were working for or supporting Bernie Sanders. I admired their idealism, which reminded me of the Gene McCarthy people in 1968. I support Bernie Sanders for President, so we became friends.
I recently posted an article on Facebook from American Prospect by Harold Meyerson suggesting that the "Bernie Bros" step back and let Hillary Clinton work against Donald Trump. He is surprised that Sanders supporters say they won't vote for Clinton, thus handing the election to Trump. Meyerson says he is a Sanders supporter and believes in "Socialist Democracy," but that Sanders has no chance to win the nomination, and we must turn our attention to the general election.
I have friends, very close friends, in fact, who are Hillary Clinton fans, although I am not one of them. I respect their reasons for supporting Clinton. I know people who are Trump supporters. I have generally unfollowed them on Facebook, or avoid being around them. Still, the outpouring of support for Trump, particularly in West Virginia, is understandable. People like Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney talking about how tax cuts for the very rich will help everyone, well, no one can fall for that anymore. And most people, even economic conservatives, are not as crazy or as personally unlikable as Ted Cruz. Trump is outgoing and has a message of hope. His comments about women, immigrants and Moslems has scared off support from just about anyone in the Jewish community. The cheers he got at AIPAC show how out of touch that organization is. Jewish clergy of every stripe have denounced Trump's stand on immigration.
Meyerson's article sparked a not-typical firestorm on my Facebook feed, between the Clinton lovers, those who will vote for her because they see Trump as the biggest threat to the country, and the Sanders people who said they will vote for the Green Party or sit out the presidential race. They claim to be revolutionaries who will not settle for the status quo.
The most influential factor in which side people were on was age. People my age were in the Hillary camp, or better-Hiilary-than Donald category. People under thirty were the revolutionaries, willing to go down in flames for Bernie Sanders' cause.
I probably would have voted for Hubert Humphrey in 1968, if the vote had been extended to nineteen year olds at that time. I started that year as a McCarthy supporter, but I became a Robert Kennedy supporter when he entered the race. Kennedy spoke at Johns Hopkins that spring, where I was a freshman. His assassination, never really fully investigated, and with an official story full of holes, left me with psychic scars that have not healed, and a deep distrust of our government. I also heard Spiro Agnew that year at Towson State. He was an ignorant bigoted clown. It was inconceivable to me that he could ever be vice-president.
When the Sanders people say that Clinton has engaged in dirty tricks, like flooding Sanders websites with porn so the sites would have to be taken down, or claim that she is beholden to big banks, or to Gulf State oligarchs and Saudi princes, I just shrug and say "So, what's new?" Back in 2008, I said (probably over breakfast with Joe) that we might get some sort of social justice from Obama, but we were never going to get economic justice. And in fact, Obama eventually came out in favor of gay rights, and has run an inclusive administration. He has tried to bring people together (a thankless and impossible task). Still, he appointed Timothy Geithner, of the International Monetary Fund, as Treasury Secretary, and allowed big banks to gain back, and even surpass the power they had before the 2008 crash.
I am with my peers. I will support Hillary Clinton for President, knowing all the negatives about her. At the Democratic Convention in Charleston next month, I will still support Bernie Sanders. My goal now will be to stop Trump. None of our choices for President are good.
Maybe one day we will get economic fairness, probably not this year. I'll settle for maintaining the social progress we have made in the last eight years, because I don't have a choice.
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