Sanders’ Call to Back Clinton Doesn’t Require a Clothespin Over the Nose

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Much has been made about polls that purportedly show that a significant number of Bernie Sanders’ backers say they won’t vote for Clinton no matter what. Now Sanders has made it clear as recently as an MSNBC Townhall that he will do whatever it takes to “make sure” no Republican gets in the White House.

http://www.politicususa.com/2016/04/25/bernie-sanders-strongest-statement-suggesting-support-clinton.html

You can’t get much more emphatic than that since everyone knows that the Republicans he’s talking about are Trump and Ted Cruz.  But Sanders’ forthright and very correct message, maybe more warning, still won’t shake the most rabid Sanders backers. It won’t make much difference to them how many times one says, get Trump or Cruz, and you get the nightmarish prospect of one, two, maybe even three more Scalia or Clarence Thomas types on the Supreme Court.

To them Hillary is take your pick: shady, duplicitous, a bought and paid for corporate and Wall Street shill, and the biggest hit, a virulent war hawk. And there’s no difference between her and say a Trump or Cruz; witness the #BernieorBust tag bandied about. Sanders knows better and not just rhetorically but from first-hand experience in hand to hand combat with the GOP in the Senate. He routinely ticks off the monumental damage that the GOP Senators and House reps have done or tried to do or if given the chance again will do from torpedoing climate control measures, to eviscerating Social Security, and the Affordable Care Act, to giving away the company store in tax breaks to billionaires and Wall Street. The rip-off is so bad and blatant that even mega-billionaire, and poster boy corporate rightist, Charles Koch blushed with shame when he told an interviewer that the system is shamelessly “rigged” for the wealthy, starting with men like him.

http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/25/news/economy/charles-koch/index.html?iid=ob_homepage_money_pool

The big question, though, is just how many of Sanders’ backers will follow his example and back Hillary, whether they have to clamp the proverbial clothespin over their nose or not. Even if more than a few follow through on their bellicose pledge not to back Clinton no matter what, that won’t much matter if the majority of them are in the lockdown Democratic states such as California or New York where even the skies parting for a GOP presidential contender wouldn’t help them.

However, it really shouldn’t have to come to a clothespin over the nose vote even without the big scare of a GOP president vowing do everything he can to take back the 20^th century. The thing that is either missed or wildly and deliberately skewed, distorted, or maligned is the reason that Clinton got to where she is in the first place as the Democratic presidential choice. There’s the relentless two decade long GOP campaign of rumor, smears, and outright lies against Hillary and Bill Clinton both within and without the White House, and you have a pattern of deceit and duplicity against a politician virtually unprecedented in American political annals. This easily could have tagged her as hopelessly politically damaged goods. But it didn’t. Even when polls show that many voters dislike her, distrust her, or speak derisively of her the one thing that can’t be denied is that she’s been one of the best prepared White House candidates in years.

Her experience in international relations and her hands-on administrative experience in White House policy affairs have insured the allegiance of millions of voters to her. And they have shown that in the key primary elections such as New York. The same polls that play up her negatives also showed that from the start of her campaign that she was the one sure Democrat who would beat any GOP contender. That’s still the case in a head to head match-up with either Trump or Cruz.

Millions of women see Clinton as the gender Obama. Her presidency will mark a historic presidential breakthrough for women. She will be a role model and inspiration for millions of women young and old in the world’s top political power spot. There’s the perception that she has the political savvy to wage the blood battles with a GOP-controlled Congress.

There’s also the political reality about the shape of a Clinton White House. She is a moderate, centrist Democrat who will give a hard nod to the interests of minorities, gays and women. She will continue and expand Obama’s policies that expand government programs and initiatives, hike spending on education, health care, and jobs and markedly increase taxes on corporations and the wealthy while enforcing and even tightening regulations on the banks and Wall Street.

Sanders supporters rail that none of this is enough and that this is hardly the political revolution that a Sanders’ White House will usher in. But Sanders himself put the lie to that when he talked about how no matter how much a president talks radical change with a Congress that won’t support even the timidest reform measures, it’s all just a feel good field of dreams.

In the end, Sanders’ call to back Clinton is not the easy call. It’s the only call. And it doesn’t require a clothespin over the nose.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His latest book is From Sanders to Trump: A Guide to the 2016 Presidential Primary Battles (Amazon Kindle) He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on Radio One. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Saturdays 9:00 AM on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and the Pacifica Network