Contain Your Disappointment: Bernie Endorses Hillary

I posted this to Facebook earlier today, and have been stunned that so far, NO ONE has reacted to it.  Granted, I only have 18 friends, but most of them are pretty darn political.  Anyway, I thought this was one of my better rants, so . . . .

For the Sanders supporters feeling 'betrayed' by his endorsement of Clinton . . . .

Sanders helped the Democrats draft probably the most progressive major party platform ever, including

1. Breaking up 'too big to fail' banks,
2. Re-enacting a form of Glass-Steagal,
3. Abolition of the death penalty,
4. Calling for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United,
5. $15/hour minimum wage,
6. An aggressive plan to combat climate change,
7. Marijuana decriminalization
8. Policies to try to prevent more tragic shootings like the recent ones in Louisiana and Minnesota.

I'm guessing that if someone had told you 2 years ago that a Democrat would be running on this platform, you would have been eager to support them. But some Sanders supporters don't want to vote for this platform, because they don't want to vote for the nominee.

But --- what did you THINK would happen? Sanders' campaign was a long shot from the start. If you went into this thinking it would end with Sanders getting the nomination, I'm sorry for your disappointment, but you were really fooling yourself. From the start, Sanders' campaign was about influencing the platform, and he succeeded beyond what any reasonable person could have imagined. If you vote for someone else now, you're the one betraying Sanders, not the other way around.

Setting aside the fact that most arguments which call into question Hillary's competence or ethics are B.S. fabricated by the right wing echo chamber PRECISELY to con people into voting for 'anyone but Hillary', exactly how many of Sanders' positions would the Democrats need to adopt to satisfy you?

If Hillary wins, she will probably still have to deal with a Republican-controlled House, and so won't be able to deliver everything in the platform. Hell, something like a constitutional amendment is aspirational at best anyway. But a vote for Hillary is a vote to enact a fair bit of progressive policy. A vote for Jill Stein is a vote not to enact anything, but to make you feel better (I guess) when you look at yourself in the mirror. And of course, there's always the small but very real chance that a vote for Jill Stein allows the reincarnation of Benito Mussolini to start doing whatever he damn well pleases (remember Nader in Florida in 2000).

If that happens, I doubt your principles will do much to comfort you.