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OpEdNews Op Eds    H1'ed 8/20/16

You Broke It, You Bought It": A Sanders Activist Challenges Clinton Supporters

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It's a serious matter, and it can't wait until after the inauguration. From the perspective of progressives who supported Bernie in the primary, this election is a shotgun wedding. We're going to vote for Clinton because we have to, but the honeymoon ends with the appointment of Salazar.

Bond has more on Salazar and why both he and Tim Kaine are a "tell," a signal of things to come from Hillary Clinton: "The choice of Salazar is a pretty good sign that as expected we'll be seeing the 'revolving door' in full force in a Clinton administration. As head of the transition he'll have enormous influence on who fills thousands of jobs at the White House and federal agencies."

Will Clinton-supporting activists take up the challenge?

To Clinton Supporters: "You have a special responsibility"

For Bond, the time to act is now and the primary responsibility for supporting progressive goals belongs to those who help kill the Sanders campaign:

So to progressives who supported Clinton in the primary"- --"- labor advocates, environmentalists, immigration reformers, anti-war activists"- --"- you have a special responsibility to lead efforts to hold your candidate accountable.

Yes, to "lead" efforts. But will they? That's the challenge. The response to that challenge will also be a test and a "tell," a sign of who Clinton activists actually are. Many will pass the test easily (I can name quite a few right now), but many will likely not.

The Split Among Democratic Activists

The "Becky Bond Rule" says progressives in the Clinton camp must be first in line to fix what Clinton does wrong, to aggressively and proactively lead the pushback. That seems only right. Yet there's a problem with this rule.

The problem: Applying this rule aggressively will expose those on the Clinton side who are really just centrists after all -- or worse, just job-seekers -- with only a few progressive positions. The dynamic within the "progressive" community was always complex (and pretty patched over), and will only become more so, more complex for sure, and maybe more patched over.

During the primary, a great many "progressives" got unmasked as mainly centrists (after all, Clinton allies held one of their big pre-Benghazi Committee strategy session in Third Way HQ). The reaction to Clinton activists by Sanders activists then, and the reaction going forward, was and will be the stuff of drama, or at least of daytime TV.

And this doesn't begin to touch the issues around war.

I predict a lot of "hanging back" from the Clinton-supporting camp -- after all, no one butters their bread on both sides, the Clinton side and the anti-Clinton side, and the butter on the Clinton side is alluring. Thus it's easy to predict a lot of angst from Sanders activists about how much calling out to do. The Becky Bond Rule -- "You broke it, you bought it" -- is a challenge to take responsibility. Note that it implies wrong-doing ("you broke it"). A real gauntlet throw-down on matters of urgent and critical importance.

The progressive-"progressive" split is as real as it always was, and it's not going away. The next few years of activist interaction, especially among electoral and Party activists, will be revealing, especially when the real action, as I'll explain later, moves out of the electoral arena. If I'm right about that, the loss of the orderly electoral arena as a place to make large changes could also be laid to Clinton's ascendancy as well, and thus, to her supporters.

"You broke it, you bought it" is the right thing to say. But will Clinton's activist base own what they did when they need to? We're about to find out.

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A writer who contributes to a number of publications, including digby's Hullabaloo, Down With Tyranny, Naked Capitalism, Truthout and Alternet.

On Twitter — @Gaius_Publius

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