Democrats at a Clinton-Sanders Crossroad

Rallying for Sanders

I am a woman in my 50s. I work fulltime at a job that takes nearly all the energy I have. And I have a book I am writing on the side that is time-critical. No one but Bernie Sanders could have gotten me to stop writing the book to work on this election. No one else would have been worth it.

But Bernie's call to revolution was so sincere, so necessary, and so timely that I responded. Not only have I donated and phone-banked and canvassed, I'm now a canvassing captain, leading others, training other captains, helping in any way that I can. I'm taking vacation days before the primary to help. I already have my flight and room booked in Philadelphia. I am as all-in as it gets.

So, dear Democrats, surely you see where I am going with this. I am not alone. There are a million of us working for Bernie Sanders every day. He is powered entirely by our donations. He has called us to serve and, by gosh, we are out serving. That is what a leader does. That is how a leader leads.

What has Hillary ever led on? Seriously, you cannot name one progressive issue where she took a difficult, unpopular stand and said I am right and the rest of you are wrong. Bernie Sanders has, and history has proven his stance right time and again. Hillary always checks the polls before taking a stance. Bernie never does. He only has to poll his own moral compass to come to the right choice. On several major issues in recent years, there's a video of Bernie saying the right thing and one of Hillary saying she "made a mistake" for taking the wrong step.

The Democratic Party has disappointed me more this year than in any other. This should have been a fair fight. Bernie Sanders was not just a message candidate. He is THE STRONGEST AND MOST DEMOCRATIC candidate running. Party Chair Debbie Wasserman Schulz buried the debates so they were easy to miss. Seeing Hillary's performance, there's no mystery why this was the case. The more people see and hear her, the less they like her, period. The states he lost in were the states that knew him least.

I'm upset at the Democratic Party for not raising a stink about an issue new in this election that reeks of a Clinton campaign tactic: the mysterious flipping of voter registrations from Democrat to Republican so that those people could not vote for Bernie. In Brooklyn, where a potentially election-altering 100,000 voters were removed from the rolls, the party has been too silent.

That New York voters had to declare their political affiliation in October 2015 even though the vote wasn't until April 2016 bespoke an effort to deprive people of their chance to vote for Bernie Sanders, not encourage it. In Nevada, when the rules were changed before the Bernie Supporters could vote in such a way that disenfranchised a number of Bernie supporters made me think the party's named should be changed to the Autocratic, not Democratic, party.

For Rep. John Lewis to stab in the back the only person in the race to have chained himself to a black woman to prevent her from being taken away in a protest, the only person who stood with the Congressional Black Caucus when they decried the widespread voter roll purges that unfairly disadvantaged black voters in Florida in 2000, to insinuate that Bernie Sanders was lying about his civil rights record, turned John Lewis -- for me -- from a hero into a monster.

Bernie Sanders is used to being attacked. The more he is attacked, the more I like him for persisting in doing the right thing. He's not in this for himself. If he had an ego, he would hold for the applause lines, use the word "I" as frequently as Hillary does, and talk all about himself, as Hillary does.

But Bernie doesn't care two cents for that. When the crowd starts chanting "Bernie, Bernie" as it has at the numerous rallies I've watched, Bernie just keeps plowing ahead, sometimes telling the crowd to stop because it's not about him, it's about us, and what we can do together.

A Time for Decision

So what's it going to be, Democrats? Are you going to become entirely the party of Wall Street at the expense of the working people? That's the path Hillary Clinton has laid out for us. Or are you going to be the party of the people, whose New Deal programs need not only rehabilitation but expansion?

Are we going to be the party that welcomes neocons like Hillary into our midst? Are we going to be the party of "No, we can't" think big enough to talk about free public college and single-payer healthcare? Are we going to be the party where only the designated nominee is allowed to win and the people's choice be damned? Because mark my words, had Bernie Sanders gotten a fair deal, he might have had a lead in pledged delegates by now. Had Sanders gotten the media coverage that Trump has gotten, there's no doubt in my mind he would be leading in the "popular vote" as well.

And the party should not allow anyone to talk about the "popular vote" when the caucus states' voters weren't counted and the populations that didn't caucus but supported Sanders weren't counted. That's not a fair measure at all.

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