crowonapost
Verified User
I'll share my view as a strong Bernie supporter - I called Bernie my 'favorite member of Congress' long before he ran for President, when he was little-known. I strongly supported him in the primary and think he was and is a historically good candidate.
Politics isn't nice. We have massive systemic corruption, which is overwhelmingly Republican. We have large corruption the Democrats are guilty of as well.
The 'good' politicians are now all in the Democratic Party - a large minority. There's a reason Bernie co-founded the progressive caucus in the party; and a reason he still runs as an independent.
There are realities in politics because the Republicans, by putting radicals on the courts, have been so successful in changing the rules to allow unlimited money to buy our elections.
Democrats are somewhat torn between trying to compete with Republicans by raising enough money to do so while also being the alternative to that corruption. It's not easy to do both, and they do some of each.
The Democratic Party voters had a chance to do a great thing this election by picking Bernie. They didn't quite do that.
So that left us with a choice. Bernie third party was a terrible idea - splitting the vote and guaranteeing a Republican win.
So it was Hillary or trump, and that is no contest, as Bernie said.
I could list hundreds of ways Hillary is better than trump and which were important reasons to pick her over trump - and Bernie agreed she was far better.
So, anger? Mostly at the 'real problems' - the race we're on to plutocracy, driven by the Republicans, the massive challenges as they are positioned to keep us getting more and more plutocratic.
I can criticize plenty about Hillary, as I did during the primary asking people to support Bernie. But her ambition, her slipperiness, her flaws, her bad alliances, her coziness with powerful interests, those are not the real problems.
And her gaming the system by controlling the DNC that just got exposed is not the real problem. I said during the primary the patriotic thing for her to do would be withdraw and let Bernie be nominated. Her supporters didn't like hearing that.
She didn't. I didn't like things about her then and I don't like things about her in these revelations.
But there are bigger issues and I don't change my position of supporting her strongly over trump because he's still a thousand times worse.
I want a progressive takeover of the Democratic Party, so a Hillary can't be nominated, replacing the compromised corporatists.
But I recognize we have a lot to do about all this - history shows progressives can lose horribly against the wealthy of the powerful interests even if they are nominated. The people are badly divided over secondary issues.
So as much as I'm for getting the money out of politics - I'm for a Democrat winning with that money over a Republican winning with it, as an interim step and compromise that can be needed.
Being overly 'purist' about this plays into the hands of the Republicans who will demonize any Democrat over any flaw while ignoring how the alternative is far worse.
Maybe this helps explain why Bernie supporters don't seem more angry - though the ones who refused to vote for Hillary will consider this validation, which it's not.
It's bad, and we need to remember the Republicans are FAR worse. We need bigger solutions than to just criticize Hillary.
This is a nice thought out post and I can agree with a lot of this on principle because the real struggle is corruption as a standard bearer of how to be and sadly Republicans have been more than willing to allow that, means justify the ends. I honestly think the GOP thought that if they did this enough, once they had control it would naturally lead to their higher natures, what they did not expect was Trump. Both parties are private groups, they can do things that are not about the principles of the constitution or fair play and they excel at that. It's the one thing I learned from the Primaries, also as a strong Bernie supporter.