After last night's primaries in DE, RI, MD, CT, and PA, it looks increasingly likely that Hillary Clinton will face Donald Trump in the general election. Hillary's strong showing puts her with a hair's breath of the delegate majority needed for the nomination, and will surely only intensify calls for Bernie Sanders to leave the race, and for his supporters to rally behind Clinton. There has been a good deal of vitriolic rhetoric regarding this last point, particularly as many recalcitrant Sanders supporters balk at the idea of supporting Clinton. Here, my own thoughts on the problem.
To begin with, the notion that one candidate is "entitled" to the support of another's voters is highly dubious, and a result mainly of our entrenched two-party system. Too often recently, voters have been asked to vote against a particularly odious candidate, rather than for one about whom they are enthusiastic. With the specter of Trump on the horizon, it seems they'll be asked to do this again. In fact, the main argument of Clinton supporters is not that she actually deserves anybody's support, but that we must do everything in our power to avoid a Trump presidency. A trump presidency is unlikely for several reasons. First, he has won only a plurality of the Republican votes in most states, and the Republican establishment is steadfastly an transparently opposed to him. More people have voted against Donald Trump in his party's own primaries than have voted for him. It is almost inconceivable that he will fare any better in the general election. The most recent poll on favorability (from early April), found that a staggering 70% of the electorate have an unfavorable opinion of Trump. That's a full 16 points higher than Clinton, a historically unpopular politician. In head-to-head polls, Clinton enjoys about a 10-point advantage, and the campaign hasn't even begun yet. Unless some new damaging information emerges on Clinton, she's got this election sewn up with or without the Sanders supporters.
As general elections have increasingly taken on the binary character of a referendum against one or the other party, it's important to realize that many Sanders supporters are not closely aligned with either party, and feel no special loyalty toward impersonal, rigid, corrupt bureaucracies. The idea that they should fall back in line with the party's nominee assumes that they were ever in line to begin with. Clinton has dominated states with closed primaries, while Sanders has won many states that allow independents to vote. The obvious conclusion is that most of Sanders's support is coming from outside the party, and that appealing to a sense of party loyalty is going to be a generally meaningless endeavor. Younger people with less political experience (and political memory) are also less likely to hold strong party loyalties. Much of Sanders's support comes from this demographic.
There have been many comparisons drawn between this election and the 2000 election, where Ralph Nader supposedly "cost" Al Gore the victory. As a reformed Nader-ite, I think that's specious reasoning. First, Sanders has given no indication of running as an independent (unlike Trump!), and will not be "stealing" any votes in November. His supporters may chose to abstain, but that's their right, and, as I mentioned above, it's very difficult to believe that Clinton will be working on such a thin margin that the minority of Sanders voters who don't vote will cost her anything. Secondly, and I know this is a belabored point, Nader didn't "cost" Al Gore the election. Al Gore was the running mate of a very popular two-term president who had presided over nearly 8 years of economic prosperity, and was running against a barely-literate failed businessman with a history of drug and alcohol abuse. There's no way that election should have been remotely close, except that Gore ran one of the single worst campaigns of the 20th century. It was possibly irresponsible for Nader not to withdraw in swing states like Florida and Ohio when it became clear they would be contested, but the bulk of the blame for that debacle has to rest with Gore (and the supreme court). I have no doubt that, should Clinton somehow find herself in a coin-flip situation, that Sanders will urge his supporters to show up for her. But this obscures the fact that it's not his responsibility to get her elected -- it's hers. One of the most common observations of Clinton's campaign by generally non-partisan observers is that she has yet to articulate a coherent, positive, message. It's unclear, in other words, why she's running for president, except that she really wants to be president. There's no mystery with Sanders. He hammers his points home in just about every speech, while Hillary offers generic talking points an piecemeal suggestions. That's not a recipe for success. She's going to have to start convincing people why they should vote for her, as opposed to against Donald Trump.
If you're wondering, I will certainly vote for Clinton in November, but I'm not going to be proud of myself. It will be another hollow victory for cynicism over idealism, disenchantment over civic engagement, and oligarchy over democracy.
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