This Democratic National Convention is a farce, and everyone knows it. And Bernie Sanders is playing along.
After a primary season rife with irregularities and tipped scales, including lifelong Democrats in Arizona having registrations changed without their consent, hundreds of thousands of Democratic voters purged from voter rolls in New York, and ballot counters allegedly changing results of an audit in Illinois, Bernie Sanders supporters suggested that Debbie Wasserman Schultz — the DNC chair who was Hillary Clinton’s campaign co-chair in 2008 — was using her position to make sure Sanders would never be the Democratic nominee. They were laughed at by Clinton supporters and media pundits and dismissed as conspiracy theorists.
After the truth finally came out just before the DNC that Wasserman Schultz and top DNC officials had been bending over backwards to help the Hillary Clinton campaign navigate every scandal, from the State Department emails, to the Clinton Foundation, to the Hillary Victory Fund, while feeding anti-Sanders news angles to national political reporters, Sen. Sanders had the smoking gun he needed that would justify a historic rejection of the Democratic Party.
Instead, Sanders tied himself even closer to the party that deliberately sabotaged his campaign and doubled down on his endorsement of a candidate whom he admitted on national TV was not fit for the presidency due to her bad judgment.
How does Bernie Sanders really feel about Hillary Clinton? pic.twitter.com/AORSOKRGDl
— Dan Scavino Jr. (@DanScavino) July 26, 2016
Sanders’ success in the primaries didn’t come from capitulation and compromise, but from confrontation. Millions of people who, by and large didn’t affiliate with the Democratic Party and had never voted before believed in Bernie Sanders’ message, as he regularly confronted the billionaire class and the political establishment. Bernie Sanders’ entire campaign was rooted in confrontation, as he chose to run for the Democratic nomination against Hillary Clinton despite former President Bill Clinton locking up the support of hundreds of superdelegates for his wife’s campaign months before anyone even got a chance to vote.
Sanders’ confrontational tone remained strong even during the platform negotiating process, when Dr. Cornel West, one of his appointees to the platform committee, refused to vote in favor of the finished document as it failed to include critical language on single payer healthcare, condemnation of Israel’s occupation of Palestine, or opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Confrontation has been the only effective method of how the movement is able to accomplish any of its goals, whether it’s Black Lives Matter blocking highways to force the topic of police officers killing unarmed citizens and receiving no punishment to the top of the national conversation, or the Fight for $15 movement staging massive walkouts and strikes in at least 270 cities to make a $15/hour minimum wage the law of the land for some of America’s largest cities and states. The climate movement’s direct action campaigns against fracking resulted in one of the most natural gas-rich states banning fracking entirely.
These movements for justice predate the Sanders campaign, and they can and should continue as Sanders becomes the sheepdog that the left always warned he would be. The gains won by these social movements haven’t been handed down by benevolent politicians, but won through direct action in the streets.
Hillary Clinton was never part of these movements, and despite all of her pandering, Clinton never once tried ingratiating herself to these social justice movements, as she and her husband are responsible for even more mass incarceration than Ronald Reagan, and even escalated Reagan’s war on the welfare system.
Clinton’s pick of Tim Kaine should even enrage feminists, as the former Virginia governor supported the Hyde Amendment that prohibits federal funding for abortions under Medicaid — the repeal of which is called for in the Democratic Party’s own platform. The progressive language won by Sanders’ surrogates in the Democratic platform is still non-binding, and the Clinton/Kaine ticket is under no obligation to uphold or push for any of it if elected to the presidency, just as Clinton advisors have already deflated any hope she will hew to the platform’s language on carbon pricing.
Sanders supporters should still make a point to vote for down-ballot progressive candidates who embody Sanders’ values this November and in the coming state primaries, but they should, under no circumstances, believe that any real change will happen solely by voting. The movement’s sole hope lies on the shoulders of the millions of people who fight in the streets for free higher education, climate justice, universal healthcare, an end to police violence, and an end to mass incarceration. And regardless of where Bernie Sanders personally stands, the people’s duty is to now separate the movement from the candidate and fight on.
Tom Cahill is a writer for US Uncut based in the Pacific Northwest. He specializes in coverage of political, economic, and environmental news. You can contact him via email at tom.v.cahill@gmail.com.
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