Bernie Sanders and the Future of the Democratic Party

Tomorrow is the June 7 primary for both here in California as well as 4 other states. According to the Hillary supporters, the nomination will be clinched by Clinton before the polls even close on the west coast. However, Bernie Sanders, to the delight of his supporters (including this blogger), has maintained that he will continue to fight all the way to the convention in July.

Rena Marrocco aka “The Liberal Diva” posing with “Bernie Sanders” (aka Michael Johnson) at the Bernie Rally in San Diego on June 5, 2016.

Yesterday Bernie came to San Diego area and spoke for the forth time in over a month to do some last minute campaigning. He brought with him Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard and Dr. Cornell West as well as some local (and extremely talented musicians) This was my 3rd Bernie rally I had attended with him speaking and the second in three weeks. This last time I decided to attend as not just a Bernie supporter, but as a blogger. I wanted to find out what the future of the Democratic Party will be now that Bernie Sanders has had this phenomenal impact on both the registration of new Democrats and the voter turnouts in primaries in other states. So I talked to a few people to get their take on things.

Both challengers for the mayor’s seat in San Diego are supporting Bernie. This is Rena Marrocco (aka “The Liberal Diva”) with Lori Saldana, mayoral candidate, Bernie supporter and long time friend.

The first two people I spoke to were Don and Kurt Scott, a married couple from University Heights. Don is a Veteran who from some of the things he said, I am guessing is about my age (early 50s) and Kurt works in retail and appears to be in his mid to late 30s. When I asked them about why they were supporting Bernie to the point that they would come out and wait in the hot sun for hours just to see him and hear him speak they had different responses. For Kurt, it is Bernie’s personal integrity that has motivated him most. He’s always held to the same principles and acted on those principles for over 40 years. Don agreed with Kurt on that but expounded saying, “with Bernie I don’t have to compromise.”

Don explained that he was in the military when Bill Clinton was in and implemented Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. He is the second gay veteran I have met who was discharged under that policy as being mentally unfit to serve (aka, gay). In addition, Hillary and Bill’s support of DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) is what has turned him absolutely against Hillary Clinton.

Both men are regular voters who were decline to state, but registered Democratic just to vote for Bernie. I asked them if they would stay Democrats after the primary and they both responded by saying that it would depend. If Bernie became the Democratic nominee, then they would stay Democrats for sure. However, if Hillary gets the nomination, it would be likely that they would go back to being NPP.

I then spoke with Glynn Clapsaddle an electronic salesperson from Rancho Penasquitos who was sporting an “I voted” sticker.  I asked him about it and he said that he had voted the previous day at the Registrar of Voters office in San Diego.  When I asked him about the last time he voted, he replied that it had been so long that he didn’t remember but that he had voted Republican the last time he did vote (later, he remembered that the last time he voted was in ’08).  Like Kurt and Don above, he too registered as a Democrat specifically to vote for Bernie.   He said that he likes Bernie “because he’s more interested in service than political gain.”  When pressed further about a specific issue he replied, “corporate welfare is the biggest issue.  We’re the richest country in the world, but we can’t take care of anyone.  That’s really offensive to me.”

I asked him if he would stay a Democrat after the primary and he said most definitely that he would.  Referring to the Republicans he said “they’ve been telling me for years that I’m rich.  But I’m not rich.”  He also went on to say that he is really upset about the Republican’s characterization of Bernie supporters as just looking for handouts.  “I’m a successful professional who is not looking for any handouts.”  He even has his own blog in which he wrote a post entitled “The Conversion of a Conservative.”

Finally, I spoke with 27 year-old Octavio Hernandez, owner of a tree trimming service in Encinitas.  He had already voted for Bernie because of his pro-peace stance saying, it’s “a dream come true to find a candidate who stands up to APAC.” For him, Bernie’s foreign policy is the most important issue.   Like the other people I interviewed for this blog, he too registered Democratic specifically to vote for Bernie.  However, he said that he will most likely not stay a Democrat after the primary.  If Bernie does not get the Democratic nomination, he will definitely switch parties, most likely to a third party such as Peace and Freedom.  However, if Bernie does get the party nomination, he would likely stay a Democrat.  I asked him if staying home on election day in November were an option.  He said absolutely not.  “I feel that I’m voting for all of the people who cannot vote.”  When asked who he would vote for in November he said that he hoped that Bernie would come out as a third party, but that writing his name in is an option if he remains a Democrat.

What I found most interesting about interviewing these men (and I didn’t realize that they were all men until I started writing this blog- I apologize for not including any women although there are a great many of them at the event) was that they were all recent registrants but most said that they would not stay Democrats if Bernie did not get the nomination.  When I identified myself as a member of the San Diego County Democratic Party most of them indicated a desire to get more involved in order to bring it further to the left.

The State of California has seen an almost 900,000 increase in voter registrations this year.  The vast majority of them have been Democrats and it is likely that those new registrants have only registered Democratic to vote for Bernie, but as I saw here in just this small sample- the party has a real chance to retain those new registrants.  If the party will make Bernie Sanders its nominee, it will set itself up to be the powerhouse party for decades to come.  The opportunity that Sanders is presenting to the party is the opportunity to actually capitalize on the motivation of these young people who are finally engaged enough to not just vote, but to get involved and stay involved.

However, many in the party are shunning these people.  I’ve heard them referred to by others in the party as not “real” Democrats because they have been newly registered.  So my question then is, why am I constantly being begged to go to voter registration events?  If the party doesn’t want these new registrants, then are we wasting our time going out and registering people?  Now the true answer is “of course not.”  The Democratic Party is welcoming and accepting of all new registrants and as far as I’m concerned, they are welcome in our party.  As far as nearly all the Dems are concerned they are welcome.  The only ones spewing that hate are actually supporting the other candidate.

But the fact is that we really need these people to be with us if we are going to change the direction of this country.  We cannot afford to alienate them by nominating a candidate that they don’t trust.  And the irony is that it very well may be the superdelegates that can save the party.  Hillary and Bernie are likely to end up extremely close with pledged delegates tomorrow.  That makes the superdelegates votes all that more important.  And their job is to make sure that someone unelectable doesn’t get the nomination.  Given that Hillary’s numbers against Donald Trump are so abysmal, it’s likely that she will lose her superdelegate majority- that is if they are committed to doing their job and to protecting the best interest of the party.

A Hillary Nomination Will Guarantee Us a “President Trump”

Donald Trump’s meteoric wins in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, pretty much guarantee him the GOP nomination.  His poll numbers are not slowing down and he seems to outperform them when it comes to election day.   This is a pretty scary precedent, since we know very little of the “how” he’s going to keep his promises.  That the U.S. is falling for his greasy, used car salesman tactics is really astounding to me.  But that’s a whole other story.

The problem is, how do we guarantee that he won’t win?   I’m just going to say two words:  Bernie Sanders.  Yep.  Our old friend who is challenging the party darling Sec. Hillary Clinton is showing a meteoric trajectory against nearly all the Republican candidates in head to head polls.  Many of the same polls show that while Clinton beats Trump, it’s well within the margin of error.  In the Quinnipiac poll, Clinton only beats Trump by 1 point.  1 POINT!! That’s a virtual tie!! As opposed to Bernie Sanders, who in the same poll, beats Donald Trump by 6 points.  That virtually guarantees that he will beat in a head to head Trump.

Yet the problem we have is within our own party.  So many of our fellow Democrats  are voting with their hearts and not their heads.  They’re fiercely protective of our girl, Hillary.  And I really don’t blame anyone for that.  She’s great.  We know that all the Benghazi and email server stuff is just a load of crap made up from the right in order to destabilize her and our party.

I understand the instinct to protect our heroine from the slings and arrows of false accusations.  I really do.  But the presidency is at stake here.  Roe v. Wade is at stake.  Trump is now calling himself “pro-life” and against abortion.  Personally, I think he’s lying when he calls himself that, but I’m not willing to take the chance that he might follow through on his new found sense of moral outrage, and put another Scalia on the bench.  We must do everything we can to guarantee that no Republican gets in office to do that.  And that means that we must, MUST nominate Bernie Sanders.

Now I know what you’re saying- probably something to the effect of polls this far out don’t matter or are unreliable.  So I’m asking you not to accept just this poll, but all the polls that came before it as well.  The trend is unmistakable.  In May of last year, Clinton had a double digit lead over Trump.  It was as high as 24 points in a CNN poll.  The last time CNN conducted a head to head poll in this race, Clinton’s lead was down to a dismal 2%.  If we look at the Quinnipiac polls, we see that Clinton started last year (in May) ahead of Trump by 18 points.  The Quinnipiac poll conducted just last week has her ahead of Trump by a dismal 1%.    Even in the more skewed polls we see the same results:  Clinton’s lead over Trump is receding.

When we do the same comparison between Trump and Sanders, we get the exact opposite picture.  CNN has only conducted two polls on this race between Sanders and Trump, and the last one was back in October.  However, they both showed that Sanders beats Trump by double digits, although like Clinton, his lead declines but not as drastically as Clinton’s.  However, in the Quinnipiac polls, Sanders has shown a trend of starting out good, ebbing a little, and the rebounding back.  This pattern continues in all of the other polls as well, including the incredibly biased PPP poll, which has a record of returning results that seem to favor whomever the Democratic party leadership (the people who are usually paying them) favor.  Even PPP couldn’t hide Sanders lead in this race.

So what about people who say that these polls are too early to make any definitive concrete decisions about? Boy what a difference a few months make.  Last year, when these polls showed that Hillary would pound any and all Republicans in this race, the majority of my Democratic friends criticized me for supporting Bernie and gave me the exact same arguments as I’m using here.   Suddenly, those same arguments to the very people who gave them to me, are no longer valid.  Suddenly, they now have other reasons for supporting Sec. Clinton.

And I get it.  She’s awesome.  I don’t blame my friends for adoring her.  I too get very protective and defensive of her when the right spreads their lies.  Unfortunately, however, the voting public is believing those lies.  And try as we might, we can’t stop the lies and we can’t change public opinion.  This wonderful woman has endured the most intense scrutiny over Benghazi to now her emails.  She has been paraded in front of congress more times than any other person that I can remember in my lifetime (and I was alive when Oliver North was on trial).  All of those investigations have proven nothing but that she has endurance and resilience.  So I get it.  She’s a national treasure.

Unfortunately, the rest of the country has fallen for what Bill Maher calls “zombie lies.”  And those lies are guaranteeing a national attitude of “anybody but Hillary.”  It’s wrong and it’s evil, but unfortunately it is happening.  If we allow Hillary Clinton to get the nomination, then we will be all but guaranteeing a Trump presidency.

Trump is hated by the GOP establishment.  A significant portion of Republican voters have already said that if Trump gets the nomination, they will vote for anyone else- except Hillary Clinton.  And the GOP is prepared for Hillary.  They will trot out the same tired lies about her and eventually, more and more of the general public will believe it.  If Trump gets the nomination and Bernie is the Dems nominee, then a significant portion of the “anybody but Trump” people will vote for Bernie.  They will vote holding their nose, but they will vote for the Democrat as long as it isn’t Hillary.

The same thinking doesn’t hold true for Establishment Democrats.  They will support Bernie if he gets the nomination.  However, the opposite, sadly, isn’t necessarily true.  Bernie has been an independent his entire political career, although he’s caucused with the Democrats ever since he’s been in congress.  When he declared that he was running for president as a Democrat, he brought with him millions of new Democratic registrants.  Most of them are former independants.  Many of them have already said that if Bernie doesn’t get the nomination they are either not voting at all in the general election or they’ll vote Green Party.

Now if you’re anything like me, you probably want to stick your middle finger up at people who say things like that and tell them to go pound sand.  And I’m a Bernie supporter!! However, we need these people because Trump is bringing out a similar element on the opposite side.  The difference is that their candidate is going to get the nomination.  The high performance in the polls of the outliers  like Trump and Sanders is demonstrating a frustration with traditional politics.  The country is ready for a new day.  And while Hillary Clinton’s gender definitely gives her a point of distinction, unfortunately, her policies are the same old, same old.   Any other election year, I think it would be fine for her to be this way.

But 2016 is going to be the year of catharsis in American politics.  The electorate is tired of playing it safe and getting screwed.  If we want to win back the White House this year, we need to counter Trump with our own brand of not the same old, same old.  We need to provide the voting public a viable, but still different alternative to Donald Trump.  And Sanders, having experience in congress and the senate, also has the experience that will put people at ease about him being the Commander and Chief.  He will know how to navigate Washington, which will put people who aren’t used to doing something different, at ease.

Furthermore, it would be likely that whomever one votes for president, will be of the same party that person votes for congress and senate.  So if Hillary becomes our nominee, it will be likely that the Dems will not regain control of either house.    The bottom line is that if we want to keep Roe v. Wade, keep marriage equality, stop Citizens United, bring the banks under control, etc.  we must ensure that a Democrat stays in the White House.  If you hold all of those things near and dear to your heart, then we have to make sure that Bernie Sanders gets the nomination.