Robert Reich, political commentator and former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, has some harsh words for all of the Democratic voters out there. Not just Hillary’s or Sanders’s supporters individually, but all of us as a group. It might just be a bitter pill to swallow, for some of us.
Let’s start with Clinton’s supporters. Reich says to stop telling Bernie to get out of the race. Maybe she can’t fight Trump right now, but Bernie is turning Clinton’s focus toward the issues that affect the majority of voters.
He also still has a chance in this. Without superdelegates, Sanders could conceivably take this election away from Clinton with a commanding win in California. As he’s been creeping up in the polls recently, it’s something that really could happen.
On the superdelegates, Reich said:
“My calculation doesn’t include so-called “superdelegates”—Democratic office holders and other insiders who haven’t been selected through primaries and caucuses. But in this year of anti-establishment fury, it would be unwise for Hillary Clinton to rely on superdelegates to get her over the finish line.”
That’s true. If Sanders overtakes her and she steals the election away from him with superdelegates, there would be an absolute uproar, and Trump would almost surely win as many Sanders supporters vote against Clinton or for Trump.
About Bernie’s supporters, he says that if Clinton is the nominee, you need to fall in line behind her. He wrote:
“But the “Democratic political establishment” is nothing but a bunch of people, many of them big donors and fundraisers occupying comfortable and privileged positions, who won’t even be aware that you’ve decided to sit it out – unless Hillary loses to Donald Trump.”
To those who say Trump and Hillary are the same, he has strong words for you, too. He reminds us of all the “narcissistic, xenophobic” hate-mongering that Trump does out there on the campaign trail. Perhaps the statement that rings truest of all is this one:
“Hillary may not possess Bernie Sanders’s indignation about the rigging of our economy and democracy, or be willing to go as far in remedying it, but she’s shown herself a capable and responsible leader.”
It may be a bitter pill to swallow no matter who ends up winning the nomination, but we all need to fall in line behind the nominee. A vote against the Democratic nominee is almost the same as a vote for Trump, and he must be stopped at all cost.
If you need convincing of that, check out the video below about the monster that is Donald Trump.
Featured image by ATIS547 via Flickr, available under a Creative Commons 2.0 license.
