Will The Political-Revolution-That-Could Be Derailed by Power-Politics-As-Usual?

Quinnipiac University Poll numbers released today, showing Bernie Sanders easily beating all GOP contenders.

If superdelegates steal the Democratic presidential nomination for Hillary Clinton in 2016, her “nomination” won’t be worth having.

That’s a view I’ve been hearing again and again in conversations with Democratic voters over the past two days, voters who do what they can to live as comfortably as they can manage these days in the quiet suburban streets ringing the giant hotel-casinos that form the empty, rigged, voracious heart of Las Vegas.

It’s a view I’ve encountered so often, in my role as as an out-of-state helper for the Sanders campaign, that I feel obligated to bring it up, for whatever consideration anyone might think it’s worth.

But the truth is that I feel stunned by just how many regular Democrats have volunteered to me over the past two days that they’ll never vote for HRC. A woman I talked today named Mary Ann just shook her head and said this: “She’s been around too long. I’m tired of her. Besides,” she added darkly, “Hillary has blood on her hands.”

A 66-year-old union guy named Duane told me that, even though his union leadership (“suck-ups,” he called them) endorsed Hillary, he’ll never vote for her. “I’d rather see Trump in there,” he admitted.

Most Bernie supporters, though, seem much more buoyantly pro-Bernie than anti-Clinton, although their optimism seems guarded, tentative, as if they recognize that Bernie’s little political-revolution-that-could might ultimately be derailed by power-politics-as-usual players from the past.

Then what? Head shakes. No one knows. We’ll cross that trestle when we come to it.

Others, though, are unabashed in their disdain for Hillary, and aren’t afraid to say so. They’re so, um, out there, and so willing to share it, that I was able to use the intensity of their dislike for HRC as a reason to caucus for Bernie.

“There’s only one way you can stand up against Hillary this week,” I told three different voters today. “And that’s to stand up for Bernie Sanders. Because he’s the only one running against her.”

That might seem a helluva piss-poor, superficial reason to vote for anyone, much less a cool, democratic socialist from Vermont with all the amazing bona fides that Bernie Sanders has accumulated over a lifetime of selfless public service, but the fact remains: There are a helluva lot of Democrats who genuinely don’t like Hillary Clinton.

And worse, there seems to be a helluva lot of insider Democrats set on tilting the outcome to her who are completely oblivious to that fact.

But no one ever accuses them of listening to people like me. They listen to big-dollar donors and each other.

That’s why I predict that if the Democratic Party nominates Hillary Clinton instead of Bernie Sanders in 2016 because of insider deals involving superdelegates, they will lose the election to someone named Trump or Cruz or Rubio or Bloomberg and they’ll never even know what hit them.

And here’s the real hell of it: They won’t even know they were holding a winning hand until they threw it all away.

We Won't Get Fooled Again

I never thought I’d say this — much less feel obligated to point it out in public—but Paul Krugman doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about.

Not, at least, when it comes to Bernie Sanders and the amazing political revolution he’s helping to inspire nationwide.

“Bernie Sanders’ Political Revolution,” Rolling Stone, 11/18/15

Example? Paul Krugman seems to think, mistakenly, that the Bernie Sanders campaign is about Bernie Sanders. It isn’t, as every Sanders supporter understands and as Bernie himself points out in virtually every public statement he makes.

It’s easy to see, though, how Krugman was misled: The campaign of Paul’s latest political crush and apparent BFF, Hillary Clinton, is most certainly about HER and how qualified SHE is, as she endlessly declares in droning detail about what SHE will do for US.

And it isn’t just Hillary. Her top-down approach is no different, really, than the campaigns of Trump and Ted and Marco and Jeb and Carly and Christy, et al.

Their campaigns are all about THEM and their BIG-ASS IDEAS no less than Hillary’s is — whether the BAI in question is building a really GREAT WALL to keep the boogeymen out or carpet-bombing ISIS into infinity and (presumably) beyond.

The only real difference is in the margins and the marching orders that will inevitably trickle down from their Too-Big-To-Fail benefactors and donors.

Bernie’s campaign is different — from the unkempt silver strands atop the candidate’s balding head down to the bottoms of his well-worn shoes and all points north, south, east and west, left, right, and center.

And I think I know what I’m talking about, because I’ve felt the feeling that Bernie inspires before: 

First, when I was 9 years old, lying on the floor watching the TV image of a bare-headed young president take the oath of office on a frozen January day, as I puzzled over his summons to “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

I felt it again, eight years later, when that President’s brother, celebrating a seemingly-crucial victory in the 1968 California Primary, jabbed his hair out of his eyes with one hand and waved a final benediction to his supporters with the other: “Now it’s on to Chicago and let’s win there.”

I’ve felt that feeling flicker from time to time in the years since, but it never glowed as brightly as it did during the 2008 campaign of Barack Obama. I was so filled with what I took for holy fire in Obama’s soaring oratory that I was persuaded to believe in Barack Obama​, in the exact same way that Ursuline and Dominican nuns had long ago taught me to believe in Jesus Christ.

I bought into Obama so completely and felt the resonance of his “Yes We Can” campaign ethos so totally that I took the entire year off to serve as a volunteer in Arizona, then New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Oregon, South Dakota, Georgia, and Alabama before finally signing on as a campaign staffer in North Carolina for the general election.

What’s this got to do with anything? Everything.

Three of the smallest Barack Obama supporters I was able to ID in Rapid City, SD, May, 2008.

Because what resonated most in me about Obama 2008 was the candidate’s promise that election day wouldn’t mark the end of the campaign, but its real beginning.

And after the 10,000 or so conversations I’d had with voters in every stop I made, in every state I stayed, I knew Obama was right. Or I knew what I thought he’d told us was right.

Turns out I was wrong. After his inauguration, Obama apparently decided he could do it himself, turning his campaign poetry into legislative prose on the strength of his own considerable intelligence and personal integrity. And that’s where HE went wrong, and we all know it.

Luckily for us, Bernie Sanders is around to pick up Obama’s fallen “Change We Can Believe In” banner and reclaim Obama’s lost Organizer-in-Chief focus.

Bernie understands very well that his campaign isn’t about him. He knows he’s a temporary focal point and catalyst for US (you and me and folks like us) to build a movement around to achieve the change and opportunity WE want and demand of our nation.

One thing we understand to perfection, hard-earned through our collective experience of the last eight years: It isn’t going to come just by voting in a single election or standing up in a single caucus.

But it will come if we don’t allow ourselves to get fooled again, by politics-as-usual hacks like Hillary Clinton and the establishment yes-men (and yes-women) propelling her uninspired and uninspiring candidacy.