Dear Hillary Clinton Supporters,
Congratulations. It is not a dead-lock certainty, but it looks like your candidate is the prohibitive favorite to win the Democratic nomination.
She is one of the most qualified persons, male or female, to run for President. She has an impressive resume and background, and possesses the kind of temperament that would make her a good, pragmatic President.Although not near as progressive as I would want her to be, she definitely will stand up for the right things more than any of the current Republicans would.
Thanks to a contest where the states that favored her were stacked up front, an African-American community (particularly in the South) that has stayed loyal in overwhelming numbers, and a superdelegate base that is unlikely to budge regardless of primary and caucus results...thanks to these factors and more, she is in the driver's seat for this year's nomination.
But some notes of caution - just trying to keep it real!....
You need to stop attacking Bernie people as if you think they are vile contaminants of society. All campaigns have loud supporters who say they will not vote for the opposition (remember PUMA? Anyone? Anyone?) You need to be more concerned about accommodating them than conquering them. Because you have no chance of winning the Presidency without them.
Besides, it's not the Bernie people you need to worry about. It's the fact that millions of others don't like her, and almost certainly never will. Yes, I know a lot of it is based on a huge pile of unfair demonizing and outright lying by a lot of right wing extremists over the last 25 years. But it's there, and I don't honestly know how you combat it. I try to talk to independents and Republicans about Hillary, and the anger and heat I get back practically singes off my eyebrows.
She's going to be tempted to tilt right rather than left once she locks the nomination. She cannot do that. She cannot run as Republican lite. Because if these last few years have proven, if nothing else, it is that if people have a choice between a Republican and Republican lite, they are going to pick the real Republican.
She needs to pick a Vice President from the Progressive wing. At a minimum, she should pick Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown and shore up her base in the rust belt. Because if it is a close election, that is where it will be decided.
It's true. Hillary is a Corporate Democrat. That's not ideal, but the best President of recent times has been President Obama, who most assuredly is a Corporate Democrat. It's not the worst thing in the world.
But it's also not the future. Catering to Super Pacs and the wealthy, shaping policy based on special interests and preserving the power of the elite, is the way things are done now. But if we are to really survive and grow as a country, it cannot remain that way. Bernie Sanders has shown us the way to the future, a new kind of politics that puts everyday people and the middle class first.
Even though she is of the present system, she does not have to stay in place with it. Just as Bill Clinton promised to "bridge us to the 21st century", she can connect us to the political revolution of tomorrow, to the next generation of leadership that restores and revitalizes our middle class and democracy.
She can do it. She is a smart, intelligent person, and I do think she cares deeply about this country and it's future. But she has to abandon her corporate ties (as best she can), stop telling us what we can never, ever have, and start the process of dreaming us past our limits to a better future and place.
It took Nixon for us to go to China. It took Bill Clinton to bring about welfare reform (whether that was good or bad is a different argument). So maybe it will take Hillary Clinton to cut our ties to the corporatists.
One can only hope.
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