STOP IT. JUST STOP IT: Saturday Political Soap Box 163

It's true.  In a normal electoral system, in almost any other country, she would be our President.  Thanks, Red States, for your blind allegiance to the letter R.  Thanks, Rust Belt, for in your pain, falling for the con.

No one laid the groundwork for the future more than Bernie Sanders.  God Bless Bernie Sanders, and the bird who flew in on.

Stop it.  Just stop it.

Stop it, my fellow progressives, Democrats, Independents and thinking Republicans.

Let us close the era of vilifying Hilary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.  This ridiculous feud is only benefiting one person - Donald Trump.

Yes, it's true.  Hillary had serious flaws as a candidate.  Fairly or unfairly, she had a lot of baggage from the past.  The right wing media had spent two and a half decades turning into a cartoon villain.

She was too identified with the old politics, and the special interest money that had become the standard du jour for ALL politicians.  So, in a change election year she represented the old guard.

Yes, the campaign sometimes made bad decisions.  I would've picked a midwesterner who was very vocal, very progressive as a running mate, and would have camped him/her in the rust belt for the entire duration of the campaign.  She should have promoted ideas more than just that Trump was scum.  In my opinion, they knew he was scum and they voted for him, anyways.  If you hear your candidate say, "grab 'em by the pussy", and you still vote for him, then no appeals to character were ever going to work.

Yes, the Russian hacking  and Comey's foolish announcement, contributed to her loss.  But here's the bottom line - whatever obstacles, this should have been a landslide for her, along the proportions of LBJ in 1964 and Nixon in 1972.  She was running against the most unfit candidate in American history, one who had only about 37% popularity, even on the day of election.  It should not have been close.

And yet, there is little doubt that she would have made a good President.  No one else had her resume and qualifications.  She might have been too cautious, but her pragmatic temperament would have served us well. I admire her abilities  and had faith she would move us in the right direction  - maybe not as fast as I liked, but certainly better than full-reversal plunge to Ayn Randian style totalitarianism we are experiencing now.

Yes, it's true.  Neither was Bernie the perfect candidate.  Time and again, he failed to connect with a broad enough base to win primaries in diverse states.  The African American vote, particularly among those that were not millennials, never supported him in numbers sufficient to deny Clinton the nomination.  In my opinion, when he failed to win the Ohio primary, the race was basically over, and he was playing out the string

Many of the new voters he attracted were not people with great political philosophical depth. They came in for his personality. or a defiance of the establishment, and didn't understand that his ISSUES, which they enthusiastically agreed with, were more important than the man.  So a portion of his voters did not switch over to Clinton, and did not fully understand what the horrible consequences would be in Trump becoming President.

We can only speculate what a Sanders run would have been like in the General Election.  He would have attracted a different group of voters than Hillary did, at least to a degree, but whether that would have been enough to win, I just don't know.  And I'm sure the same right-wing media that demonized Hillary would be working overtime to do the same thing to Bernie.

And yet, Bernie showed the way to the future in politics.  A purer, more unabashed progressivism, one not tied to large corporate donors and special interests.  He polls now as the most popular politician in America.  And, if the right wing wants to try to damage those numbers, let them try.  But I'll tell you who shouldn't try to damage them - US PROGRESSIVES AND DEMOCRATS.  STOP IT.  JUST STOP IT.  

And it is equally true about Hillary.  STOP IT.  JUST STOP IT.

Acknowledge the mistakes and imperfections,  Learn from them and MOVE ON!

Lesson 1:  Be full throated in your advocacy of Progressive values.  On almost all of them, the American people poll WITH US.  They just don't understand it yet, and you know what?  As long as we equivocate, they never will.

Lesson 2: Stop taking corporate money.  Just stop it.  Now.  Bernie showed us the way to a new kind of funding, and we must adopt it.  That includes taking huge sums of cash to give speeches to big business.  Sorry, President Obama - fairly or unfairly, that includes YOU.

Lesson 3:  Grassroots is best.  Work from the bottom up.

Lesson 4:  Run EVERYWHERE.  Nowhere in this country should right-wing extremist thinking go unchallenged.  

Lesson 5:  The next Democratic Party candidate for President is not going to be Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.  It's going to be somebody else.  And it needs to be somebody who can combine an appeal to the white working class AND the minority working classes.  Only when those two are combined do the Democrats become an unbeatable force.  Robert Kennedy did it in 1968, a run tragically interrupted by his assassination.  Bill Clinton did it in his run in 1992.  Barack Obama did it in 2008 and 2012.  We win when the working class recognizes their common interest.

I don't know who that candidate will be yet.  But I know whom it won't be - Clinton or Sanders.

So, please. STOP IT.  JUST STOP IT.

Let's stop bellyaching, and instead join together to launch the Progressive Revolution.

It may be our only hope.