#StillSanders or #JillnotHill

#StillSanders or #JillnotHill


Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders during the Democratic Debate. Photo: The Daily Beast

“I have come here to make it as clear as possible why I am endorsing Hillary Clinton and why she must become our next president.” These words came out of Sanders’ mouth when he endorsed Hillary Clinton on July 12 in New Hampshire. His reasoning is still not clear to many of his supporters, including myself. After the anger, sadness and a wide sense of despair subsided, reflection on the why and what have now began. Yes, he endorsed this warmonger before the convention. “Party unity” is the slogan the Hillary people are throwing around. He said it was to defeat Trump. In my naïveté I never thought I would hear this lesser of two evil propaganda coming from him. There it was, he said it.

It’s hard to criticize the words of someone you admire, because after all he did change the discourse of the election. He got millions of people involved in the political process, including the vast majority of millennials from every race and economic background. He mobilized a generation by speaking honestly and running a people’s campaign with topics that are as real to them as they are to us. So what does this endorsement mean? It’s hard to analyze it without getting opinionated. This is the same man who said she wasn’t fit to be president, and now he gets in line behind her. Why? We know she isn’t. But let’s search beyond his words and really question his motives. Perhaps the Democratic National Convention (DNC) threatened to shut him out of the convention if he didn’t. If this happened, all the leverage he has would disappear and they would just vote down his platform. One thing that had angered Sanders supporters was when he said he would vote for Clinton if she was the nominee. As a superdelegate, he has to vote for his party’s nominee. In his endorsement of her, he did not concede and this is the most important overlooked fact. Had he conceded, all his delegates would go to Hillary, and he would no longer be a nominee. So maybe he is playing a game of political chess and is maneuvering himself the hopes of checkmating his rival. We can’t forget that second to Trump,Hillary is the most hated and untrusted politician running for president. That she is under FBI investigation, that the Clinton Foundation might also soon be under investigation and that there are lawsuits in many states regarding voting fraud and suppression.

In the past he has said he would not tell his followers to vote for her, that she has to win them over. And she certainly hasn’t even tried if one looks at the Democratic Platform that came out of Orlando. Let’s look at the democratic platform that the media (and Sanders on his website) is claiming is the most progressive ever. The one that Sanders supposedly moved to the left. What exactly did he win from a platform that, even if passed in Philadelphia under a Clinton administration, may never see fruition? This platform is a non-binding document that serves as a guidepost for the party, and the “liberal” points that managed to get passed in Orlando, will not pass if Clinton gets elected. For example, the tax on gas emissions, which she already said she is against. Other things that got put in the non--binding contract were the eradication of the death penalty, the delivery of banking services by the Postal Serviceand the legalization of marijuana,which passed by one vote, and even this only provides a pathway for future legalization. 

Now let’s look at what they rejected: the illegal Israeli settlements in Gaza, Sanders also lost a vote on an amendment calling for a ban to so-called “revolving doors” between the government and the private sector. And of course rejected language that would “condemn the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), because Obama supportsit and is trying his hardest to pass this trading bill that labor is against. “It’s clear the corporate wing of the Democratic Party wants the window dressing of populist language—Bernie Sanders language—but are not serious about it,” Cornel West, a Sanders appointee to the platform writing committee, told the Wall Street Journal. This summarizes not only the TPP, but everything else that was voted down. Remember people, this is supposed to be the Democratic Platform outline, not the Republican one, but as usual they are trying to outdo each other at how they can screw the majority of the people over.The bones they threw at Sanders are meant to placate his supporters and get them to get behind Hillary, seemingly showing he had leverage in the draft of the platform. The language is “liberal” enough at times, while being flexible enough for Hillary and her donors to change later.

After the endorsement, a joyful Hillary said to Sanders, “You were great, so great” and “thank you so much.” Then added, “It is past time to end the stranglehold of wealthy special interests in Washington,”Sanders smiled and clapped.

Yet just like Hillary, right after the endorsement, according to The New York Times, she flew to New York for a private matinee performance of the hit Broadway musical “Hamilton” for donors who gave $2,700 to $100,000 to her campaign or the Democratic National Committee. This is the person we are supposed to trust to control Wall Street, and the other corporate interests that fund her campaign.

I doubt Sanders forgot about the voting fraud in Arizona, New York, California and elsewhere. The fact that she never released her paid speeches to Goldman Sachs and the like. Perhaps he thinks we will trust this war hawk who admires Henry Kissinger or just perhaps he knows what he’s doing and knows something we don’t like, a new move in chess. I’m not going to give him the benefit of the doubt. It’s time the people of this country break the two party system that is strangling us with the same choice. I’m not going to dwell as to why he gave in to the Democratic Party before the convention. It’s hard to trust a man who endorsed someone who under the words of Jill Stein, “Hillary Clinton has spent decades consistently serving the causes of Wall Street, war and the Wal-mart economy.”

Yes, Sanders started a revolution that is not meant to stop when he does. It goes beyond him, it’s a matter of not falling for the “lesser of two evils” propaganda the Clinton machine is already spreading so she can finally be the queen of this country. It is up to us to continue this revolution, this fight against corporate interests. I cannot support a candidate that is in bed with the prison industrial complex the way Clinton is. In bed with this new form of indebted servitude because I believe it must be abolished and she is not going to do it.

Remember Kucinich and Jesse Jackson? They too brought hope, but in the end like Sanders they were destroyed by a party that keeps moving to the right more and more. It’s an illusion and a lie to say that the democratic party serves the interests of the working and middle classes, or of labor. That hasn’t been the case in decades. Their interests lie in the big financiers and in the professional caste. Regarding immigration, it took a democrat to deport more immigrants than any president in U.S. history. That’s why Obama is known as “Deporter in Chief.” And it took a conservative democrat like Bill Clinton to get tough on crime and pass laws such as Three Strikes and You’re Out that led to the mass incarceration of people of color, and to the New Jim Crow as Michelle Alexandercalls it. It took a conservative establishment democrat like Clinton to cut benefits on “welfare mothers” while giving plenty of welfare millions to corporations. It took someone like Clinton to get away with things republicans could only dream of. This is the very man who is husband and political partner of queen Hillary who we are expected to follow like blind sheep and support. Yes, the Clintons, who seem to be above any law and who control the democratic machine. 

So if Sanders is indeed playing chess, there are some pieces and moves we don’t know, and the game will end in a stalemate in Philadelphia where neither he nor Clinton wins. One that will pave the way to Jill Stein, Green Party candidate. The candidate this country and this world deserves. She shares all the progressive measures that Sanders had and her foreign policy is truly progressive. Yes, it’s time we break from a party that long ago stopped representing us and go Green. Dr. Cornel Westhas endorsed her and fully supports her, that should be enough for us, it is for me.

 

 

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Leticia Cortez is a teacher, writer, activist and loves film. She was born in Mexico and grew up in Chicago. She travels the art world, both in her imagination and in her book, art and film reviews. She writes political essays, short stories and poetry. Presently she teaches Latin American Literature in English and Spanish at St. Augustine College.