Last week, I wrote a blog post entitled: “Trump Has Extended An Olive Branch To Progressives. Clinton Hasn’t.”
Between the time it was written and the time it was published, Clinton adopted Sanders’ policy of supporting tuition-free public colleges. And recently, she has added support for a public option extension to Obamacare.
These are good things. These are reasons to believe that Clinton might possibly, against all conventional wisdom, become the candidate America needs her to be.
I mean, I don’t believe she’d actually follow through if elected. But that doesn’t matter.
Sure, I personally hate her. (I’m not denying my own personal feelings here.) But right now there’s no way that Clinton thinks she could actually follow-through on those promises. Things like reducing the student loan burden and providing affordable healthcare for all Americans is a complete fantasy unless and until we pass comprehensive and effective campaign finance reform.
Clinton needs to make campaign finance reform a major priority before she can be considered a serious option for Sanders supporters... whether or not she would actually intend to follow through on a campaign promise for reform is less important than that she makes the campaign promise in the first place.
Right now, American democracy faces the worst crisis that any government can face: A crisis of legitimacy. We, as citizens feel helpless. We know that no matter what we do, the system is rigged. Our votes don’t matter - when we’re not turned away from the polls, we’re statistically marginalized through gerrymandering and a political system that encourages that gerrymandering, vote wastage and polarization. Most importantly, no matter who gets elected, the policies that get passed have zero correlation between what the average voter wants and a high correlation between what the funders of campaigns want.
When people like Sen. Warren say “the system is rigged,” we mean that we can no longer consider ourselves equal citizens under the law.
Indeed, Clinton herself is a clear manifestation of that helplessness.
Many of us in the Sanders camp have felt for a good long while that “the fix was in” with Hillary Clinton. Certainly she had advantages in her campaign provided by Establishment Democrats, such as Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, head of the DNC (and Clinton’s 2008 campaign chair.) It also doesn’t help that (like George W. Bush), Clinton’s rise to power has a lot to do with her being part of a political dynasty that no normal citizen could ever hope to aspire to.
Indeed, this is the damning thing - of Clinton and Trump, it is Trump who has spoken more and done more on this issue. And whomever we elect in 2016, that person must at least keep hope of American agency alive.
That is the scariest thing, to me, about the prospect of a Clinton presidency. It is not that I think she will be a bad President (even if I think she’s a horrible person.) If Trump is elected, he’ll be a bad President. He will most likely be the worst President ever elected (and I’m including Andrew “trail of tears” Johnson, John “Alien and Sedition Act” Adams, and Richard “Richard Nixon” Nixon in that calculus.) Possibly, he might be the last President. Nuclear war? Abolishment of elections? All bets are off with Trump.
But what a Clinton presidency would do is destroy what little hope remains that the people can have some say in who their elected officials are and what they do. The lesson that future politicians would take from a Clinton victory would be: “You can be as corrupt as you want, you don’t need to propose realistic reform, and the people will elect you anyway.”
It was another Clinton, President Bill Clinton, who said that “there is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right in America.” But if Hillary Clinton gets elected without at least making the promise to change, at least doing the decent thing and lying that she’ll work to restore agency through campaign finance reform ― even if she doesn’t really mean it ― just to keep the possibility alive, then nobody’s going to believe that we have the capacity to cure ourselves anymore.
Campaign finance reform is the only way we can start to make progress - indeed, even hope to make progress - on any issue. And we don’t need to wait for the Supreme Court to overturn Citizens United, we could pass stuatutory reform right now, if we took whatever political courage we could muster. We could certainly pass it if the next President makes it a priority of her or his first 100 days in office.
That is the tragedy of a Clinton victory as things currently stand. It’s why I hope Sanders stands firm and demands that this be part of Clinton’s platform before giving an endorsement.
Of course, I’d be perfectly happy if he didn’t endorse Clinton at all.