As I write this, the Democratic Convention is about to begin. The chair of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz just stepped down as the head of the DNC over the leaked e-mails showing that the DNC had apparently conspired against the Bernie Sanders campaign to hand the nomination over to Hillary Clinton. Almost immediately after her resignation, Wasserman-Schultz was given a position within the Clinton campaign as an honorary chair. With cronyism, loyalty is rewarded even after a scandal.
Clinton’s Vice Presidential pick of Tim Kaine has angered many progressives within the party. Kaine is progressive on many wonderful issues, but not on the issues that matter most in this election. This election year will focus a lot on Wall Street greed, corporate legalized bribery, and big money interests in politics. Tim Kaine is no friend to progressives on these issues and neither is Hillary Clinton.
Donald Trump is obviously not either, but he has the ability to fool a great number of Americans into believing he is on the side of the working class against these powerful corrupting influences. He will push these issues in the general election and Clinton will not be able to defend against them.
While Clinton has not been indicted over her private e-mail server, she has also not been given a clean bill of health on the issue either. Trump will continue to use this against her throughout the campaign. The whole campaign will be about Clinton’s e-mail scandal, the DNC’s e-mail scandal, cronyism, and big money corruption in politics.
To make the situation worse, Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange has threatened to release more Clinton e-mails he claims are so damaging that Clinton will almost certainly be arrested. Maybe he is bluffing or is overestimating what he has, but the fact is that the batch of e-mails he released on Friday have already forced the chair of the Democratic Party to resign. So he might not be bluffing. Either way, it will be another scandal that will dog Clinton in the general election.
The good news is that it still isn’t too late. Superdelegates really need to consider all these things before their vote on the convention floor. We are almost out of time and polls have shown consistently that Sanders is the stronger candidate against Donald Trump. He can fight Trump on the corrupting influences in politics. He can fight Trump on Wall Street greed. He can energize people against Trump’s fear with a message of bring people together.
This was a tough primary battle and there is no doubt that Secretary Clinton won more pledge delegates but as these recent DNC e-mails have shown, the deck had been stacked against Sanders from the beginning and even with that, no SuperPAC, and little name recognition, he has prevented Clinton from getting enough pledge delegates to clinch the nomination. He would almost certainly have won the nomination if the DNC had played fair and the media had given him equal time. More importantly, imagine what he could do with the full power of the DNC standing behind him as the Democratic nominee for President of the United States. The media would have to cover him and he would go toe-to-toe against Trump in a debate about the issues that the American people care most about. It isn’t too late.
We are here at the Democratic National Convention and anything can happen. A Sanders upset would be “yuge,” and would dominate the news for weeks to come. The political bump from such an upset would give the Democratic Party the greatest chance of defeating Trump and the Republicans. Bernie Sanders is the candidate America needs. Superdelegates, this election is in your hands. It is time to put party and country ahead of cronyism.
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