From very early on in this primary season, I have been a strong supporter of Senator Bernie Sanders – him being the candidate that was taking most seriously some very important issues such as income inequality, freeing our political system from big money so as to make it more democratic, and many more.
However, recently, as the hopes of Bernie Sanders winning the majority, or even the highest number of pledged delegates began to slip away, I was disturbed to see many in his campaign making moves to encourage superdelegates to assure that Sanders receive the nomination even if former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is slightly ahead in pledged-delegate count – the latest example being this meme that insists that the primary is not conclusive until the superdelegates have cast their votes.
While I agree that Sanders is inherently a better candidate than Clinton, the disparity between the quality of these two candidates is completely dwarfed to a smidgeon by how much either of them is better than Billionaire Tycoon and Reality Television Personality Donald Trump who is an unprecedented threat to the American principles of freedom.
Yes, there are reforms that desperately need to be made before next election cycle. The issue of us having a such thing as superdelegates to begin with is just one of many such things. But for this cycle, I believe that it is important that we all get behind whoever has the most pledged delegates. Clinton may not be as good a candidate as Sanders – but she is a far cry better than Trump, the danger of whom getting into the Whitehouse is greatly increased if we encourage something so divisive as trying to get superdelegates to overturn the decision voters made at the polls. To risk increasing the chance of the Republican to win by not supporting the Democratic nominee, one of two conditions would have to be met. Either the Democratic nominee would have to be no better than the Republican nominee (and as previously mentioned, Clinton is a far-cry better than Trump) or the Democratic nominee would have to be a “Democrat in Name Only” – or “DINO” for short (which for all her shortcomings, Clinton is also far from being that).
There is another reason why trying to achieve a Sanders win by means of the superdelegates is unconscionable. Early during the primary season, when it looked like there was a chance that the superdelegates might overturn a voter decision for Sanders in favor of Clinton, many Sanders supporters (including myself) were strongly in favor of asking them to promise not to do this. The issue was an important one to us all because we knew that the possibility of the superdelegates doing this hurt our candidate’s chances – but I (and I’m sure other Sanders supporters as well) also felt that it was a matter of principle too – that the party elite shouldn’t be over-riding the decisions made by the rank-and-file supporters of the party. For this reason. How we can now do a 180 on this and ask the superdelegates to do for Sanders the very same thing that earlier on we vociferously asked them not to do for Clinton is, to say the least, extremely perplexing.
I still will be supporting Sanders at very least until the results from today’s polls are in. However, after that, for the reasons here mentioned, I will be supporting whoever has over the whole primary season accumulated the most pledged delegates – even if it is Clinton. I encourage other Sanders supporters to do the same.
