In the days leading up to the Democratic National Convention, we are seeing an enormous amount of pressure and propaganda to get Bernie Sanders to endorse Hillary Clinton. Hillary supporters are supremely irritated with Bernie Sanders and continually wonder why he won't politely concede the same way that Hillary Clinton did in 2008.
I have news for you, Clinton supporters. There is little doubt that Barack Obama won the primaries fair and square. But there is nothing but suspicion about how the primaries were won by Hillary Clinton. There is even a fair amount of doubt that she even won the primaries at all based on indirect evidence. See all the lawsuits and investigations? Don't even think that those investigations are part of a vast right-wing conspiracy to deny her the White House. Most of us Sanders supporters would make Hillary look about as conservative as Richard Nixon.
Nevertheless, despite the alleged wins by Hillary, she still lacks the pledged delegates needed to clinch the nomination. You can call her the "presumptive nominee" all day long and that won't mean squat. According to the Green Papers a site dedicated to an accurate accounting of election results, Hillary still has only 2,202 of the 2,383 pledged delegates needed to clinch the nomination. Bernie Sanders has 1,847 pledged delegates. The superdelegates, most of whom have declared their support of Clinton long before the first primary was even held, do not vote until the convention.
In recent days, we've seen word of concessions on the part of the platform drafting process for the DNC. Adding nice words for Sanders in the Democratic platform is nice, but it's not binding. Hillary can walk all of it back once she's in the White House. She's spent a lot of time supporting the TPP, but seriously, if opposition to the TPP were put into the platform, she can ignore it. $15 minimum wage? Who cares if she's in the White House? She'll ignore it and go back to fighting unions like she did before in Arkansas.
Now comes word of a rally being held by Bernie Sanders today and Hillary Clinton will be there. The rumor is that Bernie Sanders is planning to endorse her there. Clinton supporters are salivating at this opportunity for Sanders to publicly and undeniably concede this election. That isn't going to happen.
The rumors have been spread around by the mainstream media in the hopes of defusing an enormous protest planned for the convention. Some are projecting 10 million will descend upon Philadelphia to protest, but I seriously doubt that there are enough toilets to support that many people let alone the lodging. I think that a more reasonable estimate is about 100,000-200,000 can be expected to be on the streets around the convention. Even that would be a very high number of people to be camping out around the convention site. And they will need a place to go potty. And eat. The local restaurants would be nuts to deny them service if the thought should ever cross their minds.
Some have voiced concern that Bernie Sanders would lose his superdelegate status if he were to refuse to endorse Hillary Clinton. Surprise, surprise. Bernie is a superdelegate. He's only been a Democrat for what, a year and he's a superdelegate? But he must endorse Hillary Clinton or he loses his superdelegate status, right?
Has anyone else noticed that Al Gore is a superdelegate and is withholding his endorsement of the presumptive nominee? Does Al Gore seem at all worried that he might lose his status as superdelegate? No. Clinton is still the presumptive nominee. There is no nominee. Isn't that odd that Al Gore, former Vice President with Bill Clinton refuses to endorse Hillary Clinton? I mean, wouldn't that be a shoe-in? Why does Al Gore seem so reluctant to endorse Hillary?
Now it's time to dash those rumors that Bernie is going to endorse Hillary. Somebody had the temerity and the brains to call the Bernie Sanders campaign just to check it out. Sure enough, the true story is that Bernie Sanders will not endorse Hillary Clinton, at least not today. Even Jeff Weaver, campaign manager for Sanders will not confirm an endorsement for Hillary to be forthcoming.
It's important to note that Bernie is one of the most experienced politicians in the United States. He's seen 14 elections won and a few more lost. He understands a concept called "leverage". He's staring a political movement that has mobilized millions of people to act and act now to stop Hillary Clinton. His supporters are learning to avoid the mainstream media for news. They are going to social networks for news. Many of them are saying that if Bernie endorses Hillary, they will vote for Jill Stein. Automatically.
They are going to Reddit to find stories from people who are close to the sources. They are forming their own networks of reporters to find and relay the news on Facebook. Clearly, the Associated Press cratered when they announced that Hillary had "clinched the nomination" a day before the last primaries were held on June 7th. But they ain't seen nothin' yet. When millions of people openly say that they're going to ignore the mainstream media because they can't be trusted, they've got bigger problems than finding readers. They're going to have trouble finding advertisers.
Where was I? Oh, yeah. Leverage. Hillary's supporters want this really, really bad. They are absolutely salivating at the novelty of electing the first woman president in America. Well, she's got nothing on Angela Merkel, Margaret Thatcher and and dozens of other countries. Here's a list of all of all female heads of state worldwide throughout history. Here's a list of current female world leaders, most of whom were elected in apparently fair elections. I do want a woman for president, just not Hillary. I'd rather have Jill Stein from the Green Party for president.
Sorry, lost myself again. Leverage, right? Yeah, Sanders has leverage. He has 1800 delegates (more than 1900 if you count the superdelegates) behind him. He has more than 12 million votes behind him. And don't forget the millions more who wanted to vote for him but could not. They could all walk and vote for someone else. God forbid that Trump might be elected as president, right?
Who knows what Bernie wants to do with all that leverage, but he's not going to betray legions of followers with an endorsement almost two weeks before the convention. We do know that he's planning on showing up at the convention with thousands of followers in tow and his delegates. We will have to trust that he's an experienced politician and that he will do everything he can to win the nomination. There is still a chance he might win, however slight. That's because the nominee hasn't been selected yet. For now, we must remain committed to victory, one way or another.
"When one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves, too. " -- Goethe
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