Bye bye Bernie Sanders
The people haven’t yet spoken but they are speaking. It certainly looks (to me, anyway) as if Joe Biden will be the Democratic candidate for president of the United States, even if there has to be a brokered convention.
Joe is very much my second choice in a long list of second choices. I wanted Elizabeth Warren, but, well, c’est la guerre. If it is to be Biden, I am 100% behind him, without hesitation, without equivocation, without regret. That’s what adults do. Adults don’t pick up their toys and run away crying because they didn’t get their way. Adults don’t try to punish the world because they think the world is out to get them. With the Titanic sinking, adults don’t quibble about the color of the lifeboat.
I admit, Joe isn’t as progressive as I would like him to be, but neither would be the reanimated corpse of Richard Nixon, and I would vote for Nixon before I would ever vote for Donald Trump. I would vote for Nixon before I would allow Donald Trump to win a second term because I didn’t vote at all. I would vote for my neighbour’s Jack Russell if he were the Democratic candidate, and he’s not even an American citizen, he’s a British dog. And he would make one hell of a president, considering the alternative.
But, some of you say, they’re all just as bad as Trump, you say. Bernie is different, you say. If Bernie doesn’t win then what difference does it make, you say. Permit me to explain.
First of all, how many children and women has Joe Biden raped? None, as far as I know. How many family businesses has Joe Biden destroyed because of a corporate policy to never pay a contractor in full for honest labor performed no matter what? Zero, is my guess. How many gold star families has Joe Biden ridiculed, disabled reporters mocked, children caged, tens of thousands of lies told? How many people has Joe Biden unjustly excoriated by name via tweet, putting their lives in danger? How routinely does Joe Biden take credit for other people’s work? How many times has Joe Biden betrayed his country to foreign interests?
Let me ask you something else. If Donald Trump had gone to Jeffrey Epstein’s New York penthouse and raped your daughter, how would you feel now about his political opponent? Would it really bug you if Donald Trump’s opponent wasn’t progressive enough? Would you really care that there’s a good chance his opponent wasn’t planning on forgiving student loans?
While you’re thinking that one over, here’s another one for you. Imagine your family ran a small cabinet business in Atlantic City and it was contracted by the Trump organization to make cabinets for Trump’s casino. Now imagine after the work was finished and approved to everyone’s satisfaction, Trump refused to make the final payment, effectively rendering the installation a zero profit job. Imagine your family complained about it and, in retaliation, Trump made it so that the family business could never get work in Atlantic City again, and had to file bankruptcy. Would you be all broken up because you suspected Trump’s opponent might be a “corporate Democrat?”
Permit me to answer for you. Of course you wouldn’t care. You’d want the bastard gone. I submit, therefore, that your problem isn’t one of politics. I submit it’s one of empathy. In other words, you’re okay that Donald Trump is a child-raping, thieving, traitorous, lying monster as long as he’s never done to you or your family any of the (literally) thousands of horrible things he’s done to other people. You’re just fine with that, right?
I hope I’m wrong about you. I hope you do care that Donald Trump isn’t just the worst president in history, he’s worse than the worst human being you have ever met. He’s so evil that you have never met his equal, because men as evil as he is are as rare as men over seven feet tall. Because if you don’t understand how different he is from the others, I’m not sure I see any difference between you and a Trump supporter.
Okay, I get that Medicare for all is a good thing. In principle I agree with it. I think it’s a disgrace that the United States is the only major country on earth that doesn’t have decent healthcare for everyone. But Bernie Sanders hasn’t done crap. He’s only made extravagant promises about what he’s going to do. I’ve seen lots of politicians make extravagant promises and fail to deliver on them. We have an evil man in the Oval Office who needs to go, and he needs to go now.
There will be other elections, other chances to make policy. Politics is a game of compromise. Come, let us compromise together. Let’s not give this evil bastard four more years. We can do it, but we have to do it together.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.