A lot has been said about the upcoming presidential general election, which involves the clashing of two widely unpopular major party candidates. A lot has been made of the issues surrounding Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, as the fair and balanced mainstream media devotes an unfair and biased amount of attention to his words instead of Hillary Clinton’s actions. Speaking of the former Secretary of State’s actions, while the media has not generally kept the heat on, people are hesitant to trust her with the nuclear codes or any sensitive data at all.
There are two different storylines regarding how we got to this point however.
Despite the media playing up the dissension within the Republican Party and disapproval of Trump among many within the party mainstream, the controversial businessman crushed the previous record for turnout set by former President George W. Bush. In 2000, Bush set the record with 12,034,676 votes. This year, Trump secured 14,009,107, or 45% of the vote. He is officially the most popular Republican primary candidate, historically speaking.
On the Democratic side, things appear less certain.
Much was made of the minor chaos at the Republican National Convention by Democrats, who watched the last stand of the #NeverTrump movement attempt to take down Trump. This would in the end look small in comparison to the mess that would haunt the coronation of Hillary Clinton in Philadephia.
As if tensions weren’t already high enough, Wikileaks then dropped almost twenty thousand e-mails between top Democratic National Committee officials, including Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The revelations were not only serious for Wasserman Schultz, but the overall conduct of party officials. Beyond the obvious favor for Hillary Clinton, it was also revealed that Hispanic outreach was referred to as “taco bowl engagement”and Latinos were “brand loyal customers.”
The supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders were lied to all through this election cycle. While they were long told there was no bias, there was actually collusion in progress by various party leaders. Wasserman Schultz herself had some vulgar opinions about Senator Sanders’campaign manager and even labeled her preferred candidate’s opponent as not being a real Democrat.
Progressive activists were never going to be included by the Democratic Party and like libertarians in the Republican Party, they will never be embraced by the party establishment. Hillary Clinton paying lip service to the progressive movement doesn’t make her progressive, progressive lite, or even remotely leaning that far to the left. She’s an establishment moderate.
Clinton and her campaign have insulted the intelligence of Senator Bernie Sanders supporters all along. Similar to how the Mitt Romney campaign treated the grassroots of former Texas Congressman Ron Paul, the Senator Sanders grassroots were robbed of a fair fight. That’s not to say he could have won, maybe it was never meant to be. But the problem is we will never know because a fair fight was never allowed. It was rigged from the beginning.
Hillary Clinton doesn’t “feel the bern” and never will. Neither does the racist DNC and their hateful leaders. At that point, the only recourse Senator Bernie Sanders supporters have within the Democratic Party is to “bern it down.” The Democratic Party deserves to lose this one.
