My message to Sanders supporters who still can't bring themselves to endorse HRC: [View all]

[Ken Burch]

(note: I'm trying to reach people here...people we need...if you just want to snipe at the people I'm trying to reach, please don't post in this thread. I'm doing this to help our nominee get elected. Please respect our nominee's interests and stay out of this thread if you can't be positive).


Yes...the emails do reveal that the DNC was biased against our candidate;

Yes...we WERE disrespected by the announcement of DWS appointment in the Clinton-Kaine campaign on the same day she resigned from the DNC in disgrace(though it's possible that DWS insisted on that timing just to stick it to HRC for telling her she had to go);

Yes...it was bullshit that the AP declared HRC the nominee the night before California voted(an annoucement that may have cost us a narrow victory there-although HRC probably would have been nominated anyway);

Yes...it was despicable that we and our candidate were falsely accused of not caring about and not wanting the votes of people of color(we could have done a better job there, but we clearly did try to get those votes and make POC a major part of the campaign and the movement);

Yes...it was painful to watch our candidate concede defeat and to have people mocking the justified and deeply-felt grief of our delegates as they watched his presidential campaign come to an end;

All of that is true...all of that is real...a lot of people have good reason to feel raw, sad, and angry;

But in the hours, days, and weeks soon to come, we must move on from that, as revolutionaries of the past moved on from far more painful moments than this.

This election is about what WE believe in...much(not all, but much) of which is incorporated into the 2016 Democratic platform. About the historic changes we have just brought to the very structures of this party, about the space for activism and mobilization we have now created inside the Democratic Party, through the historic efforts of millions of us over the last year, a year in which we support for real change in this country that had not been seen or mobilized on this scale for decades.

But it is about much more than that:

It is about our responsibilities and our duties.

We have a duty, to the candidate we supported, to the movement we created and the country and world we are fighting to save:
to make sure that Donald Trump, the most openly-fascist major party candidate in American history, never gets anywhere near the Oval Office.

We have a duty to stand now, as we have throughout this campaign, with women, working people, LGBTQ people the poor, with people of faiths and cultures new to this country, with those who struggle against all forms of bigotry and those oppressed by it, to protect their hopes, their chances, their dreams-all of which we share-from a man whose entire vision of our future is a vision of fear, of exclusion, of splendor for the few and despair for the many, a many he will seek to keep divided against itself with endless appeals to hatred, tribalism and the restoration of a golden past that never existed.

And we have a responsibility to make sure that the space for activism and political advance we have created is not forever closed by the election of a cynical tyrant who is eager to get the tools of repression and violent retribution into his tiny little hands.

Voting for the Green ticket presidentially is NOT an option this year. There were and are good reasons for a party like the Greens to exist, to raise the issues it raises, and to try and create a new kind of politics. But a presidential campaign, a campaign the Greens cannot win while the Electoral College still exists, does nothing to create a progressive future. They need to focus on winnable local races and on initiative politics, including initiatives for electoral reform.

We have just come to the end of Bernie's presidential campaign...a good end, with a magnificent speech on his part and which many achievements that all of us who took part in it can celebrate. It is natural for grief to be part of a moment like this. And anger. A lot of work was done and dreams were born in the minds of millions.

So grieve and rage for a few days if you must...rage at the next full moon if need be...work through it as quickly as you can...then join us in the work to come...the work of registering 50 million new voters, getting those voters to the polls, electing the first woman president and progressive majorities in the Senate, the House, and every legislature in the land.

We will decide this election.

We will shape the future.

To do that, we must stand now, as we have always stood, with the many and not the few.

We must elect the Clinton-Kaine ticket AND progressive Dems at every level.

It's not just about us...it's about the whole damn world.