Bernie Sanders Cannot Endorse Hillary Clinton And Retain His Credibility
Bernie Sanders cannot endorse Hillary Clinton if he wants to retain credibility in the movement he created. On Thursday, NPR reported that Sanders is expected to endorse Clinton on Tuesday, a move that could disillusion and anger his base so much so that he could lose the wide support he’d spent the last year cultivating. An endorsement from Sanders would be the ultimate betrayal to those who are angry and frustrated about the current state of affairs.
The FBI’s recommendation to not indict Clinton has only served to stoke the fires of discontent rather than putting them out. After spending more than one year on the campaign trail, and over 25 years in Congress railing against corruption and the political elite, Sanders would destroy his own ethics and credibility were he to stand up on Tuesday and urge his supporters to vote for the very woman many believe embodies the corruption he has criticized.
An earlier article on the Inquisitr noted that during an appearance on CNN with Wolf Blitzer, Sanders never once said he was quitting the campaign to endorse Clinton. Throughout the 15-minute interview, he merely called Clinton the “presumptive nominee.”
During an appearance on NPR, Vice President Joe Biden said he was “confident” Sanders will endorse Clinton. Sources have also said that Sanders is warming to Clinton after she adopted some of his own platform ideas, such as tuition-free college for families with incomes under $125,000 per year.
Sanders may, indeed, be warming to Clinton, but his supporters haven’t. With the 2016 primary winding down, the DNC’s gross mishandling of the entire process has left wounds and anger that are still too fresh for Sanders supporters to get into a forgiving mood.
When FBI Director James Comey made his announcement that although Clinton had actually been dishonest, and that she had been “extremely careless,” he would not recommend indictment, it sent a message to the American public that the Clintons are too big to jail. And even though Bernie Sanders is more widely trusted, his Democratic rival will effectively be crowned the nominee despite the huge amount of public distrust of her.
As Glenn Greenwald said, the case “does not exist in isolation.”
“Had someone who was obscure and unimportant and powerless done what Hillary Clinton did … they would have been criminally charged long ago, with little fuss or objection.”
Couple this with the overtly corrupt nature of the Clinton Foundation, and any Sanders endorsement would be perceived as a big middle finger to the people who sent him millions of dollars in small donations to fight against the same corrupt practices. To endorse that would be the end of the Democratic Party, and would upend any hope of party unity going into the general election.
On Facebook, I posed a question to supporters: How would you feel if Bernie Sanders were to officially endorse Clinton?
One commenter noted that she would be sick to her stomach and discouraged to hear it.
“Just when we had a real chance to improve everything in this country (with Bernie as Pres). It’s over already. I’m losing hope for meaningful change.”
She also said what many Sanders supporters are saying: She doesn’t like Trump, but she’s tired of voting for the lesser of two evils.
The 2016 presidential race is set to go down in history as the one in which Democrats missed a golden opportunity to make things right with the American public and instead, chose to stab them in the back for greed, power, and status quo.
If Bernie chooses to endorse Hillary Clinton and urge supporters to vote for her, all of his talk of a political revolution will ring hollow and he will be seen as just another cog in the wheel of a corrupt political system. His revolution will continue, of course, because now the American people are awake, and they’re not going back to sleep.
[Photo by Seth Wenig/AP Images]
