6 July 2016

Bernie should endorse Hillary after she’s nominated

Unless she dies before 27 July, the day when I believe the formal ballot to choose a nominee will be held (I could not find a schedule on the convention’s official website), Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic Party’s candidate for President of the United States. After her acceptance speech the next night, I expect that Bernie Sanders will join her on the podium and produce an unmistakeable gesture of support and solidarity. He’ll endorse her and stump for her.

That will be good enough for me. In fact, it will better than I feel capable of doing right now. I’ll vote for her — that’s in my enlightened self-interest — but at this point I can’t bring myself to endorse her.

But it won’t be good enough for a lot of her supporters. They want Bernie to endorse her yesterday. Like the pack of playground bullies that they are, they want him to cry “Uncle!”, to abase himself with a concession speech in the seventh inning, so that they and she can bask in the glory of seeing the man who had the temerity to challenge her drop to his knees and kiss her feet.

Bernie is playing hardball to obtain needed changes in the Democratic platform. That’s both his right and smart politics. No one should be surprised. He’d be a fool to surrender his leverage with a premature endorsement. What the Hillaryites really want when they demand he endorse her now is not just some kind of primal satisfaction from rubbing his face in the dirt, but the least unfriendly to Wall Street platform possible.