In the media lately there’s been much talk of “party unity”
when discussing support for the presumptive nominees of both parties. While I
had worked for and contributed to Bernie’s campaign and had real hope he could
pull off an upset we can now see it was not to be. I hope my fellow Bernie
supporters, especially those of the “Bernie or Bust” mindset, will take heed of
what I have to say.
First you must understand that although the national party
apparatus didn’t help Bernie get his message out and various establishment
members did put their fingers on the scale to assist Hillary Clinton it’s clear
now she didn’t need it, she won resoundingly. She is the choice of the majority
of Democrats. I won’t belabor the discussion with statistics other than to say she
won millions more votes and won them in the most democratically run primaries,
meaning elections not caucuses. We don’t have to like it, we just have to make
the best of it.
Now here’s why it should matter to you that Hillary becomes
our next president instead of the reality show blow hard. To explain I’m going
to tell you a little story about how our then congressman Henry Cuellar came to
support the Affordable Care Act back in 2010. Cuellar, who is the only Democrat
endorsed by the right wing, anti-tax group called Club for Growth, was
unwilling to commit to voting for the bill. I and others called his offices
repeatedly that winter and spring urging him to come out in support of the
bill. When he continued to keep his distance we organized rallies in Schertz
and Seguin and
met with his local staff several times hoping to up the pressure. We wrote him
letters and emails, we wrote letters to the editor. We made such a nuisance of
ourselves that we heard through back channels that he was asking his contacts
what was going in Guadalupe
County
Late one evening a couple of days before the vote was to
take place I received a phone call from a member of his Washington, D.C. staff
asking if I could manage to get some Affordable Care Act supporters to attend
an event in Laredo the next day at which he was speaking and would likely
commit to vote for the bill and he knew there would be opponents present. Since
I was working with a nationwide group and had the phone number for an organizer
with a wider range of contacts I called her and she agreed to make some calls.
When Cuellar spoke the next day there were roughly equal numbers of supporters
and opponents and he committed to vote in favor of the bill.
In an effort to persuade Kay Bailey Hutchison and John
Cornyn to support the bill knowing that it would improve the lives of nearly
one million Texans we held many more events with many more people in
attendance. We held petition drives and delivered the petitions to their local
offices. We organized phone calls to their offices from Texans from all over
the state. Even with all that effort neither of them ever showed the slightest
inclination to support the bill.
If you haven’t figured out my point yet, I’ll make it
crystal clear. It is better to elect a wavering Democrat who can be pushed to
move in our direction than to allow a Republican of any sort to hold office as
we won’t have any persuasion power over them at all.
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