Welp, it’s all over for Bernie. It was fun while it lasted. For a while there, we really seemed to have a shot at electing a true Progressive for the first time since … well, I’ll just say I was born in 1960 and I still haven’t had a chance to vote for a presidential candidate running under a major party banner in the general election who was real progressive. (And no, Jimmy Carter was not a progressive.)
The effective end of Bernie’s run as a potential nominee no doubt comes as a great relief not just to Hillary Clinton, but to the corporate media and to Donald Trump and his fellow oligarchs as well.
The corporate media managed to cover Bernie as if he were a serious candidate for exactly seven days, sometimes even foregoing the usual 24-7 live streaming of whatever idiocy Donald Trump happened to be spouting at the moment. Their week-long ordeal is officially over. The paid punditry can once again dismiss Bernie as a crank and go back to breathlessly reporting on, speculating about, and most importantly, selling lots of ads during wall-to-wall coverage of the Human Click Bait Generator.
Hillary can now safely move back to the center-right where she is most comfortable. I’m sure in the coming weeks we will learn that she has decided that she supports the TPP, after all. And in the coming months we’ll hear reassurances, buried deep within the paragraphs-long monologues with which she purports to answer reporters’ or debate moderators’ questions, that if elected she will work to rebuild the middle class by (buried deeper still) advocating a $2 an hour rise in the minimum wage and "working across the aisle” to pass legislation funding several billion tax dollars (thrown to the banks, natch) to better subsidize slightly cheaper student loans so that American youth can continue to afford to graduate from college burdened by debt that they will never out from under, particularly since (buried so deep it’s never mentioned) Hill already helped pass a bill saying federally subsidized student loans cannot be erased by bankruptcy. And because Hillary is a Serious Adult, we also know we can count on a “measured” approach to global warming, as long as it doesn’t “cost” too much, because after all what is a re-enactment of the Permian Extinction—now gathering steam and headed for your front door not next century but during your actual lifetime if we don’t stop fucking around right now—compared to the pain that will be experienced by our domestic oil producers if we force them to go the way of the whale oil industry before the entire world combusts? And because Hillary is also an Experienced Practitioner of Realpolitik—she learned from ze best, after all!—we know we will be able to sleep safely with Presidents Clinton back in the White House! While America may not be able to afford to pay for crazy expensive Big Government programs like “free college” or single payer health care—because really, who can afford to pay for unicorns?—with Hill at the tiller, we can all sleep secure in the knowledge that her Defense Department will spend at least a trillion dollars on a new fleet of jet fighters and $13 billion a pop to upgrade our 12 aircraft-carrier Navy so that America Remains Strong enough to bomb the crap out of the next third-rate country that gets in our way, with plenty left over to “deter” North Korea and Iran.
And so here’s to Hillary! I, for one, will work to get her elected so we can all go to hell in a handbasket a few—possibly even several—years later than we would have if we allow a Republican to be elected. But at least women will still have the right to get an abortion in the handful of clinics that still perform the procedure. Oh! And Obamacare gets to stick around for 4 more years, so there’s that.
And Trump the Human Click-Bait Generator can stop worrying about the prospect of facing a man who not only also knows how to convey ideas in short, declarative sentences, but who has walked the walk his whole life and can never be called corrupt. Now Trump can go back to calling Hillary a corrupt Washington insider and telling stories about how shamelessly she and Bill used to schmooze him and Melania, back in the days when the Clintons were grubbing for campaign money.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not giving up on progressivism. Today was just another battle lost in a long, long war. Bernie’s run has done some good, and will continue to do some good, because he has carried the torch a little farther, moved discussion of democratic socialism into the mainstream, gotten a lot of people to stop buying into the mantra that unfettered capitalism is as good as it gets. Progressivism is in a lot better shape than it was before Feelin’ the Bern became a thing. And I still get to cast my now-symbolic vote for Bernie on June 7th.
But right now, the morning after the March 15 results have spelled Bernie’s certain defeat, I gotta say: I can scarcely contain my excitement at the prospect of getting to vote for Hillary in November.
I’ll feel better about it by November, I promise. After all, given a choice between Clearly Evil and Merely Co-opted by the 1%, there is only one thing a moral person can do, and I will gladly do it. I’ll stand with Hillary.
Just don’t expect me to look happy about it.