Bernie, Don't Endorse Hillary Before the Convention!

I know that you are a man of your word and that if you could not win the nomination, you would eventually endorse Hillary Clinton. However, you also promised your supporters that you would take this fight to the convention and that you would work hard to lobby super delegates to switch their votes to you by making the argument that you have a better chance than Clinton to defeat Trump in the general election. After the DC primary, you decided not to send the letter you had been preparing to super delegates. Yet we your supporters continued to lobby them. And the 1831 delegates going to Philadelphia in two weeks plan to continue the effort there. We ran in delegate caucuses all over the country pledging to fight for your nomination and your platform. Right now Clinton only has 2220 delegates, which is just short of the 2383 she needs to secure the nomination outright on the first ballot. If you endorse her now and agree to release your delegates and put her name up for acclamation like she did with Obama, then we will not have a chance to lobby super delegates nor publicly register our vote for you. We want that opportunity. We know that you put up a valiant fight to get as many of your proposals enshrined into the platform as possible. We are happy that there is a plank against the death penalty, for a $15 minimum wage and for a modern day Glass-Steagall Act, and that Hillary has come around on free public college. However, what good is it to call for “considering the impact on climate change” when there is no plank to ban fracking or oppose the TPP, which will overturn environmental regulations? As recently as last week, you indicated that you would be keeping the option open to bring the TPP for a vote on the convention floor. On Saturday, 25% of the committee members filed the minority report needed to do so. However, the New York Times seems to think you will abandon that fight in order to achieve party unity. And your press release yesterday [July 10] focuses on how wonderful the platform is and is glaring in its omission of the TPP and fracking. As you know, the TPP if passed would represent a global corporate coup d’état and is probably the most important thing to fight. We know that you are getting tremendous pressure to endorse Hillary so there can be party unity at the Convention. We also know from your last C-Span interview that you would like to return to the Senate and head the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions that Patty Murray is in line to lead. We can imagine that the party leadership is holding that out as a carrot over your head. Please don’t bite. Know that if they try to marginalize you for not playing ball, your supporters will not let them. If you stay true to the political revolution, you will get that army outside the White House supporting your proposals, the one that you spoke about to Chris Matthews when he asked how you would get 60 votes for any of your bills. You can still assemble that army as a Senator even if you never endorse Clinton. We also know that you are being pressured to endorse her in order to show a united front against Donald Trump. You have said you will do everything in your power to defeat Trump, because you think he is a pathological liar and a bigot. So it seems that you feel compelled to endorse the establishment candidate you ran against because she is the lesser of two evils. In reality, we don’t know how Donald Trump will govern. However, we do know Clinton’s track record. As such, we are confident that despite what she now says, Clinton will sign the TPP, if elected President. We know she supports it, because her chief strategist Joel Benenson told Lawrence O’Donnell that she will not oppose it but will renegotiate it. It is simply not possible to renegotiate it; especially after Obama and the GOP leadership pulled every trick in the book to get fast track authority last year over the objections of most Democrats. Even you have quoted Tom Donahue, president of the US Chamber of Commerce, who said Clinton is just saying she is opposed to it because you are. Donahue said he is confident that she will sign it once in office. The excuse they used in St. Louis and Orlando to exclude it from the platform – that they don’t want to embarrass Obama because he supports it – is disingenuous. As someone who has been fighting the TPP for four years, I have viewed you as one of our greatest champions. Please don’t let yourself be neutered like Sherrod Brown was when he endorsed Clinton, forced to defend her commitment to oppose it. Finally, do you really want Trump to be the one making the case against the unpopular TPP between August and November and not the Democratic nominee? In any case, if you think Trump must be stopped, you certainly do not have to endorse Clinton before the convention. Jerry Brown did not endorse Bill Clinton at the 1992 convention, and Clinton still won in November. We delegates were elected to fight for you and our platform in Philadelphia. Many delegates have been fundraising and impoverishing themselves to be able to do this. People who gave their last money every month to you are now funding the delegates. How can we continue to fight if you give up? Please don’t make us spend all that money just to participate in a dog and pony coronation show for the media. Finally, we love you, Bernie, and the last thing we want is for you to be perceived by many in the political revolution as a sell-out, just like Elizabeth Warren was after she endorsed Clinton. Young people who flocked to you because of their keen bullshit detectors won’t buy your praise of her after all you have said during the campaign and won’t vote for her. Your endorsement won’t gain any additional supporters, as the ones who wanted to support her already do. The rest are Bernie or Bust. In conclusion, I implore you listen to your delegates and supporters who want you to take this fight to the convention as you promised. Remember that you said in speech after speech that this is not about Bernie or any one man. It is about millions of people standing up and saying, “Enough is enough. This country belongs to all of us not just a handful of billionaires.” We have followed your lead. Now we are asking you to follow ours. Allow us to try to persuade the super delegates that you are the best choice to beat Trump in November. Allow us to vote on your nomination and to include opposition to the TPP in the platform. Please do not endorse Hillary Clinton tomorrow. Lauren Steiner is a grassroots activist and organizer who has worked with Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles, the California Clean Money Campaign, the Occupy movement, Food and Water Watch, Hunger Action LA, the LA Food Policy Council and many other groups. She fights the privatization of public institutions and public goods. She plans protests, organizes citizen lobby meetings, speaks at conferences, writes articles and produces videos. She has focused her work on fracking, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, net neutrality and community choice energy programs. For the past year, she has been the lead organizer of Los Angeles for Bernie Sanders trying to get him elected and advance the political revolution he is calling for. She is a pledged delegate for Bernie from CD 33. Your support matters…

Independent journalism is under threat and overshadowed by heavily funded mainstream media.

You can help level the playing field. Become a member.

Your tax-deductible contribution keeps us digging beneath the headlines to give you thought-provoking, investigative reporting and analysis that unearths what's really happening- without compromise.

Give today to support our courageous, independent journalists.

SUPPORT TRUTHDIG 1 2

In this Article: