Head Tale

Results are still coming in but right now, Hillary Clinton is declared in 3 out of 5 “Super Tuesday III” states and leading in two others.

It’s not over yet but if this holds, it’s hard to say how Bernie has any path to the nomination and goes forward from here it becomes much more of a long shot for Bernie to have a shot at the nomination.

So on the assumption that the inevitable may have finally been confirmed today, a couple lists…

Five Reasons I’m Okay With Hillary As Nominee

1. Hillary has the most realistic chance that’s ever existed for the US to have its first female President. I wish it wasn’t Hillary with all her baggage and faults and with the asterix that this comes after her husband was already President.  But coming on the heels of America’s first African-American President, it’s still pretty amazing.
2. Even if he doesn’t win, Bernie has helped shift the conversation in the US and really opened up many people’s eyes to concepts like universal single-payer healthcare, income inequality and so on.  Plus, after eight years of Obama being falsely labeled as a “socialist”, the US has seen what a real socialist looks like and might realise it’s not that scary.
3. Beyond that, because of his support among young people, there is real potential for progressive, grassroots-driven politics to grow in the future.  If Bernie’s numerous supporters can stay involved in more local contests, they could still end up with a great deal of power (I think one of the ways Obama failed was to not keep his supporters engaged and active as well as he could’ve.)
4. We’ll always have Michigan – one of the greatest upsets in political history!
5. What has already been easily the craziest, most topsy-turvy election campaign I’ve ever seen promises to be even wilder with a looming Hillary-Trump showdown (not withstanding what might still happen on the Republican side as they figure out how to handle Trump and head into a potentially brokered convention.)

Five Reasons I’m Disappointed

1. Obviously, it’s not as close to home but this loss still brings back memories of the last Sask NDP leadership race where an insurgent, outsider, leftist candidate inspired many young people and made incredibly effective use of social media while also doing incredibly well with grassroots fundraising but still came up short against an establishment candidate with deep roots in the party and much support from other establishment figures including someone closely connected to a former leader.
2. There are a lot of people who got seriously involved in politics for the first time ever during this race and this loss will be heartbreaking for them.
3. Possibly even worse, because Bernie Sanders’ had a grassroots-driven campaign which didn’t take money from corporate donors, many people gave great sums of money.  Hopefully no one gave more than they could afford to give, even if they were really “feeling the Bern” and got caught up in the hype.
4. As Shea saw on Reddit, someone said “The rest of the world knows the US isn’t having an election, it’s having an IQ test.  And with Trump and Clinton winning, the US is failing” (at least from the perspective of most countries in the developed world.)
5. If Bernie does drop out or ends up with no reasonable path to the nomination, this race, which has been an absolute obsession of mine, suddenly becomes a lot less all-consuming of my time (hmm, that’s probably a good thing, not a bad thing, come to think of it!)