Is Trump Benefitting More from Bernie Quitting than Hillary?

After running a fierce but ultimately doomed primary campaign, 74-year-old Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders endorsed his longtime rival, Hillary Clinton, ending months of bitter acrimony and enraging his hardcore supporters, many of whom have views of Clinton that are just as negative as those of Republican voters.

In the wake of Sanders’ collapse, does presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump have a chance to pick up any of these backers and boost his base of support?

In order to determine an answer, it helps to understand what Bernie supporters are passionate about and why they hate Clinton so much.

Like Trump fans, they too see the Clintons as hopelessly corrupt and undeserving of the White House. Like many Trump supporters, “Bernie bros” skew white, angry and independent.

Even those who are hardened Democrats have watched as Obama has disappointed them with his domestic and foreign policies, much of which continue a doctrine of interventionism.  All of which Hillary Clinton has either led or supported.

The current president has broken promises on everything from closing Guantanamo to dealing with Iran. A Clinton administration would essentially be an extension of the same policies — in effect, an Obama third term.

In fact, it would likely be much worse, as Clinton is a profligate spender and known warmonger who’s gone on record as being in favor of new military action against Syria, Russia and numerous other countries.

Clinton was a prime booster of the free trade agreements Transpacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) before being forced to disclaim them in the face of Sanders’ calling her out on them. (Many people say she had a hand in drafting the TPP during her reign as secretary of state.)

But a majority of voters don’t believe Clinton when she says she opposes the pacts, a point reinforced when the Democratic Party recently refused to add a plank to its platform explicitly opposing the agreements.

Trump is absolutely correct to continue to rail against Hillary on this matter, and Democratic voters who are still in the dark about this issue may begin to see the light as Trump continues to highlight it.

Clinton also refused to condemn fracking, and how could she not? Some of her deepest-pocketed financial contributors come from the energy lobby. It’s another area where Sanders’ supporters feel “Berned” by the party that Sanders adopted prior to running in 2015 (Bernie had been a longtime independent candidate in the years prior).

The Party also rejected planks from Sanders regarding Isreali occupation of Palestine, a carbon tax, a higher minimum wage and single-payer healthcare.

While the party of Hillary did adopt language calling for Wall Street reforms, it’s very questionable, given Clinton’s track record of taking money from Wall Street banks and being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to give speeches to them, that she would push hard on any such measures.

The treatment that Sanders has received at the hands of Clinton and her organization’s machine, guided by Democratic Party Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, has repeatedly outraged Sanders’ supporters — occasionally to the point of violence.

The failure of the Party to adopt a number of Sanders’ planks despite his endorsement of Clinton, is the straw that effectively breaks the camel’s back for many of his supporters, who now feel deceived that their candidate has effectively sold out to the machine he once vilified.

Who can Sanders’ supporters turn to now? While some have mumbled about supporting a third-party candidacy — perhaps the Green Party or the Libertarians — others have taken a second look at Trump and are seeing that there may be more to like than what Hillary’s camp has yelling about in recent months.

First — Trump is a virulent opponent of free trade, arguing correctly that it’s cost America millions of jobs, particularly since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Bill Clinton-enacted legislation that preceded today’s proposed TPP and TTIP.

There’s no doubt that America’s economy is hurting and that the dearth of manufacturing sector jobs since the administration of Bill Clinton has only worsened an ailing economy that’s seen the middle class get winnowed and pushed many of its members inexorably toward lower income brackets.

Despite an uptick in jobs according to the latest government jobs report (the best numbers in eight months, apparently — despite the previous report’s statistic recording the worst numbers in six YEARS), many rightly suspect that the bulk of such jobs are going to nearly retired workers or those in the service sector, i.e., waiters and bartenders.

Second — Trump has called Clinton out on her virtual ownership by special interests and lobbyists. From foreign governments to Big Pharma to Wall Street, years of $600,000 speeches and multi-million dollar donations to the Clinton Foundation have indebted Hillary and her husband to concerns that do not coincide with those of common Americans’.

In the case of foreign governments, in particular, this is dangerous, blatantly unscrupulous and anti-American.

Third — Trump has rightly accused Clinton of criminal behavior vis à vis her email scandal and so many of her other illicit activities. Most Sanders supporters have always considered Hillary a corrupt liar, and Trump is absolutely correct in saying the system is rigged and that Hillary belongs in prison — something Bernie Sanders was always too intimidated to do during his campaign.

In fact, there are many arguments to be made that Sanders has been far too deferential in his treatment of Clinton during the recent primaries — he continually referred to her as “Secretary Clinton,” as if she still held a powerful position in government.

There were many issues, such as the email affair, that Sanders gave Clinton a free pass on — much to Clinton’s delight and satisfaction. Such actions make one wonder just how badly Sanders really wanted his party’s nomination.

Now that he’s presenting himself standing side-by-side with a known criminal, he appears to be engaged in a huge act of betrayal of his supporters.

For many of those same supporters, the fact that Trump is willing to spell everything out — to tell things exactly as they are — is reason enough to vote for him. Hillary Clinton represents a cancer in the Democratic Party that’s just gotten worse and worse over the years, and Washington, D.C.-outsider Trump is ready to surgically operate to cut the cancer out.

As soon as Sanders made his announcement, Trump was quick to act, declaring in a speech, “To all those Bernie Sanders voters who have been left out in the cold by a rigged system of superdelegates, we welcome you with open arms. We can’t solve our problems by counting on the politicians who created our problems; the Clintons have turned the politics of personal enrichment into an art form for themselves.”

When faced with a choice of whether to embrace their former sworn arch-enemy or to back another anti-establishment candidate — Trump — the option for Sanders’ supporters should be an obvious one. The more Trump can paint Sanders as the traitor he is, the more likely it will be that the latter’s backers warm to the new logical choice for November.


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