{"id":5948,"date":"2016-06-07T20:33:26","date_gmt":"2016-06-08T02:33:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/?p=5948"},"modified":"2016-06-08T14:40:43","modified_gmt":"2016-06-08T20:40:43","slug":"a-politics-of-fear-not-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2016\/06\/a-politics-of-fear-not-hope.html","title":{"rendered":"A politics of fear, not hope"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Editors\u2019 Note:<\/strong> This article is part of the Patheos Public Square<\/a> on Faith and the Election. Read other perspectives here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Politicians, more than anyone else, have the power to appeal either to our fears or our better natures.<\/p>\n

This year there are still three major politicians in the race for the US Presidency: Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump. I was an early (early) supporter of Clinton, who, from the very start was \u201canointed\u201d by Democratic party insiders. She served faithfully under Obama, who beat her in 2008. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Clinton\u2019s\u00a0former campaign co-chair, had ascended to the top of the Democratic National Committee. Over 400 super-delegates\u00a0\u2013 about 1\/5 of the total delegates needed for the nomination \u2013\u00a0pledged to support her before a single citizen voted.<\/p>\n

But Clinton has not been well-received by the \u201cleft\u201d part of the Democratic party. As early as 2014<\/a>, groups began organizing and petitions began circulating<\/a> to \u201cDraft\u201d Bernie Sanders (and Elizabeth Warren, separately). Both grassroots movements hoped to put forth a liberal alternative to Hillary Clinton<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Then, in May of 2015, Bernie Sanders entered the race. His message was simple: economic populism. We should and can spread the enormous wealth of our nation in a way that benefits the poorest and those in the middle.<\/p>\n

Crazy. Socialist. Will not be taken seriously.<\/strong>\u00a0Those were the pundit reviews, and, by them and many others, he was mostly ignored. As I\u00a0wrote in September<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Bernie Sanders appeals to white Progressives. That much is obvious.<\/p>\n

But not all Progressives are lining up behind him. Notably, those fighting for racial justice under the #BlackLivesMatter banner<\/a> have targeted him and he finds himself far behind Clinton and even trailing yet-to-be-running Biden in South Carolina, where\u00a055 percent of the voters are black.<\/p>\n

In a recent column in the New York Times, Charles M. Blow explores Sanders\u2019 lack of appeal with black voters<\/a>. There he writes that \u201cAn August\u00a0Gallup Poll<\/a>\u00a0found that Hillary Clinton\u2019s favorability among African-Americans was 80 percent, while Sanders\u2019s was 23 percent.\u201d And even more disturbing, \u00a0\u201cTwo-thirds of blacks were unfamiliar with Sanders.\u201d<\/p>\n

As I drove two\u00a0weeks ago from my home in Helena, MT to Missoula where I teach, I listened to an NPR story about the potential candidacy of \u00a0Joe Biden<\/a>.<\/strong> There, Rachel Martin and Mara Liasson discuss the \u201cantiestablishment fever that\u2019s been sweeping the Democratic Party base\u201d while failing to mention the person at the vanguard of that fever.\u00a0Liasson even, quite gallingly, says of a potential Biden candidacy that,\u00a0\u201cThere are many Democrats who think it would be good for Hillary Clinton because she\u2019d have a serious opponent, and it would help her become a better candidate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Really, no serious opponent<\/em>? But my jaw didn\u2019t really drop until I heard her next line: \u201cRight now, she\u2019s basically running against herself and her problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

If NPR, a\u00a0supposed bastion of left-leaning thought, can have a nearly 5-minute discussion of the Democratic presidential race without so much as mentioning Sanders, we have a problem.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And, in the media at least, that problem never really went away.<\/p>\n

However, for many people (myself included) he did become the liberal alternative that we were searching for.<\/strong> One of the \u201cDraft Elizabeth Warren\u201d groups formally endorsed Sanders<\/a> last June. In January, MoveOn, another large liberal group, also endorsed Sanders<\/a>, writing, \u201cIn our endorsement vote exit poll, one of the words MoveOn members most frequently used to describe him was \u2018integrity.'\u201d<\/p>\n

Integrity is a fair word to use for Sanders, who according to Politifact, is the most honest candidate still running<\/a> (over Clinton<\/a> and\u00a0big liar<\/em> Trump<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Hope is another good word for Sanders\u2019 campaign, so much so that he began to sound an awful lot like Obama in 2008 (minus all of the charisma).<\/p>\n

And hope \u2013 and with it aspiration, ambition, and forward-thinking<\/em>,\u00a0is what I would like to see moving forward in the next few months.<\/strong> With California going to Clinton (at the time of this writing only 36% of votes are reported, but Clinton has a wide lead) and Clinton already \u201cclinching\u201d the presumptive nomination on the 6th, I think Sanders will rightly drop out and extend his support to her. He pushed on this far, making sure every voter \u2013 even us in Montana \u2013 feel valued and counted, which I deeply appreciate, but pushing on to the convention would do little good.<\/p>\n

There are those who suggest that Sanders has harmed Clinton. But I don\u2019t buy it, nor does Sen.\u00a0Jeanne Shaheen, who endorsed Clinton but said on NPR tonight that the Sanders campaign strengthened Clinton\u2019s. The vigorous exchanges of ideas has been great for Clinton, who will hopefully adopt at least a few further-left policies in an effort to align herself more closely to Sanders\u2019 supporters and win the election in November.<\/p>\n

Hope didn\u2019t get Sanders the nomination, it\u2019s true. His message didn\u2019t even get him noticed much until it was all but too late for voters to \u201cget to know him\u201d in many states. Trump\u2019s messages of fear (Mexicans, Muslims, Chinese, the media, etc) did get attention, and, unfortunately<\/em>, votes. Clinton weaved and bobbed, one day a \u201cprogressive\u201d the next a \u201ccentrist,\u201d molding herself to the needs of the crowd before her. She has good credentials though, minus, my friends tell me, some serious issues with Libya<\/a> and Syria<\/a>. And she\u2019s well-known and, by US standards, left of center.<\/p>\n

But she hasn\u2019t said much about \u201chope.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even in her much-hailed foreign policy speech<\/a> last week, she pitted herself against Trump as a\u00a0\u201cchoice between a fearful America, that\u2019s less secure and less engaged with the world, and a strong, confident\u00a0America, that leads to keep our country safe and our economy growing.\u201d She then went on to attack Trump, quite successfully<\/em>, as the potential Commander in Chief who we really should fear.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Clinton\u2019s speech tonight<\/a>, however, did dwell in hope, noting particularly how Sanders\u2019 arguments had been very good for\u00a0the Democratic party and for America. She even borrowed several of his talking points before moving on to again attack Trump. But it is the hopeful<\/em> message that I dearly hope will stick with Clinton and with voters in the months to come, one that sees that not all is right with America, but that we have at our fingertips the resources to fix it \u2013 if only we have the will. And let us not forget that Clinton, like any politician, will have the\u00a0will of the wealthy and corrupt pulling her strongly in one direction. It is up to us to push, pull, and prod her in the direction of the people, of peace, of social welfare and global sustainability.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editors\u2019 Note: This article is part of the Patheos Public Square on Faith and the Election. Read other perspectives here. Politicians, more than anyone else, have the power to appeal either to our fears or our better natures. This year there are still three major politicians in the race for the US Presidency: Hillary Clinton, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":118,"featured_media":5965,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buddhism"],"yoast_head":"\nA politics of fear, not hope<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Editors' Note: This article is part of the Patheos Public Square on Faith and the Election. Read other perspectives here. Politicians, more than anyone\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2016\/06\/a-politics-of-fear-not-hope.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A politics of fear, not hope\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Editors' Note: This article is part of the Patheos Public Square on Faith and the Election. Read other perspectives here. 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