Editorial: We’re for Hillary – and Bernie

Hillary Needs Bernie on the Ticket in a Big Way

BY DAN VUKELICH AND WILL FERGUSON We’re still for Hillary. We were the first newspaper in the nation to endorse Hillary Clinton for president when she announced last year. But we think she would be more likely to win in November and be a better president if she picked Bernie Sanders as her running mate. Bringing Bernie on board would guarantee that the millions of young voters Bernie energized over the past several months stay engaged to crush Donald Trump in November. As we noted last year, Hillary pledged on the day of her announcement to get big corporate money out of politics. We believe she can do it. Just as only Nixon could go to China, we believe only Hillary has the political will and the skill to do it. If fixing a corrupt campaign system is the only thing she accomplishes as president, it will be a truly lasting legacy – one that reverses the nation’s slide into the ooze of corporate influence and voter irrelevance. Having Bernie at her side will unite the Democratic Party. Having Bernie at the table will guarantee that Hillary looks after the working poor who believe Bernie’s progressive approach to restructuring our “crony capitalism” economy can help them. We also believe that while Donald Trump will most likely lose to “Crooked Hillary,” as he calls her, Trump might actually be able to beat “Batshit Bernie,” or whatever Trump ends up calling Sanders if he were the nominee. Politics is the art of compromise – finding common ground to fix things that need fixing. We believe that only Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders together can repair the damage a Republican Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court have inflicted on America.

The Trump Factor

Which brings us to what is fueling Donald Trump. Democrats are already licking their chops, thinking that The Donald’s Epic Fail will lead them to take back the House, the Senate, or both. Even John McCain says that Trump’s candidacy means McCain “is in for the race of my life.” But the Democrats had better think again. Despite his misogyny, his xenophobia and his racism – or maybe because of it – Trump is tapping into the dark side of America and found the mother lode of anger and fear. And it probably wasn’t by accident that Trump named a white supremacist as a delegate from California. He actually needs the racist vote. Just as Adolf Hitler promised to “Make Germany great again,” the anger Trump is building on makes him a serious threat. The Tea Party people didn’t go away after the last election. Sure, they sent a few whackjobs to Congress and made a dysfunctional legislative branch more so, but they’ve been waiting for someone like Trump to come along and they'll come out in droves for him. Dan Vukelich and Will Ferguson are publishers of ABQ Free Press.

The following Editorial: We’re for Hillary – and Bernie is republished from http://freeabq.com