Ultimately, We’ll Just Have to See Who Votes for Bernie Sanders

From the day Bernie Sanders declared his candidacy on April 30, 2015, we have heard repeated variations of: “I like what he stands for, but I don’t think he can win.”

This seems to be offered as a rationale for choosing not to vote or campaign for Sanders, but if you think about it hard, it makes no sense.

Before we break it down, let’s remind ourselves of the end game. If Hillary Clinton becomes the Democratic nominee this summer, most current Sanders supporters will (or should) vote for her against anyone the Republicans are likely to nominate.

We must, if for no other reason than to keep a reasonable balance of justices on the Supreme Court bench. Plus, many foreign nations will be accustomed to dealing with Clinton from her four-year tenure as Secretary of State, which is another advantage. (Can you imagine Germany or Jordan or China trying to conduct talks with Trump or Cruz with a straight face?) And “most” Sanders supporters, if they don’t fall prey to disgust and choose not to vote at all in November, should be enough to keep the GOP from winning the White House.

I seriously doubt Sanders will choose to run as a third-party candidate in the fall if he doesn’t win the Democratic nomination. I predict he’ll throw his support to Clinton. He knows the stakes as well as anybody, and I don’t think he would risk playing the kind of spoiler Ralph Nader did in 2000, which may have put George W. Bush in the White House. (The surprising news in the wake of that debacle is how much effort Karl Rove and the Koch brothers put into encouraging Nader’s campaign in order to hurt Al Gore.)

Much as I’d like to see Sanders as our President, I won’t vote for him as a third-party candidate in November and risk putting a Trump, Cruz, Bush, Rubio, or any other Republican in the White House. That’s a nightmarish example of making the perfect the enemy of the good. I think most Sanders supporters would agree.

But in the primaries? What meaning can “I don’t think he can win” have at this point? If we support Sanders, we’d be hurting Clinton in the fall? People only want to be known for voting for a winner?

Think about it.

If it were indeed true that Sanders has no chance of beating Clinton, then what would it matter which candidate you vote for? If Clinton is destined to win anyway, why not vote for the person who most truly represents your aspirations for this country, and show your fellow citizens how many of us like what Sanders stands for?

If it’s true that Sanders couldn’t possibly win, then Clinton doesn’t need your vote, and Sanders won’t prevail if he gets it. So why vote for either of them?

The illogic of “I like what Sanders stands for, but I don’t think he can win” suggests that it is, in fact, another way of asserting “my vote doesn’t count.” It’s like saying “I don’t want to fall in love again, because I got hurt last time.” It’s the voice of fearing to care.

But your vote DOES count! . . . not necessarily in the way you might think, but sometimes it does. Look at how comparatively few votes in the populous state of Florida put Bush in the White House instead of Gore, in 2000. In 1981 Sanders himself won his first election, as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, by a margin of just 10 votes. (According to his book, Outsider in the House, the initial count rendered a margin of 14, which was so close that a recount was ordered, took two weeks, and arrived at the final result of a ten-vote victory.)

Ever since, Sanders has won his races by increasingly wide margins, because his constituents have been delighted by his performance in the jobs of mayor, U.S. Representative, and Senator. Vermonters sent him back to Washington in 2012 with 71 percent of the vote.

If voting doesn’t make a difference, why do you think the Koch brothers are pouring nearly $1 billion into swaying this election their way? Do you think their money is more powerful than the votes of millions of regular Americans? If you choose not to vote in disgust or disaffection, you’re basically saying wealthy conservatives deserve to run our country.

Even if you were to adopt the view that your vote “doesn’t count,” isn’t it still worthwhile to set an example? To vote the way you believe everyone else ought to? Good manners and charitable acts don’t necessarily change the world, either, but we choose to perform them because they make us a better person, and show the rest of the world how we think a good person should behave.

It’s just possible that if all the people who say “I like what he stands for, but I don’t think he can win” were to go out and vote for Bernie Sanders, he WOULD win.

I’ve spent most of my adult life voting more against certain people than in favor of others. In other words, I was more concerned about keeping unpalatable candidates out of office than I was enthused about the people my vote went to against them. I voted against Reagan in 1984, against George H.W. Bush in 1988, for Bill Clinton in 1992, against George W. Bush in 2004, for Obama in 2008, against Romney in 2012.

I was reasonably excited about Clinton and Obama the first time each of them ran, but less so the second time … to the extent that I voted for the socialist candidate in 1996 because Clinton had disappointed me but didn’t look like he was in danger of losing. I wanted to encourage more points of view in U.S. elections—especially from the left. I voted for Obama a second time in 2012 with much less enthusiasm, and more for the familiar goal of keeping the greater evil out of office. In 2000, I would say my support for Gore was perhaps even with my opposition to Bush.

Apart from his policy stances, which are mostly fantastic, Sanders’s insistence on not accepting super PAC money, his resistance to negative campaigning, and his graciousness to his opponents (especially Clinton) alone make him a candidate I can really feel great about supporting. It’s likely going to come down to whether the people who tend not to turn out for primary elections, especially the disaffected left and young voters, go against the grain and turn out.

Let’s make it happen, folks.