Hillary Clinton June 7, 2008

June 7, 2016. “In 2008 after Hillary lost North Carolina [back on May 6], she made it clear that our days of attacking Obama were behind us and that we were not to do anything that would make it more difficult for Obama to win a general election.” — Geoff Garin of Clinton’s 2008 campaign team.

Unfortunately, this year’s runner up, has announced he will continue attacking her till the convention, in spite of having no real chance. That’s why Hillary still needs your vote.

Exactly eight years ago, on June 7, 2008, Clinton suspended her campaign for President and threw her full-throated support behind Obama — even though she was in a vastly stronger position than Bernie is today. By “suspending” she retained the right to use her elected delegates to push for her agenda at the Democratic convention and to continue to raise funds.

Bernie could do the same, but instead he’s promising a contested convention and has deceived his supporters into believing (1) that he has a chance of overturning a three-million popular-vote majority, and a 300 elected-delegate majority, with the help of hundreds of superdelegates, and (2) that he needs to fight for the nomination in order to influence the platform. (He knows he could do this by suspending his campaign just as Hillary did.)

In contrast, consider Clinton’s inspiring behavior in similar circumstances. Remember, in 2008, she had a small lead in the popular vote instead of being behind by three million votes. And she was over 100 pledged delegates closer to Obama than Sanders is to her now.

What she did was simply extraordinary. On Tuesday, June 3, Obama surpassed the 2,118 delegates (including supers) needed to clinch the nomination. On Thursday Clinton emailed her supporters:

“On Saturday, I will extend my congratulations to Senator Obama and my support for his candidacy. I have said throughout the campaign that I would strongly support Senator Obama if he were the Democratic Party’s nominee, and I intend to deliver on that promise.”

Thursday evening she vanished. At the same time, Obama failed to show up for his flight to Chicago, leaving his press entourage in confusion to fly without him. The next day it was learned they had met privately for an hour. On Saturday, June 7, at a huge rally in Washington, Clinton said,

“I congratulate him on the victory he has won and the extraordinary campaign he has won. I endorse him and throw my full support behind him, and I ask of you to join me in working as hard for Barack Obama as you have for me.”

Bernie’s argument. Sander’s previous position has long been “one person, one vote,” and “The superdelegates should let the voters decide.” His new self-contradictory argument is that the supers should overturn a three-million vote majority of voters because he’s more electable.

Currently that argument is somewhere between weak and purely self-serving. He wants over 400 superdelegates to turn their backs on a huge majority of Democrats. But the right-wing press is backing him almost fanatically as he fights Hillary, so he’s polling well. This will change dramatically when the right goes on a rampage attack against him.

So his only hope given this argument (if there were any hope at all) would be to completely destroy Clinton’s electability. And so he plans to continue devoting all of his effort to this Trump-assisting endeavour until the convention in late July.

That is why Hillary needs your support. As it becomes clear to Bernie’s supporters that he is fighting a hopeless battle and helping the Republicans against the Democrats, the real progressives (90%) will let Bernie know this is unacceptable by going with Hillary. It’s sad that his follower need to lead him, instead of the him leading as Hillary did.

A vote for Hillary is a vote for a united Democratic Party, and a vote against Trump.