The hypocrisy of the latest round of Bernie-bashing

In almost all American elections, only two candidates – the Democrat and the Republican – have any realistic chance of winning. A thoughtful citizen will usually have disagreements with each of them on one or more issues. Some people take the pragmatic course of supporting the candidate who’s better overall, even if not perfect. Others say “the lesser evil is still evil”; refusing to vote for a candidate with whom they disagree, they stay home or vote for a no-hoper minor-party candidate.

Bernie Sanders faced this situation. He came down on the side of the pragmatists. He voiced his support for the Democratic nominee because he looked at the Republican and said, “We’ve got to keep that guy out.”

Did he do the right thing?

Well, here’s where the hypocrisy comes in. Some of the loudest pro-Hillary people on this board are now spewing vitriol at Bernie because he’s supporting a Democratic nominee with whom he’s not in complete agreement, while ignoring that he did exactly the same thing by supporting Hillary last fall.

The hypocrisy is compounded with intellectual dishonesty, as they pretend that support for the Democratic nominee means deprecating the issue of reproductive rights. My view, and I think Bernie’s view, is that reproductive rights are important. So are issues of war and peace, international trade, economic inequality, etc. That all these issues are important doesn’t change the problem I described in the first paragraph: Sometimes, the choice is between two candidates, neither of whom is perfect on all important issues, but one of whom is better than the other overall.

People like Bernie and me voted for Hillary despite our major disagreements with her. That doesn’t mean that we suddenly decided those issues were unimportant. It means only that the Democrat was better than the Republican.