by
 |
| Protesters with the Fight for $15 movement say Democratic presidential candidates must deserve their vote. (Photo: Joe Brusky/cc/flickr) |
I don't know Robert Reich personally, but I greatly respect and appreciate his work; his voice is an important one in the fight against inequality.
He has, however, repeatedly come down on the wrong side of one crucial issue, an issue that has serious implications for the future of American politics broadly, and for the future of the American left in particular.
Last week, Reich published a piece on his blog that reiterated a few nuggets of advice heoffered on his Facebook page a week or so earlier.
While he directs advice to supporters of both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, naturally, as a Sanders supporter, I was drawn to what he had to say to backers of the Vermont senator.
Supporters of Bernie Sanders should, Reich argues, "Be prepared to work hard for Hillary Clinton if she gets the nomination."
Reich anticipated the backlash he ultimately received, writing that his advice "may be hard to swallow."
"But swallow it you must," he concluded, "not just for the good of the Democratic Party, but for the good of the nation."
He was right, of course, to expect strong reactions; I didn't like his advice, nor did many others. And I don't plan to act on it.
But as I read Reich's appeal, I was overwhelmed not by emotion, and not by a sense of outrage, but by a sense of déjà vu. I thought: I have heard, and read, this all before.
Indeed I had. Though Reich words his appeal eloquently and without condescension, it is the same appeal that has been made by the more crude apologists of "lesser of two evils" politics over the past several decades.
Matt Taibbi, in an article forRolling Stone published in March, put it his way: Democrats "have been saying, 'The Republicans are worse!' for so long that they've begun to believe it excuses everything."
To his credit, Reich correctly predicts this objection—but he does not deny its validity.
"I can’t criticize anyone for voting their conscience, of course," he writes of the large number of Sanders supporters who say they will not vote for Clinton. "But your conscience should know that a decision not to vote for Hillary, should she become the Democratic nominee, is a de facto decision to help Donald Trump."
The latter sentence is the crucial one, and the weight of his argument in favor of backing Hillary Clinton if she becomes the Democratic nominee rests on its potency. The problem:The claim that refusing to support Clinton "is a de facto decision to help Donald Trump" is erroneous.
Perhaps unwittingly, Reich is merely rehashing—in a new context—a rather old argument, one that was made most prominently by George Orwell in his screeds against pacifism in the midst of World War II.
"Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist," Orwell argued in an essay that appeared in 1942. "This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other."
As Corey Robin has observed, the Democratic establishment, in an effort to suppress dissent and silence legitimate criticism of their favored candidate, has adopted what is effectively a Leninist posture, one that prioritizes unity and conformity over basic principles that Democrats, in other contexts, are happy to champion—all under the guise of protecting the party and ensuring victory against the other side.
According to Reich, Sanders supporters who don't fall in line behind a candidate they believe to be part of the problem, not a potential solution, are objectively pro-Trump: You're either with us, Reich contends, or you're against us.
But this is a false dichotomy, as Orwell himself would come to recognize in print a few years later.
Please continue this article here: http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/30/no-i-wont-work-hillary-clinton-response-robert-reich
No comments:
Post a Comment