We the People: Big gulp!

The Democratic presidential front-runner, Hillary Clinton, picked up the majority of the 247 New York delegates at stake with her win on Tuesday over Bernie Sanders. Mrs. Clinton now has 1,893 delegates, including super delegates, to the 1,180 committed to Mr. Sanders. The left-of-center Sanders needs 71 percent of all remaining delegates and super delegates to win the nomination.

Republicans in New York favored hometown presidential candidate, Donald Trump, despite his confusion about New York history.  In a speech, he mistakenly described 9-11 or September 11, 2001 as “7-11.”

He said, “I was down there, and I watched our police and our firemen, down on 7-11, down at the World Trade Center, right after it came down, and I saw the greatest people I’ve ever seen in action.”

He has promised to hire the “greatest” consultants and experts to help him if (Big Gulp) he is elected. He will need all the help he can get. If Mr. Trump is the GOP candidate, he will never be elected president because the people of our nation will not support a candidate so woefully unprepared to assume the responsibility of office and whose message is filled with hate.

Bernie Sanders, born in Brooklyn, had overwhelming support from young people and new voters. Thousands attended rallies in New York to hear him speak but, in the end, the chanting and sign-waving were not enough to win over the electorate.

It may be that his repeated promises of “political revolution” are not enough to convince the voters who work, provide for families and pay taxes to feel the “Bern.” If he had a plausible plan to end campaign finance abuse, raise taxes without hurting the middle class and redirect current federal funding to pay for his promises, more voters would have supported him.

One of the strange realities of this strange primary season is the enmity expressed for Hillary Clinton by the people who are supporting Bernie Sanders. We know Republicans absurdly claim that the former senator from New York is “evil” but even liberal Democrats seem to enjoy disliking her.

One right wing commentator claimed that if Hillary Clinton wins, “America will not survive.”  However, when the facts are examined dispassionately, no one can contradict the fact that she did an excellent job as a senator in New York. She met New York Republicans and public officials throughout the state and responded to their requests for help in a bipartisan manner.

Republican officials disagreed with her ideology, but she gave them her time and attention in a manner that earned their support. Her record will convince reasonable people that she will make a great president.

So why is there so much vehement opposition to the most prepared, qualified and electable candidate for president in 2016? The conservatives and right wing media of the nation have successfully demonized her in order to galvanize their anger and frustration about the state of affairs in America.

They falsely claim she weakened our military and helped the president make us the laughing stock of the world, yet Bernie Sanders unequivocally declared that the “worst blunder” of American foreign policy was the Iraq War, a war insisted upon by Republican President George Bush and one contrived when his administration orchestrated false information in order to convince Congress to approve the decision.

We must remember that all politicians have self-interest. Bernie Sanders is a professional politician, Ted Cruz accepted his wife’s salary and loans from Goldman Sachs, and there is no greater example of self-interest or self-promotion than Donald Trump.

So why does Hillary get the visceral hostility? Part of the reason is that she is a woman, part of it is that she is the wife of the president who interrupted 20 years of Reagan era politics in America and part of it is because she has been in the public eye for more than four decades.

Mrs. Clinton deserves criticism for things she should have done better but she doesn’t deserve this hate. However, she is strong enough to persevere and that is the kind of strength America needs now.