Written by Paul D. Crist   

Bernie Sanders is not going to be president. It stinks, on so many levels, but we’re just going to have to deal with it. As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once said, “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have.” So Clinton – along with her equally corporate-friendly running mate Tim Kaine - is the candidate we have, and we’re simply going to have to move forward with the candidate we have to support. Donald Trump simply cannot be allowed anywhere near 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Despite Sanders’ detractors (pretty much all of the Clinton sycophants and surrogates) insisting that it was all about his ego and desire to be president, those of us who listened to him – as he listened to us, the people – know that for him, it was never about that. It was always about bringing representative democracy and democratic process back to the broadest possible number of Americans. It was about making politics responsive to the people not the powerful.

It must still be about that. Sanders’ presidential campaign may be over, and each of us will have to search within ourselves as to whether to support Clinton with out vote. I will give her my vote – nothing more substantial - with deep regret and disdain for having been forced to vote for the least unacceptable option once again. But what is now more urgent and incumbent on all of us is to transition from a political campaign meant to elect a change candidate to sustained movement meant to change everything. That effort is just beginning.

Political campaigns end when one side wins. Movements don’t end. A movement may result in victories, but the work of movement really has no endpoint. This movement, ultimately, is about reimagining our economic system and it’s institutions, reinventing our relations with the rest of the world’s people, and redefining our relationships with one another in search of a more peaceful, equitable, and sustainable future. It is as much a movement of personal revolution as it is a movement to change the external paradigm in which we struggle to survive and find dignity and meaning where neither exists. The revolution must occur within us, in order for an evolutionary transition to the world we have yet to fully envision.

We’ve seen the institution of the modern presidency increasingly reduced to slickly produced theater that begins when the first candidate floats his or her name as a possible candidate. Both the campaign to win the office and the White House itself stifles the inclination to honesty, ethical action, and trustworthiness. Barack Obama managed to retain a few shreds of honesty and morality that his lesser predecessors could not, but the institution of the office has made it impossible for him to meet the high standards he told us he’d achieve back in 2008. Whoever his successor is, we clearly won’t be so lucky next time because to date, neither candidate has exhibited these qualities in their respective careers. To expect either to suddenly find the moral fiber required for ethical action, honesty and trustworthiness within the bubble of the presidency is a fool’s errand.

A dedication to honesty, morality and trustworthiness is what Sanders brought to the table, and frankly, it’s why he lost. But to be coldly honest, had he won, the institution of the presidency would have pushed him to compromise those qualities, as it has every other modern President. Just not as much, I believe, based on his long career during which he has stayed true to his core principles, even when it wasn’t the popular thing to do.

And so, even had Bernie Sanders’ won the primary contest and (as would have happened) the White House, the urgency to build this movement would remain. We must embrace strategies and tactics to force the hand of those who resist change, those who think we can only move glacially for fear of upsetting the status quo.

Make no mistake, change is underway and the pace of change will quicken only if we make that happen, building on the momentum already apparent. Sanders and his supporters remain motivated by the causes he championed, but to keep that energy going, we’ve got to keep fueling the engine of democratic resurgence. How do we do that?

Millions, perhaps a majority, of Americans understand that there is something deeply wrong - with our economy; with our political processes; with our domestic, community, national and global relationships based on class, race, religion nationalism and ideology. There is anger, anxiety, frustration, and hopelessness everywhere we look. The way forward is to channel the first three – anger, anxiety, and frustration – to dispel the last one, hopelessness.

Channeling anger and frustration into resolve and meaningful action can be a powerful tool for forcing change on a complacent and dismissive privileged class. The aristocracy continues to believe that the frustrations that produced the Occupy movement were successfully snuffed out in 2012. Occupy lacked vital elements of successful movement organizing, which made crushing it easy. But shooting the doctor never cured a disease. The disease of social and political corruption continues to thrive. We’ve been here before as a nation, and we managed to ameliorate the worst aspects of this same malady. We can do it again.

So, join us in the street. Use your voice. Write. Vote your conscience. Run for a local office. Learn from the setbacks and get back up after each one. Look deeply within yourself and question everything. Conduct yourself with integrity, always.

This revolution will require storming the barricades, as all revolutions do. But it will require much more. It will require, above all, resolve, commitment to an ideal, and perseverance. America is a democracy as long as we the people continue to use the organs of democracy.

In Solidarity,
Paul Crist