Bernie or Bust? Bad idea.

 

Let me begin this by saying that I would have been thrilled to have Bernie Sanders as the candidate for the Democratic party in 2016. I would have been thrilled to have him as our United States president. But he was beaten by Hillary Clinton in the primary and lost his chance to run for president on the Democratic ticket. So why did people still vote for him on election day?

  The United States tends to stick to a two party system. There's the conservative Republican party and there's the liberal Democratic party. The odds are in favor that you will be choosing between these two parties in most if not all elections. Granted, there are third parties. There's the Libertarian Party. There's the Green Party. I believe we even have a National Socialist party (Neo-Nazis). But you'll rarely see them getting any coverage and you certainly won't see a Green Party candidate or a Libertarian Party candidate winning an election. Aside from Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose party and the Reform party, which managed to achieve marginal success in their respective elections, you're probably going Dem or Rep.

  Then there is the write-in campaign. The idea that with enough popular support a write-in candidate can win the election. To my knowledge, this has never happened in a major election. But the "Bernie or Bust" supporters still went out on voting day and wrote in their vote for Bernie. By doing so they deprived Hillary of support that she dearly needed. And instead they supported a candidate who had no chance of victory because "Bernie or Bust" and/or "Never Hillary".

  In my opinion, this was a reckless and dangerous move on their part. The American populace went into this election knowing that Donald Trump was a dangerous person. They went in knowing that his policies would likely destabilize our country and our allies. They went in knowing that Hillary only led by a small margin. And yet these select few individuals still chose to throw away their vote. And that's what it is, isn't it? Throwing away your vote? It reminds me of a lovely line from the Simpsons. I've embedded a Youtube clip of the line in question. 

  Hillary Clinton might have seemed like the lesser of two evils to you. She might have even been the lesser of two evils. But wouldn't you want the lesser? Instead, you wasted your chance and got stuck with the greater evil. Hillary Clinton was promising reform. She might not have been promising it with the vehemence that Bernie managed, but she was still promising it. It's a shame it's too late now.