There are many of those that voted for Senator Sanders and continue to #FeelTheBern, those that support him with the most passion have transitioned to #BernieOrBust. Susan Sarandon has intimated that it may be better for liberals to oppose a Trump presidency than try to get revolutionary change from a second Clinton Presidency.
"Well, you know, some people feel Donald Trump will bring the revolution immediately," Sarandon told MSNBC journalist Chris Hayes. "If he gets in, then things will really explode."I could not disagree more, there is nothing scarier than the thought of the sociopath buffoon being inaugurated to highest office in the land and at the helm of the ship of state. But Sarandon, and other #BernieOrBust people could angle for a much better solution that will end up providing avid support for Clinton's election from even those that today swears to never hold their nose to vote for Clinton for their myriad of reasons: Clinton formally endorses Sanders to become the next Senate Majority Leader if the Democrats take back the Senate in 2016.
She could twist the arms of those Democratic Senators that had endorsed her, to commit to electing Sanders and not Chuck Schumer to become the majority leader if the Democrats win back the Senate in the general elections. Sanders would be committed to campaign for US Senate candidates in an effort to take back the senate (his advantage with independents would be welcomed to any candidate challenging a Republican) while at the same time it would allow Clinton to select whomever she felt best suited her to be her Vice President (a position that if Sanders was offered would become limited to only what the constitution provides breaking ties in the Senate and checking if the president was still alive).
Though Chuck Schumer would hate the possibility of having the Democratic Socialist rank over him, calls for party unity would be disingenuous if there isn't any actual attempt to corral those #BernieOrBust folks. Party unity is paramount to assure that Trump will be denied the White House, and as Barack Obama said in the commencement speech at Howard University
And democracy requires compromise, even when you are 100 percent right. This is hard to explain sometimes. You can be completely right, and you still are going to have to engage folks who disagree with you. If you think that the only way forward is to be as uncompromising as possible, you will feel good about yourself, you will enjoy a certain moral purity, but you’re not going to get what you want.
Even if the intended target was the Sanders supporters who were dead-enders, the exact same logic could be directed towards the establishment and Clinton campaign that are reluctant if not adamantly rejecting to compromise what she will promise to earn the votes of those who do not wish to see a double-down of business-as-usual from yet another Clinton presidency. Yes even if you have won all the primaries, with assistance of mainstream media, and with the political and economic elites cheerleading you, 45% of the people is not something can be ignored even if you are 100% right. So the Clinton campaign should not continue to ignore those millions of voters that didn't vote for her, and instead seek out a means to genuinely earn their vote in November.
My proposal of setting up Sanders as the Senate majority leader seems eloquent and with nothing lost by Clinton, that is if she really is a "progressive that gets things done". A Democratic controlled Senate would allow her to accomplish all the things that she wanted to, and if it were blocked by the House it would be a great fulcrum in the mid-terms to win the House as well. Sanders would sufficiently placated no longer jockeying for the presidency and be given real influence in the Senate to affect national policy.
The only downside I could imagine is that the neoliberal Clintonistas, though giving all the lip service in the world otherwise, are not liberals and therefore would not want a liberal lion in charge of the Senate. This is very likely true, and undercuts any argument to those that want to bolt from the party establishment for not being liberal enough, to stick it out because "we in the establishment are just about deliver on some really progressive things".
