Memo to Bernie Sanders: You really need to have a long talk with some of your more extreme and badly deluded supporters.
The New York Times recently interviewed some members of the so-called “Bernie or Bust” movement, and more than a few are saying they would rather see Donald Trump become the next President instead of Hillary Clinton.
Yamiche Alcindor of the Times spoke with a number of Sanders supporters in California who told her that Clinton has no business running for President while there’s an FBI investigation into her emails. Julie Crowell commented:
“She should be removed. I don’t know why she’s not already being told, ‘You can’t run because you’re being investigated.’ I don’t know how that’s not a thing.”
Jennifer Peters said that if Trump is the next President, it’s all the fault of the Democratic National Committee:
“We can’t go back and undo giving her the Democratic nomination. If the D.N.C. wants to go ahead and put out the candidate who can’t win and we lose in November, it’s not because I didn’t vote. It’s because they were looking out for their interests and not for the better interests of the country.”
Victor Vizcarra said Trump can’t be all that bad because he seemed like a nice enough guy on “The Apprentice:”
“A dark side of me wants to see what happens if Trump is in. There is going to be some kind of change, and even if it’s like a Nazi-type change. People are so drama-filled. They want to see stuff like that happen. It’s like reality TV. You don’t want to just see everybody be happy with each other. You want to see someone fighting somebody.”
That theme was echoed by Jackie Becerra:
“Everyone is like: ‘Trump has these terrible social issues. He hates Muslims and he hates the L.G.B.T. community. But our world is big enough that he’s not actually going to implement any of those changes in a realistic way. But what he will do is potentially audit the federal government, and he will try to break up some of the banks and try to at least influence government that way. However, with Hillary, it will just be a complacent, run-of-the-middle-of-the-road presidency.”
To these young people who are supporting Bernie Sanders and say they will gladly cast a vote for Trump, I have only this to say: If you are the future of the American republic, we are so screwed it’s scary.
This article was originally published by the same author at LiberalAmerica.org.