One of the most memorable days of my life was witnessing the inauguration of President Barack Obama on January 20, 2009. I joined my fellow classmates in a crammed computer lab in my middle school watching the first black president being sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. I guess you could say that was my political awakening. Barack Obama is a testament that change happens when you organize and persevere on behalf of the will of the people. The sheer amount of racism and prejudice that he had endured during his presidency was unprecedented, but in the end, he continued to compose an agenda that set the foothold for an affordable healthcare system, secure the inalienable right of equality for LGBTQ+ people, and rendered obsolete an archaic policy that alienated the vibrant culture of Cuba from America, all of which are just the tip of the iceberg of his legacy.
Barack Obama is revered by many young Americans because he empathized and believed in the future generations of America, even those who rabidly opposed him, for he is a family man that came from humble beginnings.
Then fast-forward around mid-2015, when Hillary Clinton, launched her presidential campaign after months of rumors whether or not she would. Like many Obama surrogates, I joined the Clintonian hype, so much as to get a shirt that read “#Hillary2016” (and I will admit looking back, it was very cringe-inducing).
Then came along a 70-something Vermont senator named Bernie Sanders.
Throughout the primary season, I donned both Hillary and Bernie stickers, but as the months rolled on and it seemed as if the odds of Bernie being nominated were shrinking by the minute, my support for Sanders continued to grow. Bernie ran a campaign run by and for the people. He brought about a new wave of the electorate that motivated young people, including myself, to engage in the American political process. Every rally and remark that I watched from the senator invoked a sense of confidence and motivation to defeat then-presumptive nominee Donald Trump. Hillary’s campaign on the other hand seemed stale and disappointing compared to Bernie’s; Bernie’s rallies were as exhilarating as Barack Obama’s were.
Then came the bombshell report from Wikileaks, about a week before the Democratic National Convention, in which it was revealed that then-DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the Clinton campaign allegedly colluded to rig the primaries in Hillary’s favor, effectively sabotaging the Sanders campaign. It was at that moment that I knew that the Democratic Party was destined to fail.
The Democratic Party, in its current state, is at a point where it can no longer win elections, for it decided to sell out one of the most popular political figures in U.S. history in exchange for an establishment candidate who ran on the same antiquated, dull platform. It has chosen to adopt the same status quo policy of neoliberalism, which favors the current oligarchical structure of political and financial power on a domestic and international level. I cannot, in good conscience, pledge my political allegiance to a party that had chosen to become a “lite” version of the Republican Party.
Do not get me wrong, I reject every ounce of rhetoric that Donald Trump stands for, but Democrats need to take accountability for their loss of the White House in November because of their selfishness in July. Their rabid finger-pointing to third party candidates like the Green Party’s Jill Stein and others show that the principles of democracy that they claim to stand for are ingenuine, for in a democratic republic that we live in, no one is entitled to our vote; it must be earned. Disliking Hillary Clinton is not equivalent to supporting Donald Trump, and vice versa.
Even when the majority of data polling shows that Sanders would’ve beaten Trump by a higher margin that Clinton, the party still continued to collude with a faux campaign with faux integrity.
If the Democratic Party continues to nominate establishment figures like Hillary Clinton in 2020, then that will guarantee Donald Trump a second term. The party has chosen to disregard the desires of two of its key voting demographics: millennials and people of color. Instead of advocating for free or affordable college tuition, Medicare-for-all healthcare and ending large tax breaks for the wealthy, the Democrats are focused on benefiting those who are party insiders in the top 1 percent. If the Democrats want to get back to winning elections and secure President Obama's legacy, they need to put more progressive and outsider figures like Bernie Sanders in its leadership.
The Republican Party won because it accepted its revolution and the Democrats did not. It is always ideal to remain somewhat in the center of the political spectrum, but occasionally political parties need to conform to new policies in order to acclimate with new voters and win elections, whether or not that means radically transforming its platform. The Democrats' refusal to radically change is testament to that view, and is the main reasoning as to how they failed to make history once more on November 8, 2016, along with jeopardizing the entirety of President Obama’s legacy by giving authority to Donald Trump.
In short, if Democrats want to win again, they need to prioritize policies that benefit American families instead of doing nothing but bashing Donald Trump. They need to build a sensible yet radical platform that can win back the working-class Americans that Trump decisively won over, and nominate a candidate that motivated young Americans to engage in the democratic process like Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders. While it is extremely important to hold Donald Trump and his administration accountable for its racist actions, it is subsequently important they have a candidate who can simultaneously do so and have an alternative solution to the Trump presidency.
