Hillary Clinton needs to start embracing progressives

When Hillary Clinton clinched the Democratic nomination for president, attention within the party shifted to how she would appeal to the disheartened progressives that had pushed Bernie Sanders to the surprising success that he enjoyed during the primaries. Clinton, who is much more moderate than Bernie and his supporters, needed to move to the left to keep the “Bernie or Bust” groups excited about the Democratic Party. However, in the weeks after becoming the presumptive nominee, Hillary Clinton has done just the opposite.

Hillary’s biggest weapon to show Sanders supporters that she wanted to make them part of her presidency, other than dramatic policy changes, was her choice of a vice president. Rumors were swirling for weeks leading up the decision about what progressive Democrats Hillary could pick to appeal to the far left voters who felt she was too moderate. Names ranging from Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the darling of the progressive movement before the emergence of Sanders to Cory Booker, the junior senator from New Jersey, to Bernie Sanders himself, were suggested as possible targets that would appeal to Bernie’s most fervent supporters. Considering this, it was a huge disappointment to a lot of liberals when Hillary Clinton picked Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine as her VP, a moderate Democrat whose traditional Christian values and fairly conservative views on abortion are in sharp contrast with the views of the far left. While Kaine’s appeal as an experienced politician who is popular in an important swing state was clear, a ticket with two moderate establishment candidates left a lot of Bernie supporters asking themselves “Where does that leave us?”

{mosads}And then the other shoe dropped. Just days after Kaine was announced as VP, emails from the Democratic National Committee were released that seemed to suggest that Sanders was treated unfairly by the DNC and chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz during the primaries and that the organization went out of its way to try and influence the primaries in favor of Clinton. Bernie Sanders and his supporters were understandably livid at the news, and while Clinton couldn’t have turned that bombshell into a positive, she could have mitigated the damage. Almost overnight, Wasserman Schultz, who announced her resignation as DNC chair following the incident, went from respected Democratic leader to a hated and corrupt example of the problem with American politics. Hillary Clinton’s best move to appeal to progressives was to condemn the actions of Wasserman Schultz, keep her as far away from her campaign as possible and apologize to Bernie Sanders. At least then there would have been the possibility of the scandal blowing over quickly. However, Clinton did not do that. She inexplicably thanked Schultz for her service and, if that weren’t enough, actually gave the disgraced former DNC chair a position as the “honorary chair of her 50 state campaign”, announcing that Schultz would pay a big role in pushing the Clinton agenda nationwide. It’s almost too unbelievable to fathom. Hillary Clinton was already having a hard time bringing the progressives in her party into the mix and responds to the ousting of one of the people most hated by that group by thanking her and giving her a job. When she should have been running as far away from Schultz as she could, she instead gave her a hug and promised to hold her close throughout this campaign.

How did the Sanders core respond to the shocking events of the past week? Not very well. At a rally before the start of the Democratic Convention, Bernie spoke to his delegates about the need to elect Hillary Clinton and was met with resounding boos and chants of “We want Bernie”. Despite the beloved progressive’s attempts to calm them down, it was clear from the get-go that he would be unable to convince the  angry crowd that Clinton was the answer.

So where do we go from here? One would hope that Hillary starts doing a better job in the weeks that follow of appealing to Bernie’s base. Because with Trump doing surprisingly well in recent polls, Hillary can’t afford to take such a large group of Democrats for granted anymore. Especially considering there are so many other people that they can throw their votes behind, including Green Party candidate Jill Stein and Libertarian Gary Johnson, a social progressive who has enjoyed strong support among millennials in recent weeks. The bottom line is that Hillary Clinton needs progressives to win the White House and she needs to start acting like it.

Joseph McMahon is a recent graduate of SUNY Geneseo, with a bachelor’s degree in political science.