Robert Reich on What's Next for Bernie - and His Supporters

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/37729-focus-robert-reich-on-whats-next-for-bernie-and-his-supporters

Does the split among Democrats feel more pronounced to you this year than in years past?

It's somewhat different. In 2008, there were many Hillary supporters who did not like Obama right after he became the presumptive nominee and really were not enthusiastic. But in the end, I would say roughly 90 percent or more of them came around and voted for him. It's different today in the sense that many of Bernie Sanders' supporters supported Bernie Sanders not because of Bernie himself but because of his message: He is the candidate against big money in politics. He is the candidate who understands that wealth and power are completely imbalanced in this society, in our political economy. That great concentrations of wealth — whether they be individual wealth or big corporations or Wall Street — have distorted and undermined our democracy. If Bernie Sanders hadn't run and Elizabeth Warren had run, it would have been the same message. If almost anybody with any name recognition had run with that message they would have attracted the same enthusiasm. I think Bernie has his own very strong attributes — I don't mean to suggest that it didn't matter who was running. He obviously has extraordinary passion and a very important degree of indignation about all of this. But Bernie Sanders supporters are not, generally speaking, overwhelmingly enthusiastic about who Bernie is [so much as] what Bernie stands for. And that makes it a different and more challenging transition for many Bernie supporters to throw their lot behind Hillary Clinton. I think most ultimately will, because the prospect of a Donald Trump presidency is so utterly terrifying.

But is it enough to just signal that she shares Sanders' priorities? That doesn't necessarily help battle the perception that she's an opportunistic politician. One of the things you said earlier is that you don't have a sense of what she stands for —

I didn't say that I don't, I said that voters don't. Most voters don't know what she stands for because she hasn't given her campaign a central theme or a large, bold idea that captures the public's imagination the way that Bernie has. I'm a policy wonk, I've gone through her policies in detail; I know what she stands for. But whether I know, that's not the issue. We're talking about the public in general, and Bernie supporters in particular. And not the one-third that will naturally gravitate to her without any effort or the one-third that are adamantly opposed to her and won't be persuadable or might be at the margin persuadable. I'm talking about this very important middle one-third that could be persuaded, but need to believe that she is sincere about some big important theme.