I voted for Senator Sanders in the Vermont Democratic Primary on Tuesday, as I said I would. I didn’t need to — I would have and could have voted for Senator Warren, had Sen. Sanders not been on the ticket — but…Bernie is my homeboy. I may have been born in Sen. Warren’s Massachusetts, but I built my family in Sen. Sanders’ Vermont.
My hope is for Sen. Sanders to get the nomination and for him to announce his cabinet before the general election. I’d like to see Senator Warren on that cabinet as the Secretary of the Treasury, and I’d like President Sanders to seek her advice in all matters economic.
Working together, President Sanders and Secretary Warren could become an indomitable force in the nation’s economic reality, re-channeling the flow of American money so it points away from those rich in capital and towards those who live paycheck to paycheck and/or are indigent.
Despite wanting to see her as Secretary of the Treasury, I have no doubt Senator Warren would have made a great American President. She has been and will continue to be an inspiration to thousands of little boys and girls who will someday serve in our government and go to work each day dedicated to doing the right thing.
I don’t yet know who I want Sen. Sanders to pick as his Vice President. Electoral politics plays too great a role (I’m told) for me to pretend at a viable strategy, but I suspect it will be a woman of color from the South. Stacey Abrams, the first black woman in United States history to receive a major party’s nomination for governor, seems to be mentioned the most, but she also lost her election in Georgia (a fact she credibly disputes) and has never served at the Federal level.
In 2018, Sen. Sanders endorsed Abrams in the race for governor. By virtue of that endorsement (and from what little I’ve seen of her), I choose to trust her. Should Sen. Sanders select Abrams to become his nominee for vice president, I will trust he went to work that day dedicated to doing the right thing.
As for the other positions on his cabinet, I don’t yet have any favorites.
But the point I’m rambling to make is this: if Sen. Sanders wins the nomination, the best way to live up to the ethos of his “Not Me. Us.” campaign would be to show voters exactly who “Us” would be.
The Democrats should not run a single person against President Trump. They should run a whole slate of highly qualified civil servants, people who have been in government long enough to understand how it works and who have the motivation to make it work for the majority of Americans.
The Bernie campaign is not about nominating Bernie. It’s about empowering ourselves to rescue the democratic ideals of the American experiment from the world-darkening maw of billionaire capitalism. Sen. Warren’s endorsement of Sen. Sanders could help us accomplish that, but so could the efforts of all those passionate people who worked on her campaign.
Because it’s never been about Bernie. It’s only ever about us.