Political reality tells us that we need to ignore the "political realists" and vote for real change
Too often when I hear the phrase "political reality" it is used to tell us that we can't accomplish real change in this country. People tell us that we are ignoring political reality when we say we want to fight for things like single payer health care, tuition free college, or same sex marriage rights.
Oops you better strike that last example because it turns out the people who lectured us that we would never have same sex marriage because of the "political reality" were actually completely divorced from reality themselves.
It is time to stop these so-called "political realists" from defining reality for us, instead we need to show them what the reality is.
The reality is that wealthy interests have corrupted both of our major political parties in this country. The corruption is certainly worse in the Republican Party than it is in the Democratic Party, but just because one party is worse than the other does not mean we can accept the corruption within our own party.
The reality is that when candidates take large campaign contributions, and even worse large speaking fees which go directly into a candidate's personal bank account, that is going to influence any politician.
The reality is that when a candidate takes $600,000 to deliver a few speeches to Goldman Sachs that candidate is probably going to be pretty happy with that payout and it is hard to believe that it won't influence future decisions that are related to Goldman Sachs' interests.
The reality is that if we want to address income inequality in this country, if we want to have single payer healthcare, and if we want to break up the big banks then we need to take a stand against corruption.
The reality is that we have a Democratic Party that has millions of great people with great ideas. We have millions who want single payer, who want tuition free college, there are millions who want to break up the big banks, and if we choose our leadership from those millions of people rather than the establishment figures that currently run our party then we can fight for real change.
To understand how we can win we need to look at another political reality, and that reality is that if we elect a President that does not fund his campaign with corporate money that President can change the party leadership. We can get a new leadership who will actually fight for things like single payer rather than telling us that it is not "politically realistic" to provide universal health care just like most of the rest of the developed world provides to their citizens.
The political reality is that the status quo is not working, if we want real change then we need to vote to change that status quo and elect a candidate who has not taken large campaign contributions or speaking fees from corporate interests.
The so-called "political-realists" told us Bernie would never make it this far. We have already proven they were divorced from reality when they said that, now let us prove that they are also divorced from reality when they tell us we can never win single payer health care.
