Written by Paul Klinkman   

The year was 1968. The landslide hero of the 1964 election, President Lyndon Baines Johnson, eventually realized that he had zero chance of re-election to a second term. His Vietnam War policies were disastrous, especially among young men 18 to 26 years old. LBJ dropped out of the race. New York Senator Bobby Kennedy won the nomination and was rewarded with a gunshot wound to the back of his head. Inside the 1968 Democratic Presidential Convention a good percentage of the Democratic delegates were furious with the nomination of the surviving choice, pro-war Hubert Humphrey. Outside the cops were instructed to run a police riot against the antiwar demonstrators.

Hubert Humphrey lost to a crook that November.

Now we come to the 2016 Democratic Presidential Convention. Hillary Clinton certainly has the option of replaying 1968. She can always have the mayor of Philadelphia order another police riot. That would be politically stupid, and a good way to lose her election in November. As an alternative she can pointedly ignore Bernie Sanders. The problem is, Bernie picked 1500 activists as his delegates, and they’re going to be Hillary’s audience, possibly booing her or worse for four straight days. If Hillary wants to cut them all dead, she won’t be able to stop them from all wearing clown wigs, from turning their backs on her as she speaks, from yelling dozens of comments over her speech that the national TV audience is going to hear, from committing creative acts of civil disobedience inside the auditorium. Outside the auditorium could be two-week-old dead fish city.

What’s a gal to do, other than lose to a, what’s the word, a Trump? Well, Hillary actually has one political option still on the table, and that option is to select Bernie Sanders as her running mate. I expect that Bernie will accept her offer. Presto, the specter of dead rats tossed into the soup all disappears. The Bernie delegates listen politely to Hillary as she explains how she’s going to stick to the party platform, and then the Hillary delegates applaud her speech.

The day after the convention, the party starts selling official HILLARY/Bernie 2016 bumper stickers. Everybody else in America prints up bumper stickers that read BERNIE/Hillary 2016. They both get down to defeating Donald Trump and the Republicans. Yes, Hillary gets a second chance to steal the White House furniture.

I should note that Hillary Clinton isn’t the healthiest person these days. Her recent weight gain is likely the result of her blood thinning medicine so that she doesn’t have another stroke. However, the weight gain carries its own long term risks.