The “fear of Bernie” phenomenon by 2020 opponents of the re-election of President Trump is palpable.

In my case, it is also laughable.

Steven Roberts’ recent syndicated column reprinted on Jan. 17 in the Courier-Express is a prime example. Roberts claims that Sanders’ belated, lukewarm endorsement of Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee in 2016 was decisive in President Trump’s narrow victories in Wisconsin, Michigan and our own state of Pennsylvania. Those Electoral College wins ensured Trump’s victory despite a deficit of some 3 million popular votes.

Roberts argues that in 2016, about 1 in 5 Sanders primary voters did not vote for Hillary in November. About 1 in 10 voted for Trump, and the rest stayed home or supported fringe party nominees.

True enough.

But Roberts claims that those voters did what they did because they were Bernie Sanders followers; Bernie told them how to vote, directly or indirectly.

Hogwash.

Many 2016 voters who voted “for” Bernie Sanders actually cast those votes against the arrogant, caustic megalomaniac that was Hillary Rodham Clinton.

I was one of those voters. I had detested Hillary ever since she falsely slandered the ordinary people who had worked in the White House travel office back in 1993 when her husband Bill became President. Hillary wanted to give the patronage post of arranging White House travel – a lucrative gig – to her own political friends.

So she engineered the firing of seven employees. That was nasty but not unusual. Incoming Presidents rearrange things. But instead of correctly noting that the employees did serve at the pleasure of the President and letting it go at that, Hillary slandered those ordinary folks. She led the spreading of rumors that the seven were fired because they misused taxpayer money. Several investigations, including one led by this area’s Congressman at the time, U.S. Rep. Bill Clinger of Warren, showed that while the travel office staff had made some accounting errors, no money had been stolen.

William Safire, a respected New York Times columnist at the time, said Hillary Clinton was “a vindictive power player who used the FBI to ruin the lives of people standing in the way of juicy patronage.”

I agreed with that assessment, and never forgot it. Hillary’s later actions during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, as a carpetbagging senator from New York State, then as Obama’s Secretary of State, reaffirmed my distrust of her.

So in 2016, I would not have voted for Hillary Clinton if Bernie Sanders had personally knocked on my door and begged me to do so. I liked Bernie. But I politically detested both Hillary and Trump.

I ended up voting for Gary Johnson, the nominee of the Libertarians.

Columnist Steve Roberts got it wrong about 2016, and is getting it wrong now.

Much of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 appeal to voters has nothing to do with his political philosophy of socialism or with personal loyalty. While Bernie is a lifelong politician, voters know what they are getting with Bernie, who won’t say one thing to win, and then do the opposite after the victory. Many of us also know that a Socialist in the White House would still face 435 political opponents in the House and 100 political opponents in the Senate. The most a President Sanders could do would be to move the needle a tad bit to the left on the political spectrum, but only with bipartisan support.

Today, President Trump can usually count on the support of 53 Republican senators. The President is depending on those Republicans to acquit him following impeachment by Democrats in the House. My view: Trump should be censured for his politically stupid and morally wrong suborning of his office to try to dig up dirt on a political opponent, but he should not be removed from the office he won fairly. But that is another story.

This story is about the reality that no member of a political party has a duty or obligation to vote for that party’s nominees if the voter thinks those nominees are unfit for office.

The only ones claiming that party-registered voters must vote as the political party commands are the political hacks who try to turn political parties into vote-buying patronage machines, as Hillary Clinton did in 1993 and party hacks have been trying to do for forever.

Steve Roberts is respected as a columnist. But being a columnist carries with it no guarantee of always being right, as this fellow columnist knows all too well.

Those who support Bernie Sanders in 2020 do include fans of his socialist political philosophy. But they also include many Democrats, Republicans and other registered voters who just like Bernie’s curmudgeonly plain-speaking concern for ordinary people and his disdain for political hacks – and make up our own minds, rejecting a fictional “duty” to vote for fatally flawed nominees.

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Denny Bonavita is a former editor at newspapers in DuBois and Warren. He lives near Brookville. Email: denny2319@windstream.net.