There is a guy that goes to the bar around the corner from my house. We’ve only ever chatted a few times as I went out for drinks with my husband. I’ve always been polite. He looks like he could be a lumberjack with a thick black beard and always in plaid, but he drinks overpriced craft beers and you know he only owns Apple products. That kinda guy. He’s a hipster and a liberal, and he represents everything about the political left that I fucking loathe.
We met this guy on Election Night. We had spent all day clipboarding for Hillary, knocking on doors until the bitter end to make sure that registered Democrats knew their polling locations and had remembered to vote. Knowing we had done all we could, my husband and I stopped into the brand new tap house that had just opened up down the street. We were in the mood to celebrate as we watched this shitshow of an election finally die and history be made.
Enter Beard Guy.
He’s there to do the same thing and watch the election results roll in, but he wants to debate and talk about how the electoral commission is rigged and we’re all screwed anyway. He cryptically reveals, unprompted, that he didn’t vote for either candidate. I force a smile and resist the urge to throttle him as I wonder if I was looking at the second person to tell me that night that they were proud to have written in Mickey Mouse. But who cares! His wasted vote was already wasted.
Well, you know how that shit went down.
Months later, being quite a bit more jaded and bitter than I was last time we met, Beard Guy comes into the bar again. He reveals that he wrote in Bernie Sanders. And I want to fucking throttle him again.
Here’s the thing about writing in Bernie Fucking Sanders. If you truly believed that Bernie was the only viable candidate and that he might actually pull in enough write-in votes to be President, then I don’t fault you. But you probably didn’t believe that. If you are so deeply religiously observant that you felt that casting a vote for either major candidate would literally consign your immortal soul to the burning of everlasting hellfire, then I don’t fault you. But you probably didn’t believe that.
If you wrote in Bernie Sanders, what you actually wanted was Hillary. You just wanted the rest of us to vote her in for you. Sure, you didn’t like her, you didn’t want her to be President, she wasn’t smiley and young and hot and likable. You wished any other woman was the candidate, blah blah blah horseshit blah, but you wanted her more than you wanted Trump.
Unless, like dozens that I talked to, you really felt that Trump or Hillary would leave us all equally fucked. Equally. Fucked. Do you know what kind of person is equally fucked by a Clinton or Trump presidency? The kind that is so privileged, so rich, so white, so well-educated and well connected, that there’s no way you would face any consequences from either President being in office. You weren’t ever going to be fucked. But you might’ve just had to sacrifice an inch of your ideological purity.
You wanted Hillary to win that election. You just wanted the rest of us plebes to vote her in for you so you could maintain your precious moral high ground. You wanted her to win and to have the right to say “Well, I didn’t vote for her” every time she was too hawkish or too pro-corporation or too female for the next four years, and you could go to bed at night knowing what a good, pure little Liberal you are.
If you loved Bernie because you wanted to help poor people, then guess what? You fucked them when you didn’t help Hillary defeat Trump. You didn’t want to help poor people, you liked the idea of yourself helping poor people. Or you wanted to help poor people, but you wanted to hate women more. The reality is that the middle class is bleeding out. Hillary wasn’t perfect, but people don’t need perfect right now, they need something, anything, any kind of relief. But they wouldn’t vote for someone that they agreed with only 80% because it wasn’t 100%, and there were no personal risks involved for doing so, and they didn’t like her unsmiley face.
Do you think that many folks who rely on Medicaid to live voted third party? Did black women write in their perfect, ideologically pure candidate? Did Hispanics conscientiously object to Clinton’s Wall Street ties? No. They turned up.
We have to be better. We’re liberals because we think we can make the world a more fair and decent place to live for the people who have gotten a shit deal from life. I liked everything Bernie had to say. He seemed to encapsulate that message neatly, almost perfectly. But I had to look at what was actually getting accomplished. Hillary had a track record a mile long of actually making things better for the people who were getting screwed, even when it was politically inconvenient, even when it was unpopular. Bernie had a list a mile long of shining speeches and an unshakeable ideology that he never deviated from, even once, and that was…about it. In terms of actual legislation that he had actually pushed through, he had diddly squat.
Speeches don’t help the disadvantaged, legislation does. Even when that legislation involves compromise, even when it only makes it to 70% of where it needs to be. Or 40%, or even just 10%. Single mothers would have been much better served by a woman who wanted to enact paid maternity leave and who also got paid a lot of money for corporate speeches than a billionaire who thinks he can grab them by the pussy. Immigrants would have done much better with a woman who wanted to close private immigration detention centers and was more hawkish than someone who wanted to eliminate grants for sanctuary cities. American national security would have been better served with a woman who shared information on a private email server that was vulnerable to attack than a man who bragged on Twitter about sharing classified information with the Russian Foreign Minister over lunch. Only someone with absolutely no skin in the game could possibly feel otherwise.
We on the left need to get our shit together and finally learn the difference between an enemy and an imperfect ally. That help will come too late for all of the youth that are going to be deported, the people who are going to die when Medicaid shrinks, and the National Park lands that will be privatized and sold off. But hey, I’ve heard a lot of you say you would’ve voted in the first female President if she had just been Elizabeth Warren. If she runs in 2020, maybe you’ll prove me wrong and stand behind her, even when she doesn’t turn out to be the literal Second Coming.
Oh this is going to generate controversy.
But I agree that a lot of “Bernie Or Bust” folks haven’t accepted the consequences of their actions. I didn’t see a lot of “Bernie Backers” on the streets at the counter protest to “Stand up To Sharia”, or when the Fasc came to town in November of 2016.
I wonder how many “Bernie Or Busters” have donated to the One People’s Project, It’s Going Down or The National Lawyer’s Guild.
You’re not wrong about the controversy 🙂 But I felt like I needed to write the piece anyway. Many, many Bernie supporters threw their support behind Hillary even when they didn’t believe in her to the same extent, and I really respect that. But the Busters decided to just give up on the whole process and salt the earth along the way. It makes me wonder if they ever really believed or cared about his message to begin with.
James, I agree with you, but I also think, to be honest, some “Bernie or Bust” people, after the election blended back in to the crowd and saying that they’re not opposing what’s happening is disingenuous.
How many of them were “On The Streets” in Charlottesville?
Spot on, unfortunately. And here we are.
I feel the same way. I’d love to be wrong here, but I don’t think I am. Thanks for reading my little expletive-laced rant!
“Hillary had a track record a mile long of actually making things better for the people who were getting screwed, even when it was politically inconvenient, even when it was unpopular,”…”American national security would have been better served with a woman who shared information on a private email server…”
[…]
“We have to be better. We’re liberals because we think we can make the world a more fair and decent place to live for the people who have gotten a shit deal from life. I liked everything Bernie had to say. He seemed to encapsulate that message neatly, almost perfectly. But I had to look at what was actually getting accomplished. Hillary had a track record a mile long of actually making things better for the people who were getting screwed, even when it was politically inconvenient, even when it was unpopular. Bernie had a list a mile long of shining speeches and an unshakeable ideology that he never deviated from, even once, and that was…about it,”[Nicole Hallberg,Aug-2,2017].
REPLY:
ALLAN VANDERLEY
This superb argumentation using straw’man rhetoric. And yet,it is most disingenuous.
Over eight months after the election,DONALD TRUMP has turned the office of the presidency into a national calamity,a global reality-TV show;BERNIE SANDERS is still travelling around the country visiting red and blue states perfectly encapsulating the message,that people are still getting screwed,even when it is politically inconvenient and unpopular to those in positions of power or wealth,BERNIE still has a mile long list of shining speeches and unsakeable progressive ideology that he never deviates from;and HILLARY CLINTON wrote a book about ‘What Happened’ as if taking ‘full-responsibility’ and is still talking about the election as if it was,is,and,will always be all about her,the victim,the outcast,the forgotten,the perfect heiress to the reconstituted neo-liberal Democratic-party.
Ms.Nicole Hallberg writes as if she is representative of liberals and or the Democratic-leaning political voter. Any argumentation is to argue about terms,semantics,and interpretations of perception. In politics,any good debater is capable of alternative narratives using the Rashomon-principle-and-effect,accounting for multiple narratives for a singular event.
And so,
Let us look at the narrative Hallberg writes. As ‘liberals’ we are ‘better’ because we ‘make-the-world-a-more-fair-and-decent-place-to-live-for-the-people-who-have-gotten-a-shit-deal-from-life.’ And yet,we all know that those same people how truly believe they were ‘making-the-world-a-more-fair-and-decent-place-to-live’,themselves ‘got-a-shit-deal-for-life’ by the very tribe they were working for – ‘liberals’ were flocking to the message BERNIE SANDERS was,and still is,representing. And,interestingly enough,that message even attracted some of the more conservative-Republican voters who ordinarily vote against their own-personal best-interests,which seems the same demographic that the ‘liberals’ were hoping to gain for nationally elected office.
It seems to me,in my view,that a party or tribe that truly believes and fights so desperately to represent ‘liberals’ that are ‘better’,because we,’make-the-world-a-more-fair-and-decent-place-to-live-for-the-people-who-have-gotten-a-shit-deal-from-life’,cannot genuinely represent the mantle of ‘liberals’,if we actively reject those people ‘making-the-world-a-more-fair-and-decent-place-to-live-for-the-people-who-have-gotten-a-shit-deal-for-life.”
…just saying,to be clear,it ain’t complicated:
Hillary has now has a track record a mile long of actually screwing people who were trying to make things better for the people who were getting screwed, even when it was politically inconvenient, even when it was unpopular.
We are still seeing the results of so many people voting for Clinton out of fear or guilt. The Democrats get to continue to justify their Republican lite policies. When you vote for the lesser of two evils, each election, the two evils get worse. Voting for Clinton was not a long-term solution. I’m sure you mean well, Nicole, but you couldn’t be more wrong. It takes shortsightedness and an unhealthy dose of privilege and entitlement to shame people for choosing to vote third party, write someone in, or not vote at all. The fact that you are still bitter about the election almost 200 days into the Trump presidency is the same kind of attitude that turned people away from the Clinton campaign. Votes need to be earned. The “vote for my candidate otherwise you’re an asshole” tactic doesn’t work.
I know it’s convenient to think that everyone who voted Clinton voted out of fear or guilt, and you’re the only person who is smart and right, but I get to say why I voted, and I voted and campaigned Clinton because I believed that she would actually make this country better for the people who have to live here.
I hope that harangue made you feel better. Your vivid description of one guy’s attire and presumed beer drinking and personal device preferences had me on the edge of my seat.Shall we discuss the corporate sock monkey problem now?
I wonder how many of the establishment Democrats have take responsibility for putting up a candidate who couldn’t beat Donald Effing Trump. Stay the course. Keep fighting the last election and berating people who don’t share your allegiance to the status quo. It’s worked so well so far.
Different doesn’t mean better, friend. You can call it the “status quo” and make it sound evil if you want, but I voted for competence and experience, not “for nothing to change”, no matter how many Bernie Bros explain to me why I “really” voted. I voted Clinton because I believed in Clinton and I believed in actually making shit better and I believed she would do that, full stop.
Your hypothesis will never be tested, Nicole. I don`t care why you really voted for the losing candidate. Bernie Bro is such a pathetic attempt at deflection.
Keep whining until the next second way defeat.
The way this could be solved, but never will happen, is to have more parties. I’m a Democrat, because I have to be. I’m not a Republican. But if there was a better progressive party that could actually win a race, they’d probably get my vote. The problem is that many of these third parties try and start at the top and not down at the bottom in the municipalities. People forget how important local is to politics. That’s where the immediate impact on our lives lie. Was I a Sanders fan? Did I vote for him in the primary? Yes and yes. But when it came down to it, who did I get to choose from? For better or for worse it was Clinton and Trump. I voted for Clinton. Not because I thought she was the best for the job, no… because she could do the job and do it well, whereas Trump… well we know how he’s doing.
Once again a great post.