I was up late last night watching Super Tuesday returns, and I got up super early (5am! I am not a morning person) to head to a meeting this morning. When I got home around 1pm, I opened Daily Kos with more than a little trepidation about what I would see. Pie wars? Flame wars? Insults? Gloating? I braced myself, and then logged on.
The first diary I saw was this one. I read through the short-ish diary, and then dove into the comments. What I saw there were some rude comments, but also a healthy amount of comments where people on opposite sides of the intra-Democratic debate were struggling to find common ground. It prompted my long comment, which was in response to a perfectly respectful Sanders supporter trying to tell the person to whom s/he was responding that it might be a good idea not to just hurl a “good riddance” at Sanders supporters (vastly summarized). I agree, and wrote my long comment in reply, feeling like I owed this Sanders supporter the details of my thought process in how I voted yesterday in VA. I was trying to help this person understand my thought process, with a longer goal of trying to bring us all together as much as possible. I was urged in replies to turn this into a diary in its own right, and this is what follows. It is offered in a spirit of honesty and openness, because beating Trump and his criminal band of merry MAGAt followers and enablers is going to be a slog no matter who the nominee is. I hope this sparks some respectful discussion, that can pave the way for a little mutual understanding, which we sorely need at this point.
I voted for Biden here in VA yesterday. Gotta admit — didn’t see the whopping Biden win coming.
I have no issue with Sanders, nor with the majority of his supporters. I am aware of the fact that the most vocal ones who do the bullying are a minority of his supporters. I had a perfectly lovely exchange over text with one of his volunteers, Seth. Verbatim:
Seth: Hi Rena! It’s Seth with Bernie 2020. I’m with Bernie because he has the movement of volunteers, donors, and supporters who are ready to defeat Trump, and get Congress to take climate change seriously. Will you join the millions of people in our movement and vote for Bernie?
Me: Hello Seth! I admire your activism. Total respect. I will be voting in the primary tomorrow, but my vote will be going to Biden. Rest assured however, if Bernie wins the nomination, I will vote, donate and volunteer for him. He may not be my first or second choice right now but he is a billion times better than Trump and he will have my support if he wins the nomination.
Seth: Great, thanks for letting me know! Enjoy the rest of your day.
Very, very pleasant exchange from my point of view, and I meant what I said about respecting his activism.
I also acknowledge that the vitriol many are currently lamenting works both ways. No one’s hands are clean. But with that acknowledgement, I will state that it is a battle of two vocal minorities, and it's important for us to remember that.
I do hope that Sanders and his staff and surrogates don’t decide that bashing the “establishment” is the way to go here. It’s divisive — and more than that, voters expressing their preference is not a conspiracy. Of the people who voted yesterday, more than 60% list their overwhelming top issue as defeating Trump. Bashing the Democratic party unnecessarily won’t help Sanders in his ongoing run, and it certainly won’t help us moving forward with whomever the eventual nominee is.
My reservations about Sanders not related to electability are as follows:
- I love the “why” of what he stands for, and believe that these go to his deeply held core values. However, I remain extremely disappointed in the “how”. If the revolution was really the key element of implementation of the “how”, DC would be under nonstop protest. They aren’t.
- I feel Democrats need a “voice of conscience”, and I think both Sanders and Warren fit these roles. But for me, I don't see that translating for Sanders into anything that inspires my confidence in him to provide presidential leadership.
Like most of those who voted yesterday, however, electability is my top #1 concern. I have seen Sanders and his excellent surrogates talk about the massive young voter mobilization that will put him over the top. But thus far — 17 states in — that hasn’t materialized. Young voters just aren’t as reliable. The palpable excitement around Sanders isn’t really translating into massive youth voter mobilization. If Sanders were the nominee, this would be required - and if he can’t bring receipts throughout the primary, well, I’m not prone to magical thinking and therefore don’t believe we can rely on that in the general.
But most importantly, the reality of Trump has created many problems, large and small, for us to handle. I fully understand the urgent demand for radical change, especially in light of the rightward drift we have been experiencing for 20+ years. But the existence of Trump has created enormous stress and fatigue in the non-Trump electorate. They are desensitized and worn out, careening from one insane news cycle to the next, often multiple times in the same day. I believe what we saw occur yesterday is the expression of a deep desire among non-Trump folks to just get back to something that feels normal. Trump has been a disruptor, and for these non-Trump people, that’s a negative. So why would they support another disruptor? I don’t have to like human nature to acknowledge its existence and the effects of that existence. People don’t want to choose their banging new high heels that look fly but are terribly uncomfortable because they’re tired. They want their comfy slippers with the memoryfoam insoles. That’s what I believe people were trying to say when they gave Biden (and most of us!) the shock of our lives yesterday.
So, does that suck if you want big, progressive, disruptive change? YES. But will we go even further in the wrong direction if Trump wins in November? I don’t think I have to give that answer. It would be catastrophic.
I didn’t make the electorate this way. I didn’t make them largely disinterested in reading candidate policies despite unprecedented access to information in real time. I didn’t make them generally (and frighteningly) uneducated about how government was set up and way it’s supposed to work. But I sure have to live with it, and they’re not going to get smarter or more diligent by November. They are who they are — and it seems they’re tired and just want to kick their fancy shoes off and put on their slippers. They want to escape the stress that they’ve been living under since 2015.
So I hope, even if Sanders doesn’t win the nomination, that you will join the Biden side if he does, as I will join the Sanders side if he does. This is all about defeating Trump first, at least for me — because failing in that means we accomplish nothing and even the modest goal of holding current ground will be out the window.
I get a lot of hounding (in respectful tones) from various Sanders supporters that I’m operating from a place of fear. Um — yeah. I am. I’m also afraid of the coronavirus, so I’ve started washing my hands at every reasonable opportunity. I’m afraid of getting hit in the parking lot of my local shopping center because some dipshit is texting while driving, so I’m cautious and alert when crossing that parking lot. Fear is a normal — and oftentimes essential — motivator. It’s not a weakness and it doesn’t make you a bad person to acknowledge your reasonable fears and discuss the things you do to mitigate those fears. Fearing a Trump re-election is far from unreasonable, and therefore I have no compunction about indicating that I’m deciding things based on a healthy amount of reasonable and necessary fear. We all do that every day in our lives.
That’s all I’ve got! Thanks for reading if you got this far. I just wanted to be a respectful voice to counter the minority mean ones.
My original comment here. I have made three minor face-saving typo edits, but that’s it.
So let’s talk. How do we get where we need to be regardless of who the nominee winds up being?