I Can No Longer Rationally Discuss The Clinton Campaign

So, I’ve got the talking stick: I’ll start. My reaction to Sanders’ speech was closer to John’s than Anne Laurie’s, but it has elements of both. Valued commenter Barbara said something that resonated with me in the thread below:

I don’t think anyone would disagree that Sanders has been a reliable progressive ally of Democrats in Congress on most issues. But he has also been an intentional outsider — which is his choice and one that never bothered me much. But it’s just a bridge too far to be an intentional outsider and then, when it no longer seems advantageous, to assume insider status with the right to direct the party’s apparatus even as he still refuses to endorse the party’s candidate. What this speech shows is that he is still too openly conflicted to claim that authority. In the case of a voluntary organization like a political party, credibility is the result of some amount of reciprocal loyalty, which, even now, he is refusing to show. My disdain at this point is not personal to Bernie Sanders or his wife, or his supporters, it’s his apparent unwillingness to truly be part of the organization he wants to direct.

Yep. I have additional concerns as well, such as the suspicion that Sanders doesn’t take the possibility of the Trumpocalypse as seriously as he ought (he says the right words on this, but his actions don’t match, IMO). And as someone whose preferences are generally to the left of the party mainstream, I’m pissed off that Sanders now appears to be squandering what could have been greater influence for the Warren wing. Could be I’m reading it wrong. But that’s how it looks to me right now.

But the thing that makes me angriest about both Sanders and his followers is their seeming belief that they alone can save the party from its corporatist tendencies and bend the arc toward justice. Excuse me, I happen to have President Obama right here — you know, the guy who orchestrated the largest top-down transfer of wealth in American history via the ACA and the man who presided over the greatest expansion of civil rights since the 1960s?

Oh, and look here — I also happen to have the first woman ever nominated by a major party in the U.S., who also happens to be one of the most accomplished, knowledgeable and influential women on the goddamned planet.

Chopped liver much, Berniacs? So pardon the fuck outta me if I’m not quite ready to hand the keys to our party platform over to the double-digit loser of the primary contest who has been a Democrat for all of one year. There. I feel better already.

Now for the mollifying part: Kudos to Sanders for telling people to get involved at the local level. And to the extent that he was able to get young folks excited about politics — and more importantly, to the extent that this actually translates into them getting involved in the party — huzzah for that.

While I think it’s not only essential, realistic and good manners to pay respect to and promise to protect PBO’s accomplishments, it’s also important to acknowledge that everything is not okay. Wages have been stagnant for decades. Working people are getting screwed. Minorities are getting killed, literally. Too much wealth continues to accumulate in too few hands. Millions more have access to the shitty healthcare coverage we middle class folks have had all along, but it’s still shitty. We need to address this.

You can’t blame millennials for looking at 2016 as square one. It is, to them. I’m actually super-hopeful about millennials – not because of the ones I’ve met online or anything to do with the Sanders campaign but due to the younger folks I know in real life, including my 30-something brother and teenage daughter. In my experience, they don’t embody the shallow, self-centered, participation-trophy traits their elders complain about.

But, being young, one thing many of them do lack is perspective, and here’s how that’s playing out in this election, IMO: The youngest of them seem to think it’s normal to have a Democratic president of Barack Obama’s stature and achievements in the White House. Whereas to folks like me, who are old enough to have voted for BILL Clinton twice, it’s near miraculous.

We’ve been here before. I remember rolling my eyes at my parents’ generation’s fixation on the politics surrounding the Vietnam War when that seemed like ancient history to me. Absurdly, one of the reasons I first supported PBO in 2008 was a desire to move past that dynamic. But I quickly learned that, as Faulkner said, the past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past.

Speaking of the past, guys, this fellow on the other ticket, he makes Richard Nixon seem like a responsible, transparent, non-paranoid and un-self-interested actor. So can we move on now?

And with that, I relinquish the talking stick to you…