Get off my grass you damned kids

A lot of people surprised by the youth vote for Bernie and then dismissing his policies as unattainable seem to be missing a few things. First is that with a Republican House and Senate, everything Clinton and Sanders propose is pie in the sky. Fer fuck’s sake, the House broke tradition this year and isn’t even going to pretend that Obama is offering a budget:

The president’s budget is traditionally declared dead on arrival on Capitol Hill. This year, President Obama’s final budget proposal is just dead.

In a harsh partisan snub, the Republican chairmen of the Senate and House budget committees — Senator Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming and Representative Tom Price of Georgia — have chosen not to invite Shaun Donovan, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to testify about the administration’s plan, set to be released on Tuesday as part of the traditional budget week festivities.

“Rather than spend time on a proposal that, if anything like this administration’s previous budgets, will double down on the same failed policies that have led to the worst economic recovery in modern times, Congress should continue our work on building a budget that balances and that will foster a healthy economy,” Mr. Price said in a statement.

So dismissing the Sanders proposals as uniquely optimistic or unattainable makes me think that the harsh realists uttering said statements don’t have as harsh a grip on reality as they think they do. They won’t work with Obama, so I have no idea why some of you think they’re going to work with “Hitlery”- you know, the person they have been savaging for what? Four decades? How could Sanders be worse?

Second, when we are talking about the youth vote, we’re talking about the people who have been straight up fucked by the current political establishment, and fairly or unfairly, Hillary is, in their minds, more reflective or representative of the establishment. Those of you saying “Hillary can work with the system and get things done where Bernie can’t” have to realize that is a double edged sword, right? The youth, rightly, IMHO, think the system has fucked them. They don’t want someone working in the system. They want the system ripped down and rebuilt from the ground up. And it’s not too hard to figure out why.

As a group, they’re fucked. They are saddled with debt, their economic opportunities are far more limited than that of any recent generation, and while they are working three jobs and paying for the SS benefits of current and soon to be retirees, they’re fed catfood commissions by “reasonable” Democrats and told they are being selfish by the Boomer generation- the generation that while achieving many great things, has left a fucking mess to deal with.

And when they look at Sanders, they see someone speaking and thinking outside the box. When they see Hillary, they see the establishment. And again, you don’t get to say Hillary is not the establishment while sitting back and stating Hillary has the majority of the Super Delegates and all the endorsements from, I dunno, establishment Democrats.

And in this case, Hillary has not helped herself at all. There was no sane reason for her to hoover up millions of dollars in speaking fees from Wall Street and trade organizations in between being SoS and her candidacy other than cashing in- the “I wasn’t sure I was going to run” line doesn’t cut it any better than “That’s what they offered, Anderson.”

You can argue she didn’t do anything wrong (she didn’t), you can read the speeches and argue she didn’t say anything that would suggest she was bought (I haven’t seen anything to suggest that), and you can argue that everyone does it (and they do!). But that doesn’t change the fact that the kids see one candidate in an ill-fitting suit talking about income inequality and taking the bankers to task and all the other parts of their platform and another candidate cashing checks from the people shipping their jobs overseas and holding the IOU’s to their student loans and funding all the groups fighting living wages. Your arguments are good and true, but they don’t change that perception or reality for the youth vote. The kids voted the way they did just like certain demographics voted for Hillary in New Hampshire.

So stop shitting on the kids. They aren’t stupid. They’re experts on their situation, and you aren’t, and many of them think Bernie is a better option for them, just like right now many African-Americans think Hillary is a better option for them.

I’m having flashbacks to the PUMA wars and the Magical Unity Pony bullshit and how Obama will never get anything done. Not to mention, things are about to get real ugly racially the next few weeks, so maybe we should all start from a happy place right here and now before the shit really hits the fan. And yes, I will still vote for Hillary or Bernie in November. I’ll campaign. I’ll phone bank. The fucking Democrat has to win.

Drops mic. On foot.

This Is Not Hard- They Just Have a Different PerspectivePost + Comments (434)