Bernie Sanders – Eclecticism

Post-Super Tuesday Thoughts

March 4, 2020 by Michael Hanscom

I know that Warren’s campaign was looking like more and more of a long shot–but I’m disappointed and frustrated that she did as poorly as she did. I still believe that she is, by far, the single best candidate, and it’s frustrating that, yet again, an immensely intelligent and capable woman is being sidelined in favor of less qualified men.

I do hope she sticks around until the convention. Partially, sure, because I’ve already sent in my ballot for Washington’s primary with her name checked, but also because I think it’s important to have her voice as part of the discussion. She’d continue to push both Sanders and Biden on the more problematic aspects of their campaigns, make it so we’re not just listening to two old men yell at each other, and–and here’s a hail Mary pass for you–if the convention is so contested that it’s clear that neither Sanders nor Biden are a consensus choice, maybe she could end up being the consensus candidate. Yeah, a long shot that won’t happen, but it’s fun to dream.

I found this analysis of why Biden did so well in the south to be quite interesting. The argument here is that for many black voters, particularly older voters, the primary concern is which candidate is the best possible choice that most white voters will support.

My read of the South Carolina vote is that black people know exactly what they’re doing, and why. Joe Biden is the indictment older black folks have issued against white America. His support is buttressed by chunks of the black community who have determined that most white people are selfish and cannot be trusted to do the right thing. They believe if you make white people choose between their money and their morality—between candidates like Sanders or Elizabeth Warren (who somehow finished fifth in South Carolina, behind Pete Buttigieg) and candidates like Biden and Michael Bloomberg—they will choose their money every time and twice on Election Day.

The New York Times interviewed a 39-year-old African American voter in South Carolina. I found his analysis instructive. He told the Times: “Black voters know white voters better than white voters know themselves.… So yeah, we’ll back Biden, because we know who white America will vote for in the general election in a way they may not tell a pollster or the media.”

The best result, though? Bloomberg is out. Thank goodness. And I do hope that he follows through with his promise to put his immense wealth behind the eventual Democratic nominee.

I guess the other bright side is that there’s very little question of whether I’ll bother watching any of the Presidential debates. I would have enjoyed seeing Warren go up against Trump on the debate stage: not only is she always incredibly well prepared, capable, and very good at thinking on her feet as she’s answering questions, but she’d have the benefit of being able to study the Clinton/Trump debates. As it is, though, I have no interest in either a Biden/Trump or Sanders/Trump debate. I know I’ll be voting for the Democratic nominee no matter what, and it’ll save me more hours of watching old white men yell at each other.

I just wish Warren had a better chance at being our next President. She’d be great.

Addendum: Also: Yes, as many of my Sanders-aligned friends on Facebook are pointing out through links and memes, Biden is very problematic, with all sorts of questionable statements and votes in his history.

He’s still far better than Trump, and if he’s the nominee, please recognize this and vote for him instead of staying home or casting a “protest vote” (that has no functional result other than taking a vote away from the one candidate with a hope of beating the incumbent). So much depends on getting someone else in office (not least, our nation’s judiciary, from the Supreme Court seats on down, which Trump has already done a frightening job of skewing rightward in the past three years).

And then, once he’s in office, keep up your dissent. Point out when he fucks up. Call your representatives and senators and make sure they know where you stand and that they should push against any poor decisions and missteps. Make your voice heard, beyond just the once-every-four-years vote, and push for things to improve. Don’t give up just because your preferred candidate didn’t end up winning–push for the remaining candidates, the eventual nominee, and (hopefully) the new President to do better.

February 27, 2020 by Michael Hanscom

Was the Democratic Nomination Rigged? A Reexamination of the Clinton-Sanders Presidential Race by Anthony J. Gaughan: “This article makes three central points. First, it contends that the overwhelming weight of evidence makes clear the 2016 Democratic nomination process was not rigged in favor of Hillary Clinton. Second, this article argues that the Democratic Party rules and state election laws actually hurt Clinton and benefited Sanders. Third, the article concludes that the controversy over the Democratic nomination race reflects a broader, bipartisan decline in public confidence in the integrity of American elections.”

On Bernie Bros

February 27, 2020 by Michael Hanscom

There’s Nothing Revolutionary About Harassing Critics:

Perfect, superhuman leaders do not exist in life. They exist in propaganda, and what toxic Sanders supporters seem most vehemently interested in is not hurting individual people, but creating a state of play in which only propaganda about Sanders can be spoken without reprisal. By doing so, they’re creating the conditions for a president who acts without accountability, a president who gets to create his own truth and use his passionate following to terrorize anyone who contradicts him—a president very much like the one we have now.

Siddown, Bernie

January 15, 2020February 20, 2019 by Michael Hanscom

I’ve been debating saying anything about Bernie Sanders’s announcement, as I know I have a few friends who are Bernie fans, and while I don’t remember any specific issues with any of them, generally, criticism of Bernie doesn’t go over well with his supporters.

But I have the advantage of being a straight cis white male, and thanks to those genetic/social happenstances, it’s easier and safer for me to say this than it is for many other people who don’t fall into one or more of those categories: take a seat, Bernie.

I thought he had interesting ideas in 2016. At first, I supported him, and cast a WA caucus vote for him. I appreciated that he helped bring a number of progressive ideas to the foreground of the political conversations (ideas which, in many cases, had been advanced by other, less privileged people over the years, but which weren’t worth seriously considering until they were brought up by a white guy, but hey, that’s just a weird coincidence, right?).

But the longer things went on, the more it became obvious to me that however interesting some of the ideas he espoused were, he and far too many of his followers were far too problematic for me to support, and I’ve seen absolutely nothing in the intervening years to convince me otherwise.

If he really wanted to help and make a difference in 2016, he should have given his support to Clinton and encouraged his supporters to do the same. He should have listened to those who were pointing out the many problematic aspects of his policies and campaign and learned from his missteps. He should have worked to listen, to learn, to do better, and to encourage his fans to do the same. But nothing I’ve seen from him tells me that he’s made any progress an any of these fronts.

I do not in the least believe that he is the best choice for 2020. I do believe that his entry into the race is going to cause more problems and encourage more racist and sexist attacks on the other people seeking the nomination. And I really wish that he would just sit down and shut up — or, if he must be involved in some way, offer his support to the new candidates seeking the nomination. But re-entering the race is not helpful.

A rare (these days) long political rant

December 24, 2019July 26, 2016 by Michael Hanscom

Here’s where I stand at the moment. (This is long.)

I believe that Bernie Sanders has a lot of good ideas, and — for a time — was doing a lot of good in pulling the Democratic party and Hillary Clinton further to the left of middle than they’d otherwise have been. I sent in my absentee ballot for Sanders in the WA Democratic Caucus, and I voted for Sanders in the (pointless) WA primary. At the same time, I think Sanders stumbled in a number of areas (particularly in his outreach, or lack thereof, to minorities) and then miscalculated by staying in the race too long and not conceding. What he ended up doing was mobilizing and encouraging the far-far-left, our corollary to the far-far-right, existing at the point where the two extremes of the political spectrum are so close in fanaticism that they risk bending the spectrum into a circle and meeting at the far side.

I don’t believe Sanders ever had a real chance at winning the Presidency, and he certainly wouldn’t now, even if by some bizarre set of circumstances he actually got the nomination. No matter how much I support his ideas and ideals, no matter how much I think we should be working towards them — and, generally speaking, I do — I don’t believe that it would have happened, even if he was able to become President. There simply would have been too much resistance from Congress and much of the American populace for the drastic, sweeping changes he was proposing for them to have gone through (look at what Obama wanted to do with health care versus what he was able to, and how much resistance there still is to that small, imperfect step towards actually ensuring that everyone in this country has the health care they should).

I think that Sanders will continue to do what he has been doing for years, working to promote his Democratic Socialist ideals and trying to pull the Democratic party back to the left, and I wish him luck and much success. But he won’t be doing it from the White House.

I don’t think that Clinton is perfect — but neither do I believe that she is the scheming, lying, backstabbing, crooked caricature that a depressing number of people seem to think she is, thanks to years of Republican attacks. I think she is a marvelously successful, effective, and savvy politician, who has had a long career during which she’s done things that I disagree with, but has also done a lot of good. I expect this will continue if she gets into office — no big surprise there, because that’s really the best that can be expected of anyone who gets into that office. I think Obama is far and away the best President this country has had in my lifetime, and he and his administration have done a number of things that I find questionable or strongly disagree with; that’s simply the reality of the office. Besides, Clinton has been attacked and investigated for years (decades), over and over again, for all sorts of reasons (some more reasonable than others), and not once have any of these investigations turned up any reputable evidence that she was doing anything more sinister than being a politician.

I don’t believe that the primaries and caucuses were rigged. I think the Democratic party’s mish-mash of primaries, caucuses, and superdelegates is problematic at best, and would much rather we simply went with open primaries across the board. However, the system we have, such as it is, worked as intended, even if many people don’t like the intent. Independents not being allowed to vote in the Democratic primary isn’t a bug, it’s a feature, even if it’s a feature you disagree with. While I haven’t done a deep dive into the reports, it looks like the DNC emails are a lot of fuss over little actual substance; since the organization’s goal was to select the candidate with the best chance of winning the Presidential election, showing favoritism to Clinton over Sanders (especially as it became more and more clear that he simply didn’t have the popular support of the American people) isn’t corruption or conspiracy, it’s doing their job. They could likely have done that job better in many ways, but it’s not a scam.

I’m far more concerned by the very strong possibility (perhaps even probability at this point) that the DNC email dump is an attempt by collusion between Putin (and/or his administration) and Wikileaks (an organization I have serious issues with, given its support for Milo Yiannopoulos, that it’s headed by an accused rapist avoiding extradition on said rape charges, and its willingness to doxx innocent bystanders in its information dumps) and possibly the Trump campaign or Donald Trump himself. Basically, it looks very strongly like this was an organized attempt by a foreign state (Russia), possibly in collusion with the Republican party’s candidate himself or his campaign, to influence our election — and I find that much more troubling than the content of the emails themselves.

I respect, understand, and sympathize with many of the concerns of those who look seriously at or support third party candidates. I fully support supporting candidates from outside of the two primary parties, have no problems with those who vote for them, and it’s entirely possible I’ll be voting for some of them myself — at non-Presidential levels (local, district, city, county, borough, state, etc.). But I don’t believe that the major systemic changes advocated for by many third-party candidates have even the tiniest, remotest chance of being successful unless we start at the bottom and work up. Like it or not (and many don’t, and that’s fine), the “revolution” isn’t going to happen. A third-party candidate is simply not going to come out of nowhere and take the Presidency. Third-party candidates can be elected and start making differences at local levels (and a few have started, at least in the Seattle area), and that needs to happen so that they can build their base and support and work their way to the Presidency. That stands a chance, and we collectively should be putting more effort and support toward these candidates when we feel that they’re in line with our goals. But “cutting the head off the snake” just isn’t a viable political strategy at the national level.

I am extremely concerned that the current state of the non-Republican parties (Democratic party plus independents, third-parties, etc.) is such that Trump stands a depressingly and frighteningly high possibility of actually being elected as President. Generally speaking, the Republican party is extremely good about unifying behind their candidate and mobilizing their voters, while the non-Republican parties consistently fall apart in this respect. Idealism is all well and good; idealism at the expense of reality is dangerous. The current fractures in the Republican party are unusual, and while they make for good entertainment, I don’t for a moment believe that they’ll really split the Republican vote apart the way that non-Republicans have a tendency to do. As a whole, Republicans believe that a candidate who is imperfect but is more in line with their beliefs than the Democratic nominee is the better choice; meanwhile, there are a disturbing number of non-Republicans who believe that a candidate who is imperfect but is more in line with their beliefs than the Republican candidate still isn’t good enough.

I would love to vote for a candidate who in every way espoused every belief I have and hold dear. But if such a candidate existed (and none ever has) and I knew that no matter how much I liked their stance there was no real chance of winning, they wouldn’t get my vote, especially when there’s even the slightest chance that someone like Trump might win. I’ll support them as much as I can — as I said above, I supported Sanders in the early months of his campaign, and I still think that he has a lot of good ideas and that he should continue working for them however he can — but generally, I’d much rather have an imperfect Democratic candidate in office than a Republican candidate, and that’s particularly true this time around.

Generally speaking, Republicans don’t scare me. I disagree with many of their viewpoints, but the vast majority of them are at least reasonable people. But the current incarnation of the Republican party has been co-opted by the far-right wing, and preys on fear, sexism, misogyny, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and general hatred of anything other than straight white male. In many ways, Trump himself doesn’t even really scare me (though he comes closer than any other major Republican candidate ever has), but the fact that he’s tapped into such a strong vein of hatred and fear that he’s actually been able to capture the Republican nomination does scare me. His followers scare me. I don’t really believe he’s any more able to get many of his wilder promises enacted than Sanders would be. But those that he and a Republican controlled congress would be able to enact would likely be disastrous; beyond that, his being elected would be even more of a call for the worst of our society to make their prejudices known in visible and often violent ways than we’ve seen yet with his candidacy and nomination.

I’ve been very pleased to have seen the great strides forward in tolerance and acceptance over the course of my lifetime, and I fear that we’re on the precipice of losing much of that progress. I have too many friends, family, and loved ones who stand a very real chance of being adversely affected by a Trump Republican presidency. I’m very saddened by seeing people who I agree with in many respects declaring that they’d rather risk Trump than vote for Clinton — especially as most of those who think along these lines are those who have the privilege (be it racial, economic, sex or gender identity, health, or any other sort of privilege) to not have to worry about actually being seriously affected by whatever might happen under a Trump presidency. There’s a real blindness here, whether willful or unconscious, to the very real possible effects of a Trump presidency on people who don’t have the privileges and resources that they and many others (including myself) do.

I will happily, willingly, and uncompromisingly be voting for Clinton in the general election. I understand that many won’t be able to vote for her happily, willingly, and uncompromisingly — but I do hope that you’ll at least vote for her, even if you grumble while doing so.

(That said, if you can’t, and if you vote for someone else, that’s entirely your right, and I won’t say you shouldn’t. But if Trump ends up in office and you complain about his policies, I reserve the right to cast some serious side-eye your direction.)

(And if you’re one of those who simply won’t vote? As far as I’m concerned, you have no right to complain about the direction this country goes. None. And I will never apologize for holding that particular view.)