Give Me Bernie Sanders Or Give Me (Political) Death!

When I was a kid, my dad explained to me that we were Democrats because they stood for the working people like us and the Republicans were for the rich people. There is nothing inherently wrong in that, he explained, as everyone deserves representation. It was a yin-yang that kept the United States prosperous without abandoning the least of us. Sometimes Republicans would be in charge, they’d get too greedy greedy, then Democrats would take over, but they’d get too spendy spendy, and then the cycle would repeat.

(Perhaps it is fair to note that my dad was a raging alcoholic at the time. Still, I have always liked the zen quality of that analysis. Or is it a Jungian thing – the duality of man? I digress.)

But as I grew into political understanding as a teen and adult, I found myself unable to see that distinction. In my lifetime, things just got worse for the working people like me and far better for the rich people. It didn’t matter whether Carter, Clinton, or Obama was in office; or Reagan, Bush, or Bush II, the Endumbening. I’ve generally remained a Democrat, occasionally flirting with Green or Independent as a registration, just because a) the electoral math precludes viable national third parties and b) this wasn’t the party full of racist homophobic misogynist science-denying hyper-religious whackaloons.

Hillary Clinton gives me very little to want to vote for and a whole lot of things to vote against. If it’s Clinton II vs. Bush III, I’ll vote for a third party, because the previous Clinton and Bushes did me no favors on the issues I care most about. Bill Clinton created the mass incarceration and drug trafficking cartels, presided over the greatest increase in marijuana arrests, invented DOMA and DADT, and couldn’t keep li’l Willy in his pants enough to allow a truly decent man, Al Gore, to win a slam-dunk election against a true dunce whose incompetence allowed us to get attacked 14 years ago today, followed up by a war in the wrong country that nearly bankrupted us, and then an economic collapse that did. So, no, thank you, no more Bushes or Clintons, please.

I’m turning 48 and I’m childless. I’m an atheist, so this next thirty-odd years are all I’ve got. Finally, there is a chance that there would be a clear and distinctive liberal vs. conservative election between Bernie Sanders and Insert GOP Winner Here in my lifetime. (I was starting kindergarten when McGovern lost his landslide election to Tricky Dick, but they wouldn’t let me vote.)

Al Gore was close in 2000. (Close? He won the popular vote!) But I feel that Gore cost himself the election, not Ralph Nader, when he allowed the right-wing to set the narrative about Clinton’s personal life rather than his economic achievements. Gore played so much in the opponents’ frames that he embarrassingly French-kissed his wife, Tipper, at the convention, to prove how husbandly and so-not-cheater-Bill-Clintoney he was. He got punked with the “invented the internet” meme before internet memes existed. Rather than owning the fact that, yeah, he had a lot to do with the development of the greatest economic engine the world has ever seen, Gore let opponents tear him down with it.

Then when Gore capitulated and was out-manuevered in the 2000 post-election, I lost a lot of hope for the Democratic party having the vision, clarity, spine, and balls to advance the opposition agenda, confirmed by the nomination of John Kerry in 2004.

I was teased about this possibility in 2008 with Barack “Hope & Change” Obama. As presidents go, I’m more impressed with him than Clinton, but there are so many stark disagreements I have with Obama’s policies it would make this already long post even longer if I detailed them. I don’t regret my Obama support – McCain and Romney would have been far worse for my pet issues of drug reform, LGBT rights, and not ruthlessly slaughtering humans unnecessarily – but there are a number of issues on which Obama would be indistinguishable from a Republican president (two words: Edward Snowden). I feel like my votes for Obama was really more votes against Republicans.

I’m tired of feeling that way. So for me, at this point in life, it’s give me the Bern or give me death! OK, not real death death, but if I don’t get Bernie as the Democratic nominee, the Democrats do not get my vote. I’ve had enough Clintons, Wasserman Schultzes, Schumers, the whole DNC triangulating lot of them. Martin O’Malley, Lincoln Chafee, and Jim Webb are all decent men, but we are at a point in history where we need a transformative leader, not another suit full of Beltway conventional wisdom.

And I know the counter arguments, because I’ve made them all in the past. The Republican will be so much worse! Really? OK, great, make it so much worse. Maybe it will take things getting so much worse for Democrats to grow a spine, some testicles, and some vision. Oh, the Supreme Court nominations! Yeah, we might get a Citizens United or something terrible. Besides, the country has switched sides now to supporting gay rights and legalized marijuana; the next president who attacks those issues does so at their electoral peril.

By now, it should be like smacking a tee ball out of the park for Democrats to pulverize Republicans in election after election. The people agree with liberal principles on damn near every policy except the death penalty. The Republicans keep serving up the Southern Strategy when the whites they’re dog-whistling to (and, outright fingers-between-the-lips whistling to) are the shrinking part of the electorate.

But Democrats do lose, aside from that master orator and political wunderkind in the White House, because they do their best to play within Republican frames, listen to Beltway pundits who live in those frames, and shrink away from asserting a counter-narrative that espouses the liberal ideals that should be the opposition party’s daily talking points. Given the choice between confident, assured Republican who believes his own bullshit and poll-watching, timid Democrat who’s parroting Republican bullshit, voters choose the authentic candidate.

So if Dems don’t give me Bernie as the nominee, and especially if they give me Hillary, I’m done with them. I’m tired of just voting against the other guy. I’ve only a few decades left on this planet and if something radical – someone radical – isn’t in charge soon, my future doesn’t look very rosy. In that case, why not just vote for the worst candidate (President Trump?) and get our demise over with quickly so I might get to enjoy the rebound?

After all, it’s better to Bern out than to fade away.