Why I’m still arguing with Bernie Bros
As Donald Trump continues to act like a candidate even after the election, there’s still an argument in post-mortem about Bernie vs. Hillary, which generally centers around the idea that “Bernie would have won if only ‘they’ had let him.” Bernie supporters want to blame Clinton supporters for Trump’s victory. Like 2000, when many Nader voters refused to reflect on their contribution to the outcome, only pointing to the other mistakes as the cause, so too we have Bernie Bros argue it was more important to be angry at ‘neocolonialism’ than it was to accept peas for dinner. The logic is based on a number of assumptions that rarely get challenged in the full light of day, but which continue to be taken for granted, making discussion as frustrating as debating climate science with a climate denier. These include assumptions like there is some invisible “they” that dictated our choices, or that Clinton voters only acted out of fear and caution. If these were true, ok, but they are not, which makes further discussion an exercise of ships talking past each other in the night.
So, I recently received the following response in a Facebook thread, which I present it here, followed by some thought…
Sorry guys, you are just flat out wrong and need to accept that. For three decades we have sat back and were told to be moderate, move to the center, don’t be too liberal, etc. Well, fuck that shit. If conservatives can rally their base as a “tea party” and effectively maintain a “purity test” about being conservative, we can do the same with liberal politicians. I do not want any more “new Democrats,””moderates,” or centrists. This has caused the Dem party to become completely dysfunctional where they felt that getting rid of Sanders was a good idea — it wasn’t. Conservatives let their populist candidate win, and we squashed ours out of fear and caution….and, how did that turn out for us? So, spare me your entitled, arrogant, attitudes and get on the train, or get run over. “Progressives” like YOU caused Trump to win — that is a FACT!
Here’s my response…
…you literally are the embodiment of what these articles are highlighting. You are “that guy.” That guy who will “throw away their votes on crackpot third-party candidates so they can preen to everyone how “radical” or “revolutionary” they supposedly are and to try and shame people who consistently vote Democrat as ignorant and brainwashed sheep.” You are actually arguing that the “purity test” IS more important than sanity in our vote. That it’s more important to teach the democrats some lesson you think you know the answer to, than it is to make a thoughtful choice between Trump and Clinton when faced with it. Meanwhile, you are going to blame other people for not “giving” you the choice you want, something to excite you enough… rather than take the responsibility to make a thoughtful choice about real outcomes on election day, like whose team is packing the court.
I’ll be blunt. I find that to be adolescent thinking. It’s all about what everybody else is going to do for you. Every other sentence is about what “we have been told.” What? Is the democratic party your mother? No one’s telling me “don’t be too liberal.” No one is telling me to “move to the center.” What is twisted is that you feel your are being told to be anything. If I’m accepting that change comes slowly, or that opinions or policies often end up in the center, it’s not because I’m letting someone tell me I have to accept it, it’s that I’ve studied the world, and I notice how it works.
So, no, there is no being wrong that I ‘have to accept’ here. But not just because you are putting exclusive emphasis the wrong question, but more importantly, because I don’t actually accept most of your assertions of fact. Now, you’re clearly not questioning your assertions of fact, so there’s no use wasting energy engaging with you. In the same way there’s not much use engaging climate skeptics on climate science. …Therefore, any response here is really for the benefit of anyone else reading along who in interested in some insights…
Here’s a few places we disagree.
1) That that we’re being told to be something like “moderate,” and that’s the source of dysfunction of the democratic party.
I don’t doubt there’s dysfunction in the democratic party, but I don’t see how being centrist or moderate is any obvious cause, particularly with so many other more variables to contribute to disfunction. So, being “pure” isn’t any sort of solution to the real problems, even if one could identify them.
2) That we “we squashed our [populist candidate]”.
Here you imply, basically, that someone, somewhere pulling invisible strings stopped some “people’s choice.” Sorry, the world, or at least this world, just doesn’t work like that. Yes, we were faced with our own populist candidate, pretty much running the same anger feeding rhetoric as the other side’s populist candidate. There is no invisible “they.” No elite squashed Bernie, more people voted for something else. Simple.
3) That we voted “out of fear and caution.”
That’s a pretty common assumption among the “should have been Bernie crowd.” But it’s also wrong. I mean it sounds good if your aim is belittle people as arrogant and brainwashed, and I’m sure there are some people, somewhere who were just cautious. But I know I voted for who I preferred in the job. I gave Bernie a fair consideration, including his following. Ultimately, I decided Bernie didn’t make the cut. In choosing who I’d want actually doing the job Clinton won hands down. There’s no fear or caution there. Just a thoughtful evaluation of ALL the variables, not just a set of opinion polls. Now, if you can’t imagine anybody chosing Hillary out of anything other then fear and caution, then I submit you didn’t bother to listen or find out. That’s just willful ignorance. Willful ignorance that really can’t be blamed on anybody else.
4) That I’m telling you to “get on the train,” and therefore am being entitled, arrogant, etc.
This I can only say is in your own head. It’s revealing. It’s telling me you’re more concerned with a petty war of attitudes among… I’m not sure who. It’s unfortunate, because what it sets up is a convenient way to reject points of reality and blame others for your own irresponsibility. That is, if I point that in a presidential election one of the two major party candidates is going to win, so the only effective vote is for one or the other, that a ‘protest vote’ is effectively not participating, that’s not telling you to “get on the train.” It’s just pointing out the math. If I say 2+2=4 I’m not telling you you have “get with the crowd,” I’m just pointing out the rules of math are set. Same for incremental change. It’s not that I “believe” in incremental change, it’s that I understand things are complicated and incremental change is often the best you get.
5) That Obama won because he was a “seen as a populist.”
Wrong. Or at least way too narrow. Obama won because he is an extraordinary human being, brought a tone and nuance to his rhetoric and person that we are unlikely to see for some time to come. He won because he accepted how the system has evolved, and played his best hand. He won for a whole host of things. And he inherited a litany of problems and obstruction at every corner, and still managed to shape up a lot. To suggest his singular dimension was being “seen as a populist that cared about ordinary Americans” just so you can say, “And Bernie was one, too. See, you should have learned from Obama (who by the way I now think is a sellout)” is just downright disgusting and petty. How dare you belittle the legacy of Obama’s character as a pawn in a petty argument like this.
6) That protest votes do anything effective.
They don’t. They don’t inspire politicians to be more “courageous.” Especially, when you are protesting things that can’t really be fixed anyway. They only take your vote off the field, and more often than not just give the ball to the other team. More importantly, we disagree here because you have not (nor has anyone really) provided a compelling case for how this actually works. We have an assertion that a protest vote will induce the change, but no real explanation for what the mechanism is, how that works when part of it is giving the ball to the other team, and that’s just not something I take for granted. If a protest vote risks producing an undesirable outcome, there’s some burden of proof to prove it’s worth the risk in the first place. I see none.
7) That “people can vote for whoever they want and should not be expected to tow any party line.”
What you are actually asserting, is that people should be able to vote for whoever they want without being confronted about the outcome. I don’t think you have a right to avoid being challenged on your thinking. If you are thinking and acting like a child, and I mean that in the clinical sense I’ve described above not as an insult, you don’t have a right not to hear people say “hey, dude, grow up.” Especially when the effect of your “right” is to wash your hands of responsibility in burning down the house we all have to live in.
8) That we didn’t listen to you when “we tried to warn you.”
Here you are trying to pass off responsibility for your protest vote waste on other people. Be an adult, own that yourself. If a vote for Clinton was a vote for Trump, it’s because you made it so by your own refusal to accept the ultimate choice. Or, as it happened in practice, sold that logic to the new voters, so they could refuse to vote responsibly for you. “We tried to warn you that we would abandon you” is what you are saying. Guess what that is? Basically it’s the logic of blackmail. I’ll give you credit, you stood by your blackmail, it seems. But sabotaging the outcome and then trying to turn around and blame others for your own refusal to truly consider the reality of the outcome, that’s just gas-lighting.
As a veteran wrote before the election,
“For those who say they’d rather not decide between flawed choices, I’d ask them to think about what life is like every day for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. They don’t have the luxury of abstaining or making a protest vote on the flawed options they see before them every day.
Our country does not ask for much in the way of national service — indeed, it should ask for more. A thoughtful and considered vote this November 8th is the bare minimum. I hope we can all do our duty. What we have is more fragile than you think.”
It’s like given the choice to between a trained pilot or an arrogant business man to fly the plane, you can’t choose the pilot, because you’re too angry that anyone’s pointed out the choice is obvious. Such thinking is the petulance of a child, which is why so many pieces addressing this eventually come down to one refrain: Grow the fuck up.
It’s not arrogance or entitlement to say “grow up,” it’s just time to stop beating around the bush and tolerating adults being children.
