Bernie Supporters: People of Color Need You to Vote for Hillary. And You’re Going to Need Us

Hi Bernie Supporters. I’m writing to not just ask, but beg you to vote for Hillary in the General Election.

Last Tuesday was rough. Hillary went 4 for 5. Bernie needed wins to keep pace. He couldn’t pull it off, and now Hillary’s elected delegate count is insurmountable, not even factoring in the Super Delegate bullshit. Hillary is our nominee.

Bernie ran a great campaign. He talked about the issues that were important to him. He built an amazing grassroots fundraising mechanism. He generated big crowds and a lot of excitement. He hired good people, people I’ve worked with and competed against. He was a credit to the movement.

I’m sorry he lost. I really am. I know how much it sucks to lose a primary. I’ve lost four. I put my heart and soul into those campaigns. I missed graduations, birthdays, and holidays. I took time from college to work one and ended up not graduating.

I worked for another candidate in the 2008 primary (FYI, it wasn’t Hillary, either). Obama campaigned on changing the way politics was done, but his primary campaign was just as hard-nosed as any other. We had some dirty tricks pulled on us. There were hard feelings, to say the least.

Three months later, I was making a 14 hour drive to train for Obama’s General Election campaign. I did it because, pride be damned, I knew Obama was the best chance of getting movement on the issues I cared about. I did it because an Obama presidency would be miles ahead of a McCain presidency. It turned out to be the best decision I ever made.

Primaries are intramural games. After the votes are counted, we coalesce around the winner. That’s how politics work in a two-party system. You vote for the standard bearer the party has decided on.

This is what you need to do. If you actually care about what Sanders stood for, you are going to have to look toward 8 years from now. Another progressive champion will arise. But if you sit out this election, it will make it impossible for that candidate to win.

Sanders lost because he didn’t appeal to the base of the Democrat Party. DailyKos and Huffington post readers like to think of themselves as the base, but that just isn’t true. College educated white liberals don’t make up the majority of the party. The party is a multi-ethnic, working class party. People of color tend to be more church-going and more moderate than your average blog reader. People of color are the real base.

Bernie didn’t appeal to enough of us. What do we care about free college education when our kids are off the college track by the 7th grade? What do we care about the influence of big banks when we depend on check cashing places and paying our bills at the local mini-mart? We could use some more big bank influence. Single-payer, government-run, Medicare for all is a tough sell to people on Medicaid who have trouble finding a doctor who will take it.

Many of you found Black Lives Matter protesting Sanders to be inexplicable. I’m on record of saying that it was a tactical mistake, but from the perspective of young people of color, it was a reasonable action. We’re used to being taken for granted by white progressives. Thank you for your vote every 4 years, but we have bigger fish to fry. Those protestors saw an old, white, career politician and instinctively thought “He isn’t with us.”

What we got instead was some very condescending comments. Bernie supporters really talked down to us. We were told, that, ACTUALLY, Hillary was bad for us because of the 90’s crime bill. Most of the white millenials don’t remember the 90’s, and they certainly don’t know what was going on in our communities. Drugs were everywhere. Gangs ran our streets. I know people who wanted the national guard stationed on our street corners, so a tough crime bill was appealing.

We were also told that, ACTUALLY, welfare reform was “disqualifying” for Hillary. This is borderline racist. It is a right-wing talking point, that minorities want free stuff, that you guys were pushing. Believe me, no one wants people kicked off of welfare more than a person of color who is going to a double shift and has to pass by their neighbor smoking pot on their stoop every day. Welfare reform isn’t the trump card you thought it was.

The next progressive standard bearer has to do better. Sanders had a courageous record standing for civil rights in the 60’s. But politics is a “what have you done for me lately?” business. He rested on his laurels and focused on other things.

What will make it impossible is if you stick to your “Bernie or Bust” guns and let Trump win. Let’s be real. We need you to do us a solid and prevent Trump from being President. Trump is a racist. He thinks Mexicans are rapist, thinks American Muslims are 5th column terrorists who should be barred from the country, and excludes black people from coming into his rallies. He courts the KKK and retweets neo-nazis.

“Privilege” gets thrown around a lot, sometimes inappropriately. Here it applies. The #NeverHillary crowd is incredibly privileged. A Trump Presidency would be a minor annoyance to white, middle-class, college educated progressives. Sure, he might start a few wars, but you really aren’t the ones who go and fight them. He’s not going to tank the economy since he’d lose a billion dollars in a global depression. His comments on abortion are pretty scary, but the right to choose is protected by Roe v Wade.

To my community a Trump Presidency is an existential threat. Millions of Latino families will be torn apart. Muslim citizens would have their freedom of movement eliminated. Can you imagine what President Trump would do during the next Ferguson or Baltimore? He’d call in airstrikes! DeRay Mckessen would be in a cell awaiting trial for sedition, not running for Baltimore mayor.

When I relayed my fear that I’ll need to carry around my passport to prove my citizenship during a President Trump’s Operation Wetback II, a Bernie supporter mocked me, grandstanded on his pet issue, and then blocked me. That’s why Sanders lost people of color.

If you stand by and let Trump win, you won’t have our support for a generation. We’ll know the score. You don’t care about 12 million brown people having their doors kicked in and rounded up. You care about “oligarchy.” You don’t care about continuing Obama’s policy of releasing non-violent criminals serving life sentences, you care about a few paid speeches. A concerted, nationwide push to take away the vote of people of color that can only really be counteracted by the US Justice Department? Sad, but it is more important we put academics in charge at the Treasury department instead of people with finance experience.

If you don’t back us now, why would we support your next candidate? The Left would look petulant and spoiled. Worse, it would show that white progressives are callous about the lives of brown people. It would open up a fissure that won’t soon be mended. Without some support from people of color, your next “revolution” won’t even get off the ground. We don’t forget stuff like this.

If you really care about the future of the movement, you need to vote for Hillary to prevent Trump. Hillary has her flaws, to say the least. From your perspective, at best she would maintain the status quo. However, treading water is better than going under. The lives of brown people would be infinitely improved.

If it makes you feel better, put clothes pins on your nose or wear latex gloves when you vote. It is what French left-wingers did in 2002 when they had to vote for conservative Jacques Chirac to prevent fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen from winning the Presidency.

But those French socialists voted for the conservative because sometimes democracy is terrible. And it is what you need to do in November. It will allow you to reset and go again in 8 years. And this time, just maybe, your candidate will get enough of a broad base of support to win the whole thing.

Vote for Hillary, if not for us, than at least for yourself.