#BernieOrBust, or a Useful Straw Man for Losers
Let’s start with some facts:
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So, why are we hearing from many that the #BernieOrBust crowd is so awful, wrong, stupid, or otherwise privileged?
First, let’s do away with the notion that there is a meaningful contingent of Bernie Sanders supporters who will support Donald Trump. They won’t.
There does exist a group of people who supported Bernie Sanders that will now either stay home in November or vote Jill Stein. Many of these people were likely not going to vote in the general election before Bernie Sanders excited them. One thing Bernie Sanders doesn’t get enough credit for is his ability to mobilize younger disaffected people, people who either felt disappointed by Barack Obama or who simply weren’t planning to vote otherwise.
I suspect that this group is largely outnumbered by those who were excited by Bernie Sanders and who will now vote for Hillary Clinton in the general, and that some of these people would not have done so or been active in electoral politics without Bernie Sanders exciting them to begin with. Meaning: Bernie’s participation in the primaries will likely be a net positive on turnout in November for Hillary Clinton.
All of this is compounded by the fact that there are only a handful of states where this even matters. You know the states, Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Colorado, New Hampshire, and Nevada.
At this point, we hear Sarah Silverman and others complaining about a hypothetical Bernie Sanders supporter who was already a reliable voter, who lives in a battleground state, and who is maybe not going to vote for Hillary Clinton. Once you do the math this comes down to like 29 random people.
This #BernieOrBust crowd simply doesn’t really exist. Many of the people who do talk about #BernieOrBust were leftists of one stripe or another who were never, never ever, going to vote for Hillary Clinton or any other centrist Democrat. They don’t count, because they simply weren’t a winnable vote for Hillary Clinton. Even then, I imagine many of those people are voting strategically and are only voting for Jill Stein or staying home in states that are either safe for Clinton or not winnable by Democrats, so it literally doesn’t matter.
I also want to explain some of this psychology. Many people were excited to vote for Barack Obama in ’08, and even in ’12, but many of those young people feel burned by that experience. Obama was a bit of a chimera, everyone could see what they wanted to in him. He ended up being a very boring centrist president, hardly worth the excitement and passion many people of my generation (I’m about to turn 33) felt. They felt burned by that experience, and many of them were likely not going to vote in 2016 until they started to Feel the Bern. Clinton doesn’t do anything to undo this.
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So, what’s the point of complaining about a tiny group of people, a group so small that they literally can’t swing the election in either direction?
People remember 2000. Say what you want about Democrats, but they always take the wrong lesson from history. They blame 2000 singularly on Ralph Nader. Nevermind that 2000 was a confluence of freak events, bad campaigning, illegality, and a host of other terrible things from both Democrats and Florida Republicans. Bush winning in 2000 was all about Ralph Nader getting a few people to vote for him in Florida that maybe would have voted for Gore otherwise.
I don’t want to dwell on this too much as this has been litigated to death, but Nader didn’t cost Gore the election in 2000. Period. Full stop. It’s become a truism to mainstream Democrats, yet is simply untrue. Instead of looking inward at how their own campaign was mismanaged and otherwise incompetent, they found their villain in Ralph “Unsafe At Any Speed” Nader. Nader draws more ire than the Supreme Court, more ire than Katherine Harris, more ire than anyone else responsible.
The 2000 Election and Ralph Nader have become such compelling boogie men for the Democratic Party that they would rather spend all their time, resources, and energy berating and brow beating a tiny percentage of people who might vote third party than spend their time in areas that would see real results.
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Here’s where their motivations come in: This election is going to be far closer than anyone is willing to admit. I was one of very few voices saying that Trump had a very credible chance at the Republican nomination last Summer. If nothing else, people constantly underestimate both Trump and misunderstand the zeitgeist of the moment and how Trump speaks to it.
Hillary Clinton could lose this election. If we’re being honest with ourselves for two seconds we also have to acknowledge that had John Kasich or Marco Rubio won the nomination that this would not even be close, Clinton would be lucky to win 200 votes in the Electoral College. Hell, even Ted Cruz — a literal black hole of charisma and charm, someone I would viscerally dislike even if I agreed with everything he said — would likely beat Clinton.
Hillary Clinton is a terrible candidate. She has a lot of baggage, has been on both sides of every issue, isn’t charismatic or inspirational, and simply doesn’t fit the moment. Her message that “America is already great” won’t play, she’s surrounded herself with hacks who weren’t ever very useful and are especially out of touch, and her strategy is going to backfire.
As far as I can tell, her electoral strategy is to go negative on Trump. That makes a certain amount of sense, it’s hard for her to run on her record and the more people see her the less they like her, but going after Trump will only depress turnout. Trump, similarly, will go after Hillary Clinton. They’ll both drive down turnout, and Republicans win low turnout elections. How Hillary Clinton can campaign on a strategy that sets up conditions favorable to Trump is beyond me, but here we are and that is what she’s doing.
African American and those under 35 won’t turn out at the same rates that they did for Obama in ’08 and ’12. Thankfully, I doubt Democrats are dumb enough to try to scape goat African Americans for a decrease in voter turnout should Clinton lose in November.
[I want to take a quick tangent, please indulge me in this: One thing that is bizarre to me is how we discuss “millenials”. We kind of scoff and give dismissive wanking motions over that generation, no one much cares about how they vote or turn out, but if we were to mention “Under 35” voters than we do care. They’re the same people, yet people seem to treat and talk about them as two distinct groups. It seems likely that people don’t understand how dire Clinton’s position is because we talk about “millenials”, and not those “under 35".]
Turn out is going to be brutal this year. Younger voters and African Americans won’t vote at the same rate that they had in the previous two presidential elections. Economic precarity and Trump’s economic message is going to resonate with crucial states, Ohio especially. Trump’s anti-immigrant message will similarly racialize legitimate economic grievances and channel them into ever more overt racism, and his stance on Muslim immigration will only find more traction as ISIS and disaffected lone wolf young Muslim men continue to commit heinous acts of violence.* We’re on the brink of another recession, Democrats seem incapable of not doing unforced errors, and everything else seems to be going to shit. Trump has a real shot at this.
*To be clear, this is a commentary on the way those attacks are covered compared to attacks by right wing white nationalists. Compare and contrast the media of the train attack by a young Afghani man in Germany with the grotesque attack in Munich last week.
Even popular pundits like Nate “Didn’t Place” Silver agree.
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That’s the point of blaming, scolding, lecturing, and otherwise hectoring Bernie Sanders supporters. Clinton could lose, and they are now trying to find a scape goat for why she might that doesn’t challenge the policies or politics of the Democratic Party.
What ultimately matters is that the Democrats doesn’t change. They are terrified and outright hateful towards even the most lukewarm social democracy. The Democrats are now firmly a center right party that appeals to the social and cultural norms of middle class coastal suburbanites. They don’t want to be a big tent that represents those middle class coastal suburbanites, younger more progressive people, working class white (and black!) people in “fly over country” who are having their families and communities devastated by free trade, and other such groups.
Yet, the Democratic Party feels like all of those other groups somehow owe the Democrats loyalty without anything in return. The notion that a candidate should have to earn a person’s vote, to work a constituency and meet them halfway on policies, or do any actual sort of work is hateful towards Democrats. All of us should vote for Democrats because the other guys are way worse, and that’s it. Those that voted for Nader in 2000 stole their vote from Gore, the person who rightfully was owed it. Anyone that may not vote for Clinton in 2016 is stealing a vote from Clinton, she owes us nothing to earn it.
Worse, Bernie supporters are expected to vote for Clinton while being insulted by these people. It’s so important that Trump doesn’t become president that everyone should vote for Hillary Clinton, but it isn’t so important that Trump loses that Democrats should show a bit of respect and decency towards the same voters they demand to show up.
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This all matters because the Democrats are going to continue running a terrible campaign. They’re going to continue offering nothing to earn a person’s vote. The “lesser-evil” well is going to run dry, they’ve been going to it for far too long. I can’t imagine they’ll get very many more people to vote against Trump that didn’t already vote against Romney or vote against Palin. The Democrats could blow this entire election because they are very, very bad at this whole politics thing.
They don’t want to address the very real economic and social concerns of the people they demand fealty from. They don’t want to be a party that represents their historic constituencies, they don’t want to hire people who understand how to campaign in 2016 (they’d rather continue paying their rolodex of know-nothing hacks), they don’t want to do anything that is required to win. Instead of trying to win, they’re doing everything they can to find scape goats for why they might lose. It’s obvious this messaging about #BernieOrBust types is coordinated, look at every liberal pundit or website and they’re all talking about it this week in the same exact way.
These #BernieOrBust people simply don’t exist, and where they do they don’t actually matter. Most Bernie supporters fall in line with where I do: they’ll vote strategically, third party in safe states and for Clinton in battlegrounds. Just to be clear, defeating Trump IS important. If you live in a state that is close I believe you should vote for Clinton because Trump is that bad. That can be simultaneously true with how awful Hillary Clinton is, between Welfare Reform and Iraq and everything in between.
Making Bernie supporters a scape goat in advance of a potential Clinton failure in November means that the Democrats can again blame the “left” for its failures, and further entrench itself as the party of free trade and other policies that are destructive towards the working class.
I’m skeptical of a third party rising in any meaningful way, although if a left third party did I’d be happy to do all I could. I’m becoming ever more skeptical that there is any hope to “retake” the Democrats for even the most boring New Deal platform.
Ultimately, the Democrats are so afraid of losing that they don’t know how to win. They’re already trying to find someone to blame for it. They only have themselves to blame should they lose, but you should fully expect those that supported Bernie Sanders to get the brunt of the ire.
