#StillSanders?
Disclaimer: I wrote the following story during the 2016 election cycle. This story was written at a time when conventional political wisdom stated that an inarticulate and impolitic businessman with no political experience and multiple fraud and sexual assault allegations pending against him could not possible best a former First Lady/former United States Senator/former Secretary of State in a presidential race — and the tone of the piece reflects that.
Aside from the occasional corrections to spelling/grammatical/syntax/factual errors, the story you are about to read is in its original form.

Over the past few days, I have been seeing the “Still Sanders” hashtag all over the place (#StillSanders). Last night, I saw one on a Facebook post from a cousin who expressed the intention to write in Bernie Sanders on Election Day. After my blood pressure went back down to normal, I replied to the post by (politely) reminding my cousin that Bernie Sanders wasn’t on the ballot and that I would like him to consider voting for Hillary Clinton instead.
My cousin immediately replied. “Sorry, cousin.”
I was tempted to ask my cousin how someone who was progressive enough to support Sanders would risk throwing the election to a racist-ass, misogynistic, Islamophobic, xenophobic, underqualified, tax-dodging, sexually predatory demogogue with suspicious ties to Russia. After all, refusing to vote for Clinton — the only other person on Earth in a position to ascend to the Oval Office right now — was voting for Trump by default. Then I remembered that this particular cousin lives in Massachusetts, a blue state. There was no need to fire off the opening shot to World War III over his write-in vote.
However, my Boston-based cousin isn’t the only person doing the Bernie Sanders write-in thing. Entirely too many swing staters, voters with the actual power to determine who becomes the president, are writing in the name of Vermont’s junior senator.
Apparently, members of the #StillSanders crowd feel that is important to “vote one’s conscience.” They seem not to understand that that is not the only reason, or even the primary reason, to cast a vote.
While it is okay, even noble, to bring our political ideals into the voting booth with us, we don’t vote for our ideals. We vote to choose our political officials, leaders who will use their democratically-granted power and authority to implement those ideals.
Not only are members of the #StillSanders swing state crowd misusing their votes, they are actively courting disaster — for other people. Many of these supposedly progressive protest voters aren’t thinking about what will happen to the people who will be subject to deportation, (unconstitutional) religious tests, a revival of (unconsitutional) stop-and-frisk, limits on reproductive choice, the reversal of (now constitutional) marriage equality, and a social environment where (100% illegal) sexual violence against women is once again normalized. As I’ve said before, no true progressive could possibly feel good about that.
On top of all that, the #StillSanders crowd won’t even achieve their long term goal of igniting a socialist revolution; anyone inclined to join that type of political movement will be too busy dealing with the real-life day-to-day consequences of a Trump presidency to get too heavily involved.
History bears this prediction out. While many Florida-based progressives retroactively rationalized voting for Ralph Nader in 2000 by citing increased activism on the Left in the wake of George W. Bush’s win, the Bush regime’s policies pushed the country to the brink of ruin and (perhaps permanently) damaged our standing in the eyes of the world. While Bush was arguably one of our worst presidents, a Trump administration would make the “asses of evil” look like nursery school.
Instead of casting protest votes, the #StillSanders crowd needs to hold its collective nose and pull the lever for Clinton come November 8th or, at the very least, stay home. What they shouldn’t do is extend an engraved invitation to the White House to Donald Trump. The stakes are simply too high.