Friendly Fire

When it’s blue v. blue, somebody always gets burned.

There’s a few things we need to establish up front. Politics is an ugly, nasty business. Candidates are slanderous and angry, and negative attacks pay off. This is the nature of our system today. Shy of tearing it down and rebuilding a functional system, (an effort we as Americans could never agree on enough to complete) this is how we pick our leaders. The sides battle and fight and squabble until there’s nothing left, and the lines are irrevocably drawn; conservative versus liberal, progressive future versus good ol’ days past, Democrat versus Republican.

Lately, though, the latest salvo of attacks on progressivism hasn’t been lobbed from across the fence, or the irrevocable divide between our two ideologies, the attacks have been coming from within, a problem nobody seems to want to address. Much like the calls are coming from inside the house, the attacks are as well, as supporters of both Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont seem to be obsessed with destroying one another.

Having run a fierce campaign and having held the title front-runner until recently, Clinton found herself besieged among the coveted under 30 voters by Sanders, who’s message of economic populism and democratic socialism are resonating. Sanders, on the converse, is inexperienced in foreign policy, and struggles to speak with clarity on any issue that doesn’t pertain to Wall Street or use the phrase “billionaire class.” These are not perfect candidates, no matter how hard we wish. We know this.

Still, I’m worried we’re forgetting who our true opponents are. Lately, interactions between supporters of both campaigns, regular citizens and celebrities have become tenser and more vitriolic, the anger building to a crescendo of rage that is misdirected. While my world is fairly progressive, twice on social media today I entered in internet battles with Sanders supporters, hell-bent on tearing down Clinton and her allies. In contrast, across stages in New Hampshire and packed auditoriums, Former President Bill Clinton, Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright all launched volleys upon Sanders supporters and their candidate.

While an exchange of ideals is good, and a clarifications of differences is good, a civil war, as what’s shaping up to happen, is most definitely not. Intra-party fighting doesn’t look good on anybody. When Clinton supporters lash out at Sanders’ voters it looks like panic, nervousness at being dislodged from the top spot in the polls. It looks like a sudden need to right the listing ship in a rougher-than-expected sea. When Sanders supporters target Clinton, it screams of desperation, of shrieking flailing from the nosebleed seats, desperate for their candidate to move anywhere in the polls beyond stagnating second place, thirteen points down nationally and 300 delegates behind her.

Strangely enough, though, the candidates themselves seem removed from the fray. The battles seem to be proxy wars, fought amongst the supporters in distant lands while the candidates remain focused on issues and mild barbs. As a progressive (and one who favors Secretary Clinton) I worry we’re losing sight of the real goal. I worry we’re getting buried in the weeds, cheering against each other too much. We must remember where our priorities are.

As progressives, our country we’ve worked hard to build over the last eight years is under attack. Nationwide, malicious forces of anti-woman rhetoric work to set us back to the forties. Voters are caving to xenophobia and fear, and actively working to repress the voting rights of urban citizens. Conservative candidates for President promise to add a constitutional amendment banning marriage equality, and refuse to accept the correlation between gun access and gun violence.

I do not say this lightly, nor alone, but the Republican Party has come off the rails, and everyone knows it.

Their candidates are a former Reality TV star, a man who insists on “carpet bombing the desert,” and two people who have never held elected office before, a surgeon and a disgraced former CEO. The voices of reason, John Kasich and (surprisingly) Jeb Bush (who knew, what with that last name) are being stifled and snuffed out under the booming bombast of racism, homophobia and misogyny from those at the top of the polls.

Surely, this is the saddest slate of Republican candidates ever, making even the most stringent of Republicans harken for the slate of qualified candidates from 2012. Remember when the stage had Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Jon Huntsman, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry? Those were the days. Hell, even the ‘crazies’ from ’12, Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain, look positively tranquil and composed in comparison to the teeming shrieking xenophobic hordes of redneck denizens who howl their support of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Some, like reality TV star Sarah Palin even, jump in to provide disjointed, fragmented support in lieu of endorsements.

Still instead of unifying and calibrating our sights on our real enemies in the war, by smearing each other we shoot ourselves in the feet in the battle. Of the Sanders/Clinton feud, Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker, wrote recently:

And now Bernie Sanders is making Clinton look fragile. He has developed a message that turns Clinton’s greatest strength — her experience — into a weakness. …With the Democratic campaign, and its debates, reduced to just two candidates, all of these contrasts will be exaggerated as never before.

Specific candidates aside, this is bad for the general election. In August, our party will nominate one candidate, and if the opposition has spent the last nine months smearing, attacking, and denigrating that candidate, we will have done the Republicans’ work ourselves, and guarantee a loss of the White House.

Look. Sanders is weak on guns, and inexperienced on foreign policy. Clinton has ties to Wall Street, and a penchant for being robotic. They both have flaws, they both have supporters who are nothing if not human, but I maintain we have more in common than we have different.

Both candidates are strong advocates for reproductive rights and support Roe v. Wade.

Both candidates support the Affordable Care Act and providing access to Healthcare for all.

Both candidates are strong supporters of LGBTQ rights and last year’s SCOTUS decision making marriage equality the law of the land.

Both candidates are believers in climate change, and the need to make decisions now, so we can protect the future,

Both candidates are opposed to unilateral foreign policy.

Both candidates support the Iranian Nuclear Deal, working to lift sanctions on Tehran in favor of removing nuclear weapons.

Both candidates want to end systemic racism and understand what happened and continues to happen in Ferguson and across the country.

Sanders and Clinton are in agreement on nearly everything, and where they disagree is minor, logistic things. That doesn’t matter. They have slight policy disagreements. What’s most important is what Sanders said quite aptly in his closing statements of the last Democratic Debate:

Sanders: “Sometimes in these campaigns things get out of hand. I respect the secretary, I hope it’s mutual… on our worst days, we are 100 times better than any Republican candidate.”

Clinton: “That’s true!”

So, I’m calling on you, fellow progressive, to join me in stopping smearing and slandering and berating each other. Let’s all pledge to fall in line and support and more importantly, vote for whichever candidate wins the nomination.

It’s time we bring this boxing match to a close, because we don’t have one amazing champion, we have two. So let’s ring the bell now, before they get too beaten up to continue fighting.