In 2000 at about this time during the campaign season, a deep fear began to overtake me. As I saw the Nader Left dehumanizing Al Gore and the parallel deification on the Right of George Bush, I knew in my gut that we were headed down a very bad road. Sadly, I was right, along with everyone else who’d felt the hand of doom descending. The next eight years were worse than any of us could imagine.
The online world of one-on-one political debate and shit flinging had barely started, but what there was of it was as fierce then as now. Kos didn’t open his shop until 2002, but Free Republic was already an active sewer of wingnuttery. The Left-leaning bulletin boards were small but passionate. One that was active then was called Turn Left. TL had been raided by Right-wingers in 1998 and was a hotbed of Left-Right debate and mudslinging. The posters from the Left were completely united in their war with the often utterly insane Right-wingers.
Then came 2000 and as the months of that year dragged on the small coalition of Left-wing posters shattered. I have no idea now what the percentage really was, but I guess about half of the 20 or so regular posters went with Nader. That’s when my fear started. Just as there had been nothing, absolutely nothing we could say to the Right-wingers that would sway them from their opinions, no matter how reasoned, how factual, how sensible we were, now there was nothing we could say to each other.
I can’t recreate that debate and its charges and countercharges but its essence was chillingly similar to today. Those of us who stayed with Gore were corporate sellouts, Nader would bring revolution and clean up DC, only he spoke for the middle class and real people, only he was above politics and untainted by money. The Right-wingers gleefully stirred the pot of our discord, to keep us at each other.
Meanwhile the same divisions were manifesting in my real life political community. Friends shouted at each other, threats were levied, friendships ended. It was all excruciatingly painful and in the end it brought us George Bush. No revolution, no incremental reforms, only a hideous backward slide into a hole that Barrack Obama, strong president that he is, has been able to get us only slightly out of.
Bernie Sanders is not Ralph Nader. He is a more honest man and his intentions when he started his run were, I think, of the best. He wanted to introduce certain issues into the dialogue that he thought would otherwise get short shrift. It was a good idea.
But a candidate has to have a campaign and campaign staff and supporters. And the gamebook the campaign has been using is very similar to the one Nader’s campaign used: create division, stir up discord, dehumanize your opponent—all the while creating an aura of saintliness and incorruptibility around your candidate.
The current war inside the woman’s movement is a prime example. That didn’t come out of nowhere. It wasn’t spontaneous. Its first small manifestations, maybe a diary on Daily Kos or a passing comment from a Sanders’ supporter in an article, were jumped on, promoted, dittoed, and expanded. Once the Overton window had been moved so that it was all right—even admirable—to attack the women who support Hillary, especially anyone in the public limelight over 50, the damage had been done. I’ve now seen dozens of diaries and columns from young women explaining in condescending language why it’s perfectly great of them to disavow the “old style” of feminism—the “establishment” —in general and Hillary Clinton in particular. Every one of them is as unconvincing to me, and anything I said in response would be unconvincing to them.
Now that template is being moved to communities of color. In order to truly stop Hillary, the Sanders campaign has to tear those communities apart just as they tore apart the women’s movement. We will see more and more articles, diaries, columns, blog posts, and comments shouting that Hillary Clinton does not deserve the support of people of color. The young will be encouraged to make passionate declarations and even demeaning remarks about their leadership’s (“establishment”) support for Hillary.
The Right will eat it up, blowing their dog whistles at full force, the media will get into the mix with distorting and damaging commentary, so we should prepare ourselves to go through very ugly times.
Bernie Sanders is not Ralph Nader but he is also not Barack Obama. He has not built a campaign that everyone can join in if he is the eventual nominee. Obama’s campaign never descended to the level of character assassination that Sander’s campaign began with. I felt throughout the 2008 campaign that I was welcome in either camp and it was mine to choose. My debates with friends were sometimes tense but never nasty. This year I have been categorically rejected by the Sanders’ campaign since they do not stop the constant attacks on older women who support Hillary. Bernie may have disavowed the BernieBros, but it isn’t them who worry me (although they are a nasty manifestation of misogyny). What really worries me it the discord stirred up in otherwise unified groups for no other reason than to make political capital.
One self-declared feminist “of a certain age” (her words) wrote a column in a local paper disavowing Hillary because she was too excellent at politics. Imagine that. A woman works hard to get ahead, learns from her mistakes, makes coalitions and creates a good team, and another woman—from the Left mind you—attacks her because she’s too good at what she does. And is shocked and dismayed when another woman says of this strange new reality, “There’s a special place in hell….”
The wounds from Nader in 2000 turned into scars and faded somewhat. Some friendships were rebuilt, but it sometimes took years. A massive distrust was left behind. We skated past that mistrust in 2008, by a hair and the wisdom of the campaigns. Now it’s not only back in full force; it’s the guiding principle of the Sanders campaign: don’t trust anything about Hillary Clinton or her supporters. That fear I had in 2000 has returned, worse this time.