I’ve stayed out of the pie fights thus far because there’s been a lot of passion on both sides about which candidate people are supporting, and I think there’s a really interesting divide. Numerous people have talked about the viability of the plans presented by Clinton and by Sanders; numerous people have compared and contrasted the different proposals and views and history. Numerous people have talked about styles and how they’d work as President.
One thing that I think is overwhelmingly the case, even if Sanders supporters don’t say it, as to why we want Sanders as President, is that we want our Presidential candidate to talk about the flag on the hill rather than the line in the sand. Both are equally valuable. The flag on the hill is the goal, is the dream of the impossible, and where we’d like our country to be in our dreams. The line in the sand is the place where we consider anything behind that to be unacceptable.
People need the flag to rally to, to look towards, and to say yes we want to get there. The details? The details are a lot less important; if the language is inspirational and aspirational and fire people up, we can build the groundswell to figure out the details later.
It’s also a negotiation; the thing that Obama did that many progressives take issue with is that he pre-negotiated. To simplify, he put out a proposal that was partway between the flag on the hill and the line in the sand. It doesn’t matter whether he was innately uncomfortable with the flag on the hill or if he made a tactical mistake in that. In the end, we ended up sliding back to the line in the sand.
Know that as President, you are extremely limited in terms of what you can do on your own without Congress. There’s only so much you can do with Executive Orders, but it’s insufficient to ask people to “Make me do it,” but rather as President it’s important to rally people, to use the bully pulpit, and to make the case that your view is the correct one. I don’t doubt that due to gerrymandering either Clinton or Sanders will be unable to actually enact anything directly.
I also believe that Clinton has positioned herself in the incremental realm of the possible rather than the idealistic realm of the impossible. And while I think it’d be fine, I think fine is insufficient. I want a candidate that talks about dreams and fervently hammers away at the single theme about privilege. I want a candidate that challenges us to be as loud and angry as them.
There are other, somewhat less important aspects of Clinton’s history that I’m uncomfortable with, but in the end, this distinction is where I think the biggest difference between Clinton and Sanders are; not necessarily their actual campaign views, but rather the concrete versus the vision. Some people are more comforted by knowing the specifics and the numbers and the path and plan.
I want vision.
I’ll be voting for Bernie Sanders in June, when Californians go to the polls.
