Many of you are undoubtedly too young to remember 2008; it was a crazy year. An upstart candidate named Hillary Clinton burst onto the national scene with the promise of finally putting a strong, progressive woman in our highest elected office. When the establishment forced the hand of the DNC and once again awarded the nomination to yet another African American with a Mulsim middle name, the movement started by Ms. Clinton could not be stopped.
When the Republican candidate, John McCain, nominated the first — and by first, I mean second — woman to run for Vice President, the Clinton base knew they had found a home. With their support, McCain became the 44th president of the United States of America. Sadly, he died only days into his term due to a massive heart attack brought on by eating some poisoned moose jerky. Thus began the age known as The Global Shitshow.
OK, so that didn’t actually happen, but it was promised. Oh how it was promised. We were told, in no uncertain terms, that should Barack Obama win the Democratic nomination, millions of Democratic voters — mostly women — would flock to McCain. The Democratic Party would be ripped apart, naturally, and pretty much everything Hillary Clinton would have fought for would have become impossible for generations. Um… yay?
The BoB (“Bernie or Bust”) partisans are threatening the same thing. Should we worry? Are these BoBs Republican plants? Read on, as I explore these questions with a historical review of the PUMA (Party Unity My Ass) “movement.”
If your Facebook feed is anything like mine, you’ve already seen at least a few pledges to vote for Trump if Sanders loses the nomination. This time — according to them — their political sabotage will be effective and complete. After all, regardless of what’s happening in the polls — opinion or election — Sanders enjoys the rabid support of nearly 167% of the Democratic base as well as many of their pets.
Inspired by the religious right, billions of Sanders supporters have decided that the proper way to show devotion to a socialist Jew is to ignore everything he says and act like complete assholes. Thus, in order to show fealty to Sanders, these hordes plan to try to obliterate everything he’s promoted, including the idea that it would be better to vote for Clinton over Trump.
I probably don’t need to talk anyone down from a panic attack over the imminent demise of the Democratic Party. Actual, real-world polls have shown that an overwhelming percent of Sanders supporters are ready to throw their support behind a Hillary Clinton nomination. The real question is: are these BoBs going to put a dent in a Clinton run? Are they all just a Republican dirty trick? The answer is two-fold.
The first part is, “No, they are totally sincere.” That said, most of them will get over themselves and the remaining BoBs will literally number in the hundreds. There will be Sanders supporters spitefully voting for Trump because some people are just crazy and stupid (pretty much Trump’s campaign strategy).
The second part is, “Hell yeah.” All evidence of a BoB “movement” will be a wholly concocted media illusion orchestrated by conservative ratfuckers. If you recall, when the “PUMA” (Party Unity My Ass) concept emerged, Fox News managed to find a couple of women willing to go on camera and declare themselves the tip of a great disruptive pro-Hillary iceberg ready to send Obama down into the icy waters of the North Atlantic.
Not surprisingly, no rallies ever followed. No more than the handful of original media PUMAs ever showed up for interviews. McCain’s post-convention bump was attributed to PUMAs for Palin, but after it evaporated, polling made it clear that most women found Palin embarrassing, not empowering. Any true Hillary fan found Palin’s candidacy insulting and horrifying.
The tangible evidence of PUMA-dom was found only on web sites. Web sites are great for astroturfing because they can appear vital even with a small number of users. These sites gathered users and spoke of a growing network of people ready to support Hillary Clinton by voting for John McCain.
Were these sites legitimately pro-Hillary, or were they just opportunistically anti-Obama? Much like the claim that Saddam Hussein was making a nuclear weapon, it was pretty obviously a bunch of bullshit, but there was some fear that it might be legitimate. Similarly, after years have passed, we now know for sure: it was 100% bullshit.
One prominent example is HillBuzz. If you visit this site today, the banner shows some cartoon bees buzzing around the Capitol Dome. This, I suppose, implies that the “Hill” in “HillBuzz” is Capitol Hill. Originally, however, the “Hill” was Hillary Clinton. At some point during the 7 years of bashing Obama for doing things that Clinton had promised to do, they dropped the awkward pretense that the site ever had any interest in Hillary Clinton or her agenda.
For example, in the primaries, both Clinton and Obama promised health care reform; Clinton proposed an insurance mandate and Obama opposed it. What did we actually get? An insurance mandate. Like all dutiful right-wing propaganda organs, HillBuzz has relentlessly bashed the exact same health care reform that their icon Hillary Clinton would have delivered. It was only a matter of time before HillBuzz quietly distanced itself from its supposed raison d'être, Hillary Clinton.
This brings us to the comically sad “Hillary is 44” web site. The idea that the site supported Clinton’s run to be our 44th President is baked right into the domain name hillaryis44.org. Hence, to this day, HillaryIs44 continues to mouth support for Clinton while simultaneously bashing everything she stands for, trashing the Obama record she’s running on, and enthusiastically celebrating Donald Trump.
The pink-colored web site garnered a tremendous amount of media attention when it came online. It was the subject of numerous stories here on Big Orange and was rumored to be so influential that it garnered the name “Big Pink.” Its comments sections were ablaze with racist anti-Obama fervor, certainly, but it turned out that there were, at most, about 100 active users. I haven’t looked much at the site these days, much less tried to analyze its users. It’s really just the 21st century equivalent of a Lyndon LaRouche campaign sign. It sits there as a reminder that radical threats to upend the Democratic party can frequently be safely ignored.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this trip down memory lane. I hope, too, that if you were at all worried about BoBs disrupting Democratic chances in November, you are reassured. I fully expect to hear stories about waves of disaffected Sanders supporters flocking to Trump. I expect to see “Bernie or Bust” web sites crop up amplifying claims of a growing movement. Ignore them. Laugh at them. And if expectations prevail and Clinton is the Democratic nominee, lets put her in the White House.
In case you were wondering, bernieis45.com has been registered.