It’s become increasingly clear to me that I’m not pure enough to be accepted into the Sanders Revolutionary Cadre, even though many of my friends are. Sanders himself, and many of his supporters, have set the standards so high that I can’t possibly qualify.
I’m at least as compromised as Hillary is, to tell the truth. I apparently am not uniformly “progressive.” Unlike Bernie, I’m pretty critical of some aspects of the Castro regime in Cuba. Having just been forced to switch from an ACA exchange policy to more expensive and less comprehensive Medicare, I am not a fan of “Medicare-for-all,” and have serious questions about the practicalities of single-payer. As an adjunct professor, I fear that “free tuition” would come at the expense of paying professors anything approaching a living wage. (My union, the NEA, has endorsed Clinton, so it’s obviously part of The Evil Establishment too, no matter how hard they fight for us.) I believe that racism, sexism, patriarchy, homophobia, etc. etc. are intertwined with income inequality, but not identical to it; Exhibit A would be the sexist venom directed at otherwise high-income and high-status Hillary Clinton, like the racist venom directed at Barack Obama, Eric Holder, and other high-income high-status African-Americans.
Beyond individual policy disagreements with Sanders, I bristle at having him and his minions judge whether I measure up to some imaginary (and migrating) standard of purity. I’m just not interested in putting myself through a probe more intrusive and insulting than a TSA pat-down, and risking insults and put-downs and insinuations.
My money isn’t pure enough for Sanders either. My father, like Sanders, was the son of poor (and socialist) Jewish immigrants. But my mother is a lefty-liberal (“progressive”? yes, in the 1948 Wallace campaign, but I’m not sure she would qualify under Bernie-standards) from a much more privileged background. Some of the family money stretches back to slave-holders and land stolen from Indians (as it does for pretty much anyone whose family arrived in the American colonies from Europe before 1900). I went through college and law school on some fortuitous investments made by my grandfather in oil and gas leases (which we no longer own). I used to do some legal work for Big Bad Insurance Companies, and once took a speaking fee from a mainline church, so my earned income is tainted too. I’ve also made money from stock market investments, which Sanders says is pure fraud. I wouldn’t want to embarrass or distract Bernie by trying to donate and having him send the check back (or decline my Big Bank credit card) because it’s dirty money that might be an attempt to buy him off — or having him take the money and then blast me for being compromised.
So to misquote the great Marxist (Groucho), I’m not interested in trying to shoehorn my way into a Revolution that pretty clearly doesn’t want me as a member.
The Clinton crew, on the other hand, seems delighted to welcome me into their team. They’re happy to have my money, even though I’m nowhere near a max-out donor, and they don’t probe on where every penny came from. It’s a big tent, they say. There’s room for people on the autism spectrum to use their talents. There’s room for women with strong confident voices, with no one accusing you of shouting. There’s room for foreign policy experts, health care policy wonks, economists, Planned Parenthood and even NARAL, Dreamers, teachers, students, clergy, personal care attendants, mothers of sons killed by police. We don’t all have to agree on everything; we can discuss and even argue over policy, and about strategies for getting at least part of what we want out of a deeply divided Congress.
I’m sure there’s room for me. And there’s likely room for you too, even if you too aren’t perfect.