Under no circumstances will I relinquish what I have seen and felt since the day Bree Newsome climbed down the flagpole. I think back to Michele Obama’s response about being proud of America (much publicized back when) and I think how much we have to be proud of today, how much more. For me it is always activism, the progressive edge, and what to me “makes sense” which in the context of life since the 1960s has been liberalism. I can live with Hillary. I am very proud of Hillary as an individual. On many levels. Not that I want to vote for her. I would be disappointed if Bernie hasn’t taken this all the way come next year. But we must assure that the political revolution has already begun (hat tip Occupy, Snowden, etc. too) because there will not be another train like this coming for a long time.
Millions of youth have clearly been touched with the strongest call to become politically involved, long-term, in their lifetimes. That was Bernie’s criticism of 2008, was the exceptionalism of that win not leveraging a more coherent body of voters, organized voters, afterwards. We will not do better than this. The kids will remember this always. I remember McGovern. Howard Dean made us feel alive. John Edwards broke some of our hearts (another p*nis of destruction, pleeez!?! What matters?). Bernie is it. Hill or no Hill in the White House, this is it. We are what we have. And we are strong and mighty. And we are the best we’ve got.
I am going to prognosticate about Tuesday that there is a 99% likelihood neither candidate will be knocked out of the race. Hillary is tough, strong, and a specialist in “hard.” Bernie is running for another election — something he has a lot of experience with although this is bigger (much!). Personally I will always find Hillary supporters more “establishment” but the Democratic Party’s Democratic Wing is not going away. It is not about supporting one candidate or either and let’s live it up for 4 days. We are going to win this because we have to, and we have to make sure that THE PEOPLE win. It is easier than ever to define “the people” right now because income inequality has made life so cartoonishly able to be reduced into “oh no what if I needed $500 right now” for most of America. That is simplifying right there!
Like some hippie circle holding hands, we must all commit to stay strong as one people, the American people, the one Obama keeps referring to in his speeches, building our future and trying to save the world from us the U.S. Climate change. War. We must be involved. If we are stuck with Hillary, us Berniacs can protest our asses off and scheme how to pressure Congress to move. With Bernie in the White House, if the banks don’t all move to the Caymans, the need for us to think together and remain active will truly be even more urgent. We’ll have to stay smart. Thank you everybody for staying smart so far in the Democratic primary race. I haven’t seen anything I haven’t seen before except one strong, beautiful and capable candidate and another guy who seemed unlikely but has already had his name stuck on the best political revolution of our time. This one is going to stick. Dear all of us — we have to stick the landing.