I have been hearing and reading posts and comments from some Bernie supporters along the lines of: never voting for Hillary, if Bernie is not the nominee, I’m voting for Trump. And then the replies of anxious democrats and other progressives, trying to dissuade them: Supreme Court! Women’s rights! Environment! Etc.
Well. I have been thinking about it. And I actually think these Berniebots are right. They should vote for Trump.
I have always been a fierce advocate of folks making informed decisions in the polling booth. The more information and education out there, the better. And I think if folks did that, the Ds would win every time, by a landslide. The Rs think so too, which is why they are so involved in denigrating education and knowledge, and in abetting voter suppression.
But I can’t deny that some people’s interests are indeed not aligned with mine. My born-again sister is actually voting her interest, however misguided I think it is, when she votes for Cruz. She thinks the theocracy can’t happen fast enough, so he is her guy.
And what I have seen of some of the berniebots – not all Bernie supporters, just some – is that progressive politics, or progressive action, is a platform. The cause is important, but it is not as important as the underlying emotional motivation. Instead, they are angry, and pure, and have found a cause to focus it on.
I’ve seen this before. I used to work for environmental NGOs. In the late 80s and 90s, a lots of folks flocked to that effort in the Pacific Northwest, fuelled by the spotted owl issue. My other biologist pals and I called what we were engaged in “combat biology,” which included swaying public policy (yes! I have been a lobbyist!), but the weapons we were attempting to use were reason and science. And the timber industry employed its own biologists, conducted its own research, and certainly worked hard on the policy side to get their views known and acted on.
But some of the folks on the enviro side were not interested in the science. They were not interested in the communities who were also being exploited. They were not interested in any kind of rational plan to go forward. Making progress wasn’t nearly as important as making sure there was no compromise.
What they enjoyed was the fight. The good fight. Being on the side of the right, yes, but also the opportunity to have a confrontation. I can remember very well three incidents that perfectly illustrated this for me.
One, at one meeting I was told that I was not as good an environmentalist as this other person because I had a science degree. Really pure environmentalists didn’t need science, they had their mystical knowledge of and communion with nature, and science got in the way of that. Because I was a scientist, I clearly didn’t have the required purity.
Two, I remember two men coming back from a community meeting where they were supposed to be trying to have a rational discussion and maybe get some dialogue going with a timber town, whose prospects from overlogging would normally make the workers have common cause with those of us promoting sustainability. Instead, they came back recounting how confrontational it got – their eyes were shining as they talked about how the meeting almost came to blows. They enjoyed it, the sense of danger and excitement. And they disparaged the “freddies” – the forest service employees – one of whom was the district biologist who had been quietly helping us, and working from the inside to keep what habitat she could. In the black-and-white worldview, however, she was on the wrong side.
Finally, I was asked to provide biological input for a challenge to a timber sale. I knew the area very well, went out and did a general walk-through, which of course was not a complete survey, but nonetheless I was certain about a few things, one being that it was not mountain lion habitat. The environmental group wanted to include mountain lion as an impacted species, because they wanted to bolster their arguments with some charismatic megafauna, thinking that was an easy way to make a good argument (easier than talking about macro-invertebrates), and because they basically didn’t understand the ecology of the area. But I said no, in my professional opinion they aren’t there; it’s the wrong habitat and too isolated from any suitable habitat. (And of course there was zero evidence that mountain lions were there.) Despite all that, the organisation changed my report without my knowledge to include mountain lions, and submitted it with my name on it. Not cool.
I see a similar approach in some of the berniebots. Facts don’t matter (such as that Hillary has the same liberal rating in her votes in the Senate as Bernie). Everything is explicable as a conspiracy (R-generated voter suppression affects ALL democratic voters, but somehow it’s Hillary’s fault, and is the only reason she won in Arizona or New York). When Hillary does it, it’s awful, but when Bernie does it, it’s OK (just two examples of many – Bernie taking money from the DNC for his past campaigns, and helping them raise it by hosting fundraisers with “the 1%;” and Bernie voting for intervention in Libya. On both points Hillary is castigated and Bernie gets a pass). I now live in a country with only four big banks, and nobody here wants them dismantled, as that would affect every pension, every retirement, every household transaction. And Australia escaped the GFC in part because we have four strong, well-regulated banks; the argument here is to make sure they are in the radar of regulation, not to break them up. But that kind of nuanced approach is scorned by these berniebots, who call it pandering to the establishment. And then there’s the ferocious flaming of anyone who dares to challenge their world view, or who, like Elizabeth Warren, doesn’t do what they want, when they want.
And now, these berniebots vow that they will vote for Trump rather than Hillary.
That makes perfect sense to me.
Just like some environmentalists I met, I can’t see that these particular berniebots are terribly interested in the actual issues, and realworld consequences. Anyone seriously interested in progressive causes would at least take the SCOTUS argument very seriously indeed, and do anything to keep nominations out of the hands of the Rs.
Nope. The folks I am talking about simply don’t care very much about any of that. They don’t care about the harm that rescinding the ACA would do. They don’t care about the harm SCOTUS could do. They don’t care about the environmental harm a republican executive can do. They don’t really care about campaign finance reform, as if they did, again they would care about SCOTUS (and know perhaps that Citizens United was actually a case about anti-Hillary propaganda from a conservative organisation…). They don’t care about any of it. The politics are just a vehicle. In fact, I’ve heard and read some of them stating that if they can’t have Bernie it would be better to lose, as somehow the country will emerge better from whatever destruction is wreaked, and then purity will win out.
So, what motivates them? From what I can see, and based on my earlier experiences, this: They care about the meme of being the beleaguered enlightened few who see the truth. They care about being pure, and never ever compromising. They care about who they see as their enemy, and want to have confrontations that are personally satisfying. They like the theatre, the excitement, the crowd.
And most of all, they care about their anger. They go to the huge rallies, where everyone, from Bernie on down, gets to express righteous anger. It feels good to boo, and to chant, at a debate. It feels good! And it doesn’t matter if we all go down in flames, so long as they can remain angry and pure.
Feel the burn, indeed.
If I am right, then these particular berniebots should indeed vote for Donald Trump. He is their next-best candidate. He also loves the adoration of his crowd, he could not care less about facts or consequences, he certainly claims to be anti-establishment, he enjoys rudeness and insulting others, he feeds the flames of anger in his audience, he encourages confrontation.
In short, he’s their kind of guy.
So, I expect the comments to this post will be full of flames, on fire actually. I expect all sorts of exculpatory commentary, along the lines of “but Hillary is the beast!” and “I do care, so much that I can never compromise, even if that means voting for everything I say I’m against ….” and “It would be better if it all came crashing down….” All of which will just continue to make my point.
I think, if I am right, those voters will never vote our way this year so we shouldn’t waste resources chasing them. We don’t have the motivating factor, and Hillary is indeed too much of a practical policy wonk, to attract the angry pure. Let them go, and let’s get on with winning this election, so that we and they will never have to face the real consequences of their votes.