I found myself humming an old John Haitt tune today. As is often the case, the reason why came to me a couple hours later. I’d been talking with an old friend, S.C., who was planning to vote for Hillary in his local primary. We discussed our preferences and our reasons, not really trying to persuade each other, just talking and trying to understand.
It was an interesting conversation. S.C. said he really liked what Sanders was trying to do, revitalizing our civic involvement & pushing hard on climate change. He actually preferred Bernie’s policies. He just didn’t believe that the country was ready to elect a self-described democratic socialist; didn’t see Bernie as viable in the general election. I’m sure you’ve already heard a story that rhymes with this one.
We know the polls show Bernie to be preferred over the Republican candidates by considerably wider margins than Hillary is, and of course he doesn’t have the negatives the other candidates do. “Yet” I’ve heard it argued. Yet. And when the Republican media machine trains its metaphorical guns on Bernie, they’d be able to scare people away from voting for the socialist. This, in essence, was S.C.’s point.
Now, the song I was humming this afternoon was Haitt’s 1987 gem, “Have a Little Faith in Me.” To my mind, there’s a small but significant fraction of Hillary voters like S.C. — not promoters, exactly, but supporters — who don’t believe that other Americans want what they want, who don’t have faith that the New Deal democratic vision of coming together for the common good in the face of economic deprivation and increasing ecologic disasters can still rally a winning coalition.
I guess even if I didn’t want to believe the polling, I’d suggest that people can still be called by their better angles. The repugnance of Trump’s vapid belligerence, Cruz’s seething smarm, or even the recycled bait-and-switch politics of what ever fresh face might be put up at their convention to try to salvage something from this train wreck of an election — any of these would only help provide contrast to the honest (even, if you must insist, naive) love, solidarity, and inclusive patriotism of the Sanders campaign. I believe that the moment is right and the movement can fly. I believe that the general voting public can be inspired, that there are more of us out there than S.C. suspects, that he is not as alone in his desires and aspirations as he thinks he is. To quote Hiatt, “All you gotta do is have a little faith in me.” (Well, us.)
So that’s my little story. What song’s going through your head these days?