As a Daily Kos writer, I went into semi-retirement quite a while ago. Part of that was from choice, but part was because this blog moved and it moved away from me.
When I arrived on these shores some fifteen years ago I was a liberal island in a sea of red, living as I do in darkest Oklahoma. I have made a home and a life here, and for many years Daily Kos gave me a political home, a refuge from the utter wrongness and downright fuckwittery of those who became my friends, my neighbors and even some of my family.
I owe this place a great deal. For a couple of years I tried to pay some of that forward working with the Community Spotlight, and I always did my best to write with compassion on subjects that attracted my interest.
The change began to happen during the 2016 primary season and I know many of you remember it well. It was, quite frankly, the most shocking and disgusting display of entitlement and dishonesty that it has ever been my misfortune to witness … and I am talking about us, my friends, not the Republicans. They are who they are, we need to be better and for the most part, we manage that, but in 2016 we did not.
I didn’t get involved much. I was never attacked, never insulted, never “flagged” but I felt lost, cut adrift … and I floated away like a piece of discarded flotsam hopefully to wash up on a friendlier shore. I never quite cut the ties that bound me here. I have too much invested. I care too much.
So I’m back, at least this once, to tell you all to knock it the fuck off!
We lost in 2016 by seventy-seven thousand votes across three states. The recriminations were horrendous and I have zero interest in re-hashing the reasons why. What I will say is that we should have won those three states by seven hundred thousand, but we didn’t. We didn’t lose because of the nasty pejoratively named “Bernie Bros”. Neither did we lose because Hillary is a woman, or because she had horrible unfavorables. We didn’t lose because the Republicans cheated, although they surely did and they will cheat this time too. We didn’t even lose because adults on Daily Kos, who should know better squabbled like the kindergarteners I spend much of my time with.
We lost because for thirty years the Democratic Party has taken for granted the very people who should be our natural constituency. While we spend much of our time being distracted by social issues, important as they are, we lost sight of the core issues that affect the food on the table, and the health and education of our own base. The minimum wage is insultingly low. Millions of people have insufficient, or no access to healthcare. Traditional industries have shrunk, and the new industries are not being developed fast enough, or in the right places. School funding is shrinking and yes, people notice. Communities of color have seen little change for a generation.
We know this. We all care about it. Diarists write about it, Rachel Maddow talks very well about it … and little changes.
So when a candidate appeared to actually offer real solutions for real people we let the neo-liberals shout him down. When we lost the election many contributors, even front-page writers who should damned well know better joined the chorus of blame. They blamed progressives, they blamed Bernie, they blamed Bernie’s supporters and they blamed EVERYONE except themselves.
“He’s unelectable”, “He’s not even a Democrat”, “He’s too old”, “His supporters are mean”. We all heard it. And the worst of all because it is absolutely wrong on so many levels … “A vote for a third party, or staying at home, is a vote for Trump”.
Let me be very clear.
We do not get to blame the voters … any of them!
It is the job of the candidate and the campaign to attract voters, and the job of all of us to get out the vote.
Now I don’t know Bernie Sanders any more than I know Elizabeth Warren or any other candidate. I don’t have personal feelings for them, I am not attached to them. I am nobody’s “bro”. Those individuals have their own friends and families who no doubt love them very much. I am attracted only to their policy positions (it helps if they appear to be nice, but it’s not a requirement). I was and remain a firm supporter of Sanders’ positions, I feel pretty good about many of Warren’s too. I haven’t a clue what Joe’s are, and that’s a problem. Not for me, but for many voters whose only real idea of Biden is that he hung around with Barack Obama. Sure, you guys may all know him well, may well like and respect him, but that’s not enough to win.
What will make it worse is to continue doing the work of the Right for them. Posting shitty memes on FaceBook, calling people out in comment threads here and elsewhere. Behaving like a sore winner is very ugly, and it gets old real fast. It’s divisive and dishonest. I’m fairly sure a server farm somewhere outside Moscow is busy creating many of those memes, and I see no good reason why we should help.
Let me assure you. I will support the election of Joe Biden for president. There are times though when some of you make it extremely difficult to feel good about doing so. If any supporter of another candidate chooses not to vote for Biden I would be disappointed, but please stop making it easy for them to reach that conclusion.
As calm as I usually am you have no idea of how bad you make me feel as a Democrat, and a supporter of Democratic positions when commenters and Diarists behave like this. The Right never does this, ever. They take their cues and march in lock-step in the same direction. We can never be that nor would I want us to, but dammit neither do we have to rip ourselves apart and drive folk away. It’s just not good for business.
Joe Biden was not my first choice for nominee. He wasn’t even my second choice. But I recognize he is the choice that has been made. He is the presumptive nominee and if we get this right he will be the 46th President of the United States … and that doesn’t sound too bad.
Joe is not a progressive. He never has been and he never will be and I accept that. Politics isn’t a love affair. None of us gets to hang on for that one true love. Politics is more like a bus service. If no buses go right to your destination, get the bus that goes closest and go from there.
The re-election of Donald Trump would pose an existential threat to our republic. It would at the same time destroy any semblance of democracy that remains. Where we would go from there I can’t even.
Joe is not the bus that gets us to social democracy and social justice, but at least he would head off generally in the right direction, and we need that now more than ever.
We will make electing Democrats a heavier lift if we fight among ourselves. We might make that lift too heavy, and face four more years of blaming each other while America burns.
So knock it off. We have one job and nowhere in that job description is there any room for petty squabbling. Biden supporters … lay off. Sanders supporters … Joe is the nominee, get over it.
/rant