I have to say, at one time Bernie Sanders was one of my favorite members of Congress- but that time was when I was in college, and most of you reading this had no idea he existed. Even at the start of this process though, I still really liked Bernie, the ideals I had projected on him, and his political brand. My original thought was that Bernie was simply not realistic, but I was thrilled that he was running to move the Democratic race to the left. His Brooklyn accent, his fired-up appeals on the stump, and his brutal honesty made him kind of awesome. At one point, I flirted with parting ways with my long-standing support of Hillary, and becoming a Berner. I didn't though, for a lot of reasons.
First, I just can't quite square myself with Bernie's positions. I agree with him on stopping TPP, raising the minimum wage, legalizing marijuana, closing private prisons, and a host of other issues. I have substantive policy differences with him on major issues though. No, I don't want college to be free, and to reduce the value of a bachelors degree to a high school diploma. No, I don't agree with giving gun manufacturers immunity from lawsuits. No, I don't want to scrap the ACA in favor of "Medicare for All." No, I don't oppose all trade deals, just the bad ones. No, I don't support bringing back the outdated Glass-Steagall law. No, I don't oppose any and all military actions. I have serious substantive issues with Bernie.
Beyond that, I don't find Bernie's platform to be reasonable. We had to back-door pass the ACA, but he thinks Congress will expand Medicare for everybody? He's going to get free college for everybody, while Congress won't even lower the interest rates for students? His entire platform was based on some sort of "pie in the sky" theory of politics, where an activist "revolution" would swamp Washington and either convince all the members of Congress to change, or would replace them all. The truth of American politics is that we don't even all agree on what we want, much less on the solutions, and anyone who thinks there is some "common sense" politics that will sweep the nation and change everything is unrealistic. I believe had Bernie won the White House, the disillusionment that would have followed that victory would have destroyed the left for at least a generation.
It got worse with Bernie though, particularly as the primaries raged on. His supporter, Tulsi Gabbard, resigned from the DNC and gave credence to the ridiculous argument that Bernie was losing a "rigged" primary. Look, i've read the emails- yes, the DNC staff didn't like Bernie. What state did they rig in action though? Please don't tell me New York, where people simply didn't follow the rules to register in time, and where the places "purging" voters were actually boroughs that Hillary won, and would have seen benefits from more turnout in. Please don't tell me Arizona, where the Republican Administration in that state got rid of polling places, hurting everyone. Beyond that, yes, some staff made inappropriate comments about Bernie's religion, but that was not something that ever went public. Should Debbie Wasserman-Schultz have stepped aside? She shouldn't have been chair after 2014, but yes. The debates should have been put in prime-time spots, I totally agree, but the actual viewership was well in line with past primary debates, and there were more of them than we've seen in the past. Of course, their final ridiculous argument was the super-delegates one- who Bernie both wanted to flip to his side, but also to not exist anymore. If super-delegates were bound by primary results, Hillary would have still won comfortably, and there would be no point to their existence. If you don't like their existence, fine, say that. Don't also ask for them to overrule the votes though. As he fell further and further behind in the delegate count, he continued to claim he had a shot to achieve victory, continued to ask his supporters for their hard-earned donations, and most importantly, continued to attack both the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton as corrupt institutions, part of the problem in Washington. The truth is that Bernie had no shot after Super Tuesday, and certainly after he didn't win in New York, and he continued to run a very tough primary campaign against Hillary and the party. He helped the GOP learn how to run against her, and how to fracture the Democratic base more.
In truth, I don't actually know if I blame Bernie as much for his behavior during the primary process. He's not a Democrat. His entire career was based on being a left-wing critique of the Democratic Party. I realized during this process what Bernie was really all about. He would take major Democratic achievements of the past 30 years- The Family and Medical Leave Act, The Affordable Care Act, The 1993 Clinton Budget, The Dodd-Frank Bill- and basically decimate them as "not good enough." He would slam Democratic politicians for playing within the Congressional process, which is not "pure" and clean by his standards, making deals in order to get things done. He would key on buzz words like "lobbyists," and make them the evil, doing so knowingly that lots of people lobby for lots of things. Bernie did all of this while having only a few legislative achievements of his own, over a long career in Congress. Because he never joined the Democratic Party, he never had to take ownership of getting things done. He was an independent, a party of one. I don't agree with that, but I can't fault him for that now. I just won't vote for it. If anything though, I blame the party leadership for going along with letting him bring that criticism into the party.
All of that was enough for me to distance myself from a Congressman who I used to really admire. I don't really need to dive into all the things the GOP would have said about him, beyond this. Yes, they would have said the obvious, he's a socialist. Yes, they would have brought up that he had no job until he was 35. Yes, they would have brought up his wife running a for-profit college that went bankrupt right after she left. Yes, they would have brought up his stealing electric from the neighbor. Yes, they would have brought up his honeymoon in Moscow, during the Soviet Union. There are even worse things, but none of them really are material to me. The point is that the build-up of "Saint Bernie" became very, very annoying, and frankly was flat out false. He was as flawed as the rest of us, if not more, and it became tiring hearing otherwise. I can perfectly accept this, it's not an issue to me, provided that you don't hold him up as something he isn't.
Of course, Bernie never called himself a saint. His supporters did. His supporters not only held up Bernie as the standard for being progressive, but did so without any problem calling Hillary and her supporters some pretty bad things. To be clear, there were many different types of Bernie supporters, and not all agreed on this part, but there was a large chunk who created a "false equivalency" between Hillary (and her supporters) and Trump (and his supporters). For the first time in my lifetime, an actual portion of the runner-up's supporters formed a "Bernie or Bust" type of group, that refused to support the eventual nominee, and actually carried through on it in significant numbers. I had people who showed up for the first time in 2016 telling me how I "wasn't a progressive" in their eyes, because I didn't agree with Bernie on his pet issues. I suppose I wasn't in the streets protesting the Iraq War while some of them were playing with children's toys, but I digress there. His supporters became terrors on Facebook and Twitter, as any critique of Bernie on policy or character was met by a tweet-storm of attacks, sometimes attacks that had nothing to do with the point being made. I had people i'm not friends with on Facebook commenting on pro-Hillary posts to call her a "war criminal," "crony capitalist," "bitch" and other negative things, and sometimes just to attack me for supporting her. I suppose it's only fine to attack a candidate for President when it's not your's though, based on their actions. I helped Bernie delegates get on the primary ballot, only to have some of those delegates attack me personally when I didn't back their candidate- no mas on that one, folks. His supporters, and their aggressive posture, made me less and less likely to be okay with Bernie.
All of this leads me to now, the point we're at, when many of the Bernie backers are saying "I told you so." Even knowing what I know today, I would vote for Hillary in the Democratic primary over Bernie, without any reservations in fact. I heard his comment about ditching identity politics to talk to the working class, and yes I know that it's being taken out of context- as things so often are in politics- and frankly I still find it largely offensive. The Democratic Party, beginning with 1960's, decided to stand up for those marginalized in our society, vocally and in policy, and to suggest we should talk less about their plight is not okay. This is why Bernie never caught on with voters outside of his white, liberal backing. It's why he probably would have also lost to Trump, as every group besides white male Democrats would have shown up at lower frequencies for him- there's just no reason to assume otherwise. Beyond all of that, if your simplistic takeaway from Donald Trump's victory is that populism elected him, and not racism, I don't really agree with you. If that was the case, Russ Feingold would have won Wisconsin, even as Hillary lost it.
By the way, after all of that, I have to say that I agree- Bernie is right that we should have talked more about jobs, while talking to people outside of our own base. I agree that we should have new leadership in Congress, and I'm even fine that Bernie is being added to the Senate leadership by Chuck Schumer. If the idea here is that we should adopt some of Bernie's issues and rhetoric, I'm actually all good with that. I'm just not fine with handing the party over to Bernie, I didn't vote for that. No, I don't want open primaries, join my party if you want to pick my nominee. No, I don't want us to become the anti-engagement with the globe party, be that in trade or in defending liberty around the world. No, I don't want us to turn on President Obama, and act as though he did an inadequate job. In short, I'm not ready to tear up the party we have, in favor of his revolution. I've seen us fight for nursing homes to stay open locally, to fund schools at the state level, and to protect consumers from predatory banks, nationally. I've seen us be the defenders of human services at the county government level, defend good wages and union jobs at the state level, and fight for foreign aid that helped feed children around the globe. The Democratic Party is a damn good institution, the institution that gave you the Violence Against Women Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Family and Medical Leave Act. It needs some changes, not a replacement.
I'm not against Bernie's ideals being a part of our future, but I am not ready to give his proxy, Keith Ellison, the keys to the DNC yet. I'm not against Bernie like candidates, like Elizabeth Warren, being our next nominee for President, but i'm not going to nominate a 79 year old Bernie to be our next President. I hope Bernie does run again in 2018, and doesn't face a primary, and continues to push for some of his policies. I'm just not ever going to come around to the idea of President Bernie.
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