To add yet another log to a nicely roaring blaze, I’d like to publish my thoughts on the Clinton/Sanders partisanship here at DailyKos. To begin, I think both are excellent candidates no matter what is happening on the other side of the aisle. I currently support Senator Sanders, but I would also be happy to vote for the extremely accomplished former Secretary Clinton.
I’m also a Millennial. And an Engineering PhD student, who looks for problems before they happen in order to provide solutions before things go banana-shaped. Now that that’s out of the way…
I’d like to point to something rather important:
Further recall the Occupy Wall Street movement. Dollars to Doughnuts that the people supporting Sanders so fervently come from the same cloth as OWS, energized by their first meaningful social movement… only to find no meaningful help or change from the people who they felt should have their back: The Democrats.
Meanwhile, Cliven Bundy gets to keep his land because he has guns, Ferguson crushes protests of lawlessness (because they don’t have guns), and Millennials get blamed for being lazy and unwilling to sacrifice by those who have no clue about the social and economic changes that kinda shafted a lot of my age group. Then, along comes someone who makes them care again, someone who has a history of fighting for what they believe in, what they feel is wrong with the system as it stands. After all the abandonment, all the effort amounting to nothing, all the rampant hypocrisy in what is claimed versus what can be done, the application of brutal repression against peaceful protesters and kid gloves for armed insurrectionists threatening to kill federal employees...
Senator Sanders tells them he gives a shit about what they’re dealing with, and even though he’s an old white guy, going against the grain of ‘new hip diverse ethnic and gender composition’ that both parties want so badly, they’re fired up by his positions. They’re energized by the possibility that they could have a chance to see meaningful changes to the status quo.
And now, we’ve got a bunch of people leaving and continuing elsewhere, oldtimers and newer recruits, and the partisan rancor continues non-stop, with a two-week window to burn every possible bridge.
Let’s say that this succeeds, and Sanders supporters stop posting here. While I suspect this wouldn’t impact Markos much, these are people who are highly motivated, highly informed, and probably set to be organizers and activists all over the nation thanks to their tech savvy and interconnectedness.
Chuck all of them out, for the sake of argument.
So, what happens 20 years from now? 30? 40? In actuarial terms, I’ll very probably still be here. And most of those 65+ that Clinton was winning? Gone or unable to vote.
Memento Mori: Remember that you must die.
The dead don’t vote.
The dead can’t carry a party.
So, who takes up the flag when the establishment acts to ostracize a group that has been continually told to toe the line, and gotten scraps in return for their support? Where was their Michele Fiore when OWS was being maced and arrested? Where were their elected representatives coming down to stand with them in Ferguson?
Eventually, the Millennials will give up. They won’t SHOW up. Why bother, when all outcomes seem similar and rigged against them with the only variation being by degrees of stupidity?
We don’t have the advantage of the right wing, with the capability to indoctrinate their kids with idol worship of the founding fathers, the second amendment, and the Right-wing version of Jesus. We base our arguments around the facts as we see them, the plights of people we may never meet, and usually, the application of the scientific method and critical thought processes. We lose people to the easy answers and proud ignorance of the extreme right, and it’s incredibly hard to bring people back once they’ve decided to lock themselves into a reality where things aren’t their fault.
So, while both sides of the HRC/BS fighting have been making things worse by leveling stupid accusations about how electable someone is (“Democratic Socialist” is pretty much on par with “Hillary Clinton” as far as I can tell when I read RW sites to check up on the current thinking of the real problem children) and screaming about delegate math, the current presumed nominee’s supporters should ask themselves one important question:Will demanding that Sanders leave the race before every delegate is counted and telling his supporters to go sit at the kids table if they can’t toe the line worth giving up a non-trivial voter base in the future?
And that, my friends, is the long tail of the reactionary decision to jump into General Election mode before the nominee is officially named. Is your support for HRC so important that you can’t let the younger generations get involved, get interested, and see the process to the end? If you cut them off early, they’ll give up. If you keep them involved, and don’t belittle the guy who got them back into politics after all the bullshit they’ve put up with in their lifetimes…
They might just stick around to keep your ideals going.
If you cut them out and destroy their hope, well, what can you honestly expect?
I’d also like to call attention (once again) to the incredible work they’ve done basically running Senator Sanders as a third-party candidate, using decentralized and self-assembled networks of people uniting around a common goal to do amazing small-donor fundraising and making what should have been a cakewalk into a competition for Former Secretary Clinton. He’d been all but ignored by the general media thanks to the DNC strategy of limiting debates and the disinterest from most news outlets about old white guy yelling at cloud, missing the ‘Thousands of people showing up to events’ part.
That’s the kind of motivation you want on your side. That’s the kind of innovation and cleverness the DNC needs to survive, not the endless torrent of “We’re going to lose to republicans! Send money!” emails that the current crop seem to think equal feet on the ground at the polls.
So, as I said, I’m an engineer. I solve problems. Here’s a few solutions to pursue, either as individuals or as a community:
1. Do take Marcos’s post about not being a dick to heart.
2. Pressure the DNC to keep all superdelegates out of the nomination process. If the math doesn’t work out, let it be an honest victory for whoever gets the most delegates.
3. Only go to general election coverage when the general election comes around.
4. Ban or otherwise punish antagonists on both sides equally. As long as the Sanders supporters have an equal voice, they’ll stick around. As long as bad actors are removed without bias, they’ll be fine with it. After all, Equality is exactly what they’re pushing for.
5. Accept criticism, not insult.
6. Don’t be a dick.
Cheers, Grecotch (I can’t believe I didn’t use my usual handle when I made this account years ago… This sounds like an STD)