A Plea to Sanders Supporters: Don’t Fall in Line
Photo courtesy of Getty
Now that the “superprepared warrior realist,” feminist superstar, and paragon of the mainstream left Hillary Clinton has “officially” secured the Democratic presidential nomination—thanks in no small part to a farcical and overtly corrupt primary process—Bernie Sanders supporters can prepare themselves for months of intensive sermonizing from agents of the American oligarchy who will scarcely bother to conceal their condescension as they politely disabuse us of our political illusions.
The formula is straightforward and naturally platitudinous. It’s been used often enough already to qualify as a cliché, but don’t expect that to give the Clintonoids a moment of pause. They will continue to push forward, doing their utmost to feign empathy with the quixotic “Berniacs” who over the past few months they repeatedly insulted with allegations of sexism, misogyny, racism and outright physical violence. Dismissing Sanders’ voter base as practitioners of one or all of the above was commonplace during the primary season, beginning with the specious “Bernie Bro” phenomenon, which sought to undermine Sanders’ legitimately populist image by highlighting chauvinistic comments (supposedly) made by a handful of his supporters on Twitter—that vaunted medium of sophisticated intellectual discourse.
“Bernie has a bro problem” the headlines gleefully read. It was a clever (that is, cynical, Machiavellian, cunning, etc.) means of diverting attention from his actual platform, the bottom line of which is equality across the board, and shifting it onto a nonissue that had exactly nothing to do with the candidate himself. And it was pretty effective. “Journalists,” “pundits” and “political commentators” righteously demanded that Sanders himself apologize for the “appalling” and “despicable” actions of his most ardent followers (Sanders, being the overly-obliging person that he is, actually did so).
Meanwhile, those same journalists, pundits and political commentators cried foul at suggestions that perhaps Mrs. Clinton should be made to answer for the vehement support she offered her husband’s destructive (and at times racist) policies when he was in the White House and she essentially served as co-president.
Putting the heat on Hillary for supporting her degenerate husband’s crime bill, welfare reform, “free trade” agreements, “humanitarian interventions,” etc. was actually a manifestation of our culture’s hatred of women; or so we were told by our liberal authorities. By tying Hillary to her husband’s atrocious record, we were denying her agency, holding her under the oppressive yoke of the fading patriarchy. Of course, few things could be more sexist than the argument a lot of Hillary’s acolytes deployed in defense of their queen: she was merely being a dutiful wife, going along with her husband; she can’t be held responsible. Talk about denying agency.
One would think that a woman who asserts that any allegation of sexual assault should be heard and investigated might have some hang-ups about staying wed to a man who has been accused of sexual assault by several women, one of whom maintains that Bill Clinton forcefully raped her. But this too is off limits—not because it’s sexist, but because it’s an old Republican canard. Since her story represents a threat to Hillary Clinton’s façade as a champion of women the world over, Juanita Broaddrick is accorded the same degree of credibility and respect that most accord Glenn Beck. Politics is a dirty business, indeed.
Getting back to the point, the people who maligned Sanders supporters as race-baiting women-haters are now, ironically enough, desperate for their solidarity. We must band together to slay the greatest evil this world has ever known: Donald J. Trump. That, of course, is the crux of the argument. But there’s also a sly attempt to take for granted that the arch-neoliberal and arch-neoconservative Hillary Clinton somehow shares important political ideas with Bernie Sanders. Absurd, to say the very least.
Take a recent column in the New York Times by liberal pundit Nicholas Kristof, titled “Sanders, Clinton and, er, President Trump?” It’s a typical patronizing appeal to Sanders voters in which the author takes a paternal tone with his target audience, issuing solemn warnings about the “liberal disenchantment” that supposedly led to the nefarious Republican regimes of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. In other words, Kristof is going to do us all a favor and kindly tell us why we’re stupid and what we can do to redress that stupidity (“punditsplaining”?).
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