Bernie Sanders and Revolution Betrayed

The revolution will not be organized, and it turns out I’m a bit angry about that.

This post is about why I’m voting against Bernie Sanders for Democratic nominee. I’m afraid that to be taken seriously doing that these days, particularly as a woman, requires a political autobiography. Credentials required lest someone think I am merely voting genitalia.* So here they are.

The first presidential election I recall having any feelings about, much less strong feelings, was the Carter-Reagan-Anderson race of 1980. I was for Anderson, mostly because I found the Carter administration weak and too easily mired in scandal. I was wrong, because I didn’t understand how major third-party candidates worked against the candidates they were closest to politically in our system, and because I didn’t understand how the press manufactures the image of an administration, but it didn’t much matter. I couldn’t vote. I was barely ten when the election happened.

I grew up political. I also grew up Gen X, particularly that little slice of Gen X who knew that nothing we did was going to matter because Reagan was going to get us all killed with his macho, anti-communist, bullshit posturing before we got to see any significant slice of adulthood. It turns out we were wrong about that too, though not because of Reagan. An awful lot of people worked to keep us all from dying.

It took a long time to grow out of this idea that nothing we did mattered. In the meantime, we watched our parents’ generation plunder our political heritage.* We were badly outnumbered, but we could have done more if we’d only known how. Somehow, though, the generation that wasn’t interested in making sure we had schools, jobs, bridges, or retirement funding also wasn’t interested in making sure we had a way to plug into the political process and make our voices heard.

That never kept me from being interested in (or moderately obsessed by) politics. It did keep me from being as effective as I could be.* I educated friends on candidates, issues, and process when I had the opportunity. I plugged into a few protests, but they were…well, they weren’t designed to be invisible, but they might as well have been.

It took the internet to get me to a place where I felt like I could call myself an activist. I grew up pathologically shy, so face-to-face conflict wasn’t something I could manage. And let’s not talk about the phone. Since no one ever mentioned the administrative needs of campaigns to me, that kept me from doing much for my candidates. The internet made it possible to advocate for them where my skills were stronger.

Ironically, internet activism also made me more comfortable dealing with conflict in real time, so by 2008, I was ready to campaign for a candidate. That candidate was Al Franken. When you live in Minnesota, you get used to not having very much input on presidential nominees, but every vote for Franken made a huge difference in national politics.

It took me a while to decide which Democratic candidate to support, at least after John Edwards pulled out. I liked his ambition and trusted his skills. He wasn’t part of the choice I was given. Instead, I was offered two more conservative candidates with different but overlapping competencies.

I chose Obama. I chose him despite a deep sympathy for Clinton being bombarded with sexist bullshit*, not because of the issues or because he was being similarly bombarded with racist bullshit*, but because of what his campaign was doing. He was more conservative than Clinton, but both were far to the right of me on most issues. For that matter, so was Edwards.

What Obama’s campaign was doing, however, gave me hope, far more hope than his slogans or his policies. In a year when both having a black candidate and having a female candidate were exciting new voters, Obama was the candidate taking advantage of that excitement to organize and train the people who had finally found a reason to participate in a process that wasn’t made for them. Politically neglected, Gen X me wanted to cry. Instead, I voted for him.

I don’t think Obama handled this perfectly. There have been too many times over the past seven years that I’ve been asked to put my name to a position without having any idea how it would be used for leverage, and I have a better than average grasp of how these things get used. That way lies apathy.

Still, he organized people in 2008 and again in 2012, and he’s still doing it now. He’s building a political machine more progressive than the Democratic Party. I don’t know exactly what he plans to do with it, but I’m intrigued. I’m kind of big on activist training and organization. A candidate who seized the opportunity to offer it had the potential to upset the balance of power and was worth supporting, even when we disagreed on policy.

Thank you for your patience; we have now reached 2015 and Bernie Sanders vs. Hillary Clinton.

Once again, I’m faced with a choice of candidates who are significantly to the right of me on most issues, but this time the candidates are more differentiated. That doesn’t make an easy decision for me, because I’m kind of an odd duck politically. After decades of trying on and discarding labels, I’m currently calling myself a “wonky radical”.

In practice, this means I think very few options are off the table politically, but I want to make sure we know what we’re doing before we make big changes to even a compromised system. I’ve found Obama’s pre-2014 caution to be the most frustrating part of his domestic agenda. I don’t believe in compromising before you have to compromise. It only means you compromise twice.

So, yes, Clinton’s unwillingness to consider so many possibilities hurts me. It hurts me all the more that in the last eight years since I last had to consider her as a candidate, I’ve had experiences that make me identify with her*. It hurts in no small part because there are few politicians these days whose wonkiness and competence give me as much pleasure. (Thank you, Al Franken, even though I’ve written you very frustrated letters on some issues.)

Benghazi hearings? Oh, such joy. Her autism plan? Wonky and progressive. This is her at her best. But it comes with her worst. That Clinton at her worst is not the demon harpy people keep trying to tell me she is* does not mean we don’t have substantial disagreements in areas I care a lot about. Those areas affect lives. They affect who lives.

If we’re talking about the issues, I should lean Sanders. Like most progressives, I agree far more with him than with any other candidate, if only because the issues where we have the most disagreements tend to be left off those kinds of questionnaires because they’re complex (foreign policy) or considered special interests (gender and racial equality). Clinton and I have disagreements on some of those issues as well, but surveys that don’t dig into them exaggerate the gap between the two candidates.

Still, economic inequality is a huge issue that interacts with those other issues, and there are real differences there. I was willing to be won by Sanders under certain conditions.

Those conditions have nothing to do with “electability”. Who gets elected is determined by who votes, and we don’t know enough about who is ready to vote these days. Young voters made a huge difference for Obama. They have real reasons to vote based on the economy, and they have far more access to training in politics than I did at their age. Plus, they’re already an activist generation. I’m not willing to guess what Millennials can’t accomplish politically. They’ve got too much of a head start on me.

Those conditions also have nothing to do with his ability to govern in the midst of gridlock. He faces the same obstacles Clinton would face–though perhaps a bit less personal animosity from members of Congress–and the same obstacles Obama has been pushing through for the last year or so. Progress can be made under these conditions, even if it requires compromise. And I believe in asking big to start.

No, the conditions under which I was willing to be won by Sanders had to do with his understanding of the power of the administrative branch and his willingness and skill at exploiting those powers to push his agenda. Did he understand the job, and would he do what it takes? This is a perennial question when legislators want to move into executive roles and one of the reasons governors are often safer choices for president, even without foreign policy experience.

So the questions were:

  • Would Sanders put together an effective cabinet?
  • Did he understand the uses and limitations of executive power?
  • Would he use and could he command the small amount of leverage left to his party to resolve gridlock?
  • Could he make effective appeals for voters to urge their congressional representatives for change?

There were other questions I should have been asking as well, but I’ll get to those.

Early indications were mixed. Sanders had some history of pragmatism as mayor and accomplishments using that approach. On the other hand, his reputation for choosing close advisers based on loyalty and ideological purity was bolstered by his choice of a campaign manager who’s never run a national campaign but has run his previous campaigns, as well as other major advisers who have worked for him but not on anything of this scale. (Clinton’s choices, by contrast, have much more experience.)

It was early, though, and Sanders didn’t have much money. He was busy stirring up dissatisfaction, because that’s his best political strategy. I’d have to wait to judge his competence. No matter how tired I got of someone telling me there were problems as though I hadn’t been saying that longer than he’d been in Congress, I would wait. I waited. Then I waited some more.

Did you know there are big problems with income inequality? I’m so glad someone finally told me.

Then the data breach happened. As bad as it was, the reaction from the Sanders campaign was worse. They either didn’t find out how many people were involved before communicating or communicated bad information. They pointed fingers and made insinuations rather than taking responsibility. They sued to force the Democrats to do something they were about to do anyway. It was a disorganized mess that told me they didn’t have anything going beyond “Look at the problems over there!”

That was not what I’d been waiting for. It was what I’d been waiting through. I was done.

Scandal has been one of the major tools of the U.S. right wing as long as I’ve been paying attention to politics.* A weakness for scandal was one of the big things that made the Carter administration less effective than it could be. If Sanders’ campaign reacted this badly to a scandal that no one was even pressing, there was no way they could handle–oh, just for example–something like the Benghazi mess.

You can’t pay attention to presidential politics for any length of time without knowing this. You have to know you have to be prepared. You should anyway, because it’s basic political effectiveness not to get sidetracked by making a small problem worse, but you have to know that this is part of being a Democratic president.

I was no longer willing to wait for Sanders to prove to me that he knew how to govern this country and was willing to do what it takes. For what it’s worth, I’m still paying attention, and I haven’t had any reason to change my mind. This doesn’t help, though I don’t agree with it 100%. This certainly doesn’t help.

Competence also affects lives. It also affects who lives. Good intentions make great paving stones, and this is why I’m a wonky radical.

Nothing I see tells me Sanders is doing the minimal work to prepare to govern this country. This would be far more obvious if the press wasn’t gung-ho about having a horse race to report on and had done nearly as much work to vet Sanders as a candidate as they have Clinton.* As far as I can tell, this is his plan for us:

  1. Discover our economy has problems
  2. Vote for me
  3. ????
  4. Revolution!

It’s worse than that, though. I can understand some procrastination when you’re the long-shot candidate, even as it raises my hackles because getting prepared is something you should do before you ask for people’s votes. Some people always assume they can catch up at the last minute, no matter how much work it’s taken other people to get there. It’s more likely to happen, and more likely to be overlooked, when it’s a man underestimating what a woman has accomplished.*

However, Sanders is currently not even bothering to put the energy of his supporters to good use, and I find that unconscionable. Whether Sanders wins the nomination or not, he has the attention, the energy, and the goodwill of a mass of people who are prepared to take over U.S. politics if given a chance–or even an unrealistic promise.

What is he doing with this? Not much, really.

He’s refused to raise funds for the Democratic Party to spend on state and congressional races after having promised to do so. Nor is he campaigning for those candidates as he speaks around the country. No matter who the Democratic nominee for president is, those races matter. They matter in terms of what the president can accomplish, and they matter on their own.

When gridlock is the norm, state races determine how people live. When funds are allocated at the national level, states determine how and even whether to spend that money. Those are the kinds of decisions Sanders is refusing to affect “on principle”.*

Then there are all the people who are pouring their hearts and their dreams and their voices and their energy into supporting Sanders. I know it isn’t reasonable to ask Sanders to have had grassroots organizers and trainers in place here in Minnesota since April of last year, as Clinton has, but they’re hiring field organizers right now, less than a month away from the caucus.

If your campaign depends on the grassroots, you have to do more for your supporters than ask them to show up at rallies sometimes and talk about how much they like you with their Facebook friends. Getting Millennials and people of color into the political system–not just to the voting booth–is the revolution we’re actually going to get. Its impact shouldn’t be underestimated, but it won’t just happen.

Obama knew this eight years ago. Sanders could and should have anticipated the need to organize his supporters, to get them connected locally, to get them practicing his message on each other, to get them comfortable dealing with objections and confrontation. He hasn’t done that. He’s done very little, here and across the nation, to take his support and convert it from a bunch of individual votes to a coordinated campaign that wields the real political power the people in it deserve.*

That’s what has to happen in order to deliver anything like the revolution Sanders is promising (which isn’t a revolution, but it wouldn’t have to be to make real change). The political machine Sanders looks askance at is doing this. He’s not. He’s just telling people to be angry, then giving them nothing effective to do with that anger. That’s not good.

Bernie Sanders is neither prepared to win the nomination and become an effective president nor lose on principle in a way that does anything but squander the support of the people he’s making promises to. There’s nothing revolutionary about that. That’s what people think of when they say, “politics as usual”. That it comes dressed in revolutionary garb just makes me angrier.

And that is why I’m voting against Sanders for the Democratic nomination.

* Yes, I am angry about this.

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Bernie Sanders and Revolution Betrayed
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19 thoughts on “Bernie Sanders and Revolution Betrayed

  1. 1

    I think the lack of state-level organization is one of the things that worries me most as well. The GOP has poured millions, maybe billions into it, and the results are undeniable. Only a state-by-state ground game will be able to reverse the tide of conservative dominance at the state and local levels. I can see Hillary doing work in that area precisely because she is a party person. Sanders is not, which presents problems for the future, after his tenure would be through.

  2. 2

    Great article, Stephanie.

    Me, I’m voting on super Tuesday, and I’m still undecided. You’ve got some very good reasons to go for Clinton; I’ve also hear good reasons for the other side. I’m leaning Clinton right now mainly because I believe she has both the depth of knowledge and the killer instinct to utterly shred Donald Trump into unrecognizable giblets in a debate, and that’s something I would greatly enjoy seeing.

    The larger point, though, is that we must really quash people who say “Hillary or no one” or “Sanders or no one” and vilify the other candidate. We’re fortunate to have two articulate, smart candidates, and both are a million times better than anyone from the other party on their worst day. Let’s all vote in our respective states, then rally around whichever one wins when the time comes.

    And again, thanks for a thought-provoking article.

  3. 5

    As a Sanders supporter, thank you for this.

    1: You’ve reassured me that I can accept a Clinton win (which I still feel is the most probable outcome, both in the primary and the general election).
    2: You’ve given me a very useful list of things to keep in mind if my candidate does win–things that his supporters, in particular, will be obligated to be wiser about and hold him accountable on.

  4. 6

    You make some good points, and Sanders is far from an ideal candidate – but all the alternatives, including Clinton, are oligarch-friendly warmongers (Clinton has supported just about everycriminal and disastrous war the USA has been involved in since she came to prominence, and was recently touting how much Henry Kissinger admires her). The minimum requirement if you want real change in the USA is to get a POTUS who does so too.

    Did you know there are big problems with income inequality? Iā€™m so glad someone finally told me.

    And no doubt you played a big part in getting the issue into national politics.

  5. 7

    You say the data breach finished you off with the Sanders campaign — but speaking as a computer professional who followed the ins and outs of this CLOSELY, if that was your tipping point, it should have finished you off with the Clinton campaign.

    When the dust settled, what’s clear to me was that: Shutting the Sanders campaign out violated the terms DNC’s own agreement regarding data breaches. IMO, that document itself (see below) makes it clear that breaches were routine and not taken particularly seriously; comments from techie staffers from prior campaign (Reddit, slashdot) support this.

    Also, at the point when the Sanders campaign sued for access, the DNC knew the extent of the breach, and that — by all accounts, including the DNC’s — the data accessed wasn’t particularly useful. Nor, by almost all accounts, did it differ from prior breaches that nobody even fussed about.

    PERSONALLY, I’m appalled by the architecture and lack of security shown by the whole incident and by this breach agreement document; it would be trivially easy to create an unbreachable setup. Separate computer for each campaign; master computer for the common data; propagate the common data. Done. But I’ve seen enough bad tech in my life to NOT out and out condemn the DNC alone for suckage here. (This mess finished me with Wasserman-Schultz, and the DNC’s lousy database design, though.)

    But it was not a black eye for the Sanders campaign; they were blindsided by the DNC’s reaction,

    Terms of the agreement — drawn from Snopes, with Snopes’ elipses:
    “Either party may terminate this Agreement in the event that the other party breaches this Agreement; the non-breaching party sends written notice to the breaching party describing the breach; and the breaching party does not cure the breach to the satisfaction of the non-breaching party within ten (10) calendar days following its receipt of such notice … The Agreement does not permit either Party to suspend its performance of the Agreement prior to terminating the Agreement in accordance with the provision above … The Agreement does not permit either Party to terminate or suspend the Agreement without notice, or without providing the breaching Party with the requisite opportunity to cure … The Agreement requires the DNC to “use security measures, with respect to the Campaign Data, that are consistent with good practices in the data processing industry.”
    http://www.snopes.com/bernie-sanders-campaign-data-breach-controversy/

  6. 8

    “However, Sanders is currently not even bothering to put the energy of his supporters to good use…”
    Speaking as one of those supporters — Stephanie, are you on social media, or reading comments sections? You seem to be expecting a traditional campaign, and not seeing it.

    IMO, to the contrary, Bernie is running an extraordinarily effective grassroots campaign; his message at the outset was that this was to be the work of all of us, and that it needed to happen independently and at the grassroots level. The turnout was astonishingly high in New Hampshire, and the canvassing effort was extraordinary. (See, for instance: http://time.com/4168802/bernie-sanders-canvassing-app/)

    The idea is to build a national volunteer election infrastructure, use it to get out the vote for Bernie — which is HAPPENING — and then use that infrastructure to elect a better congress.

    For example — every time the Boston Globe runs a Bernie-negative article (and the Globe is solidly pro-Hillary) I hit the comments section. Almost invariably, Bernie supporters have already gotten there, and posted the facts about what’s been said, the facts about Bernie, and links to his campaign information. If necessary, I fill in any holes… and if no one’s there first, well, I am. Similarly on Facebook — and Twitter, though I’m a newbie there.

    In addition, I keep the following handy: can’t get his ideas through Congress? Don’t bet on it: The idea is to create a groundswell of volunteers, put together an electoral infrastructure — all of which is happening — and elect a better Congress.

    Want to help now? Google “Bernie volunteer.” Want to phonebank? Google “Bernie phonebanking”

    Where are the candidates to elect? Here’s a slate of Sanders Democrats:
    http://m.dailykos.com/story/2016/1/18/1470373/-Here-s-Bernie-s-Revolution-Introducing-Sanders-Democrats

  7. 9

    Interestingly, you don’t tell me anything Clinton’s campaign did wrong in the data breach, but it should be the end of her for me? Okay. Sure.

    I explained this already in the post, but here you go again: The problem is that the Sanders campaign ran around like chickens with their heads cut off after the breach and they did it in public. They were surprised by the DNC? Gosh. Do you think the presidency will be predictable? Do you think the Republicans will send polite notes to let them know where the next fake scandal will be fomented so White House communications will take however many days it takes for them to get their stories straight?

    It’s not going to work that way. It’s going to be messy. If Sanders hasn’t hired anyone who can handle communications for a wee mess like the data breach, we’re all in trouble if he becomes president.

    The comment on what’s happening in the Sanders’ campaign is nice and all, but none of it is a surprise. I am, in fact, looking at all that and more and complaining that this is not anything like a well-run campaign, and it certainly isn’t activist training. It makes me sad that this is what people are being trained to think is effective organizing and activism. And yeah, it makes me angry too.

  8. 10

    Nick, in fact, most of the “real change” in the U.S. is happening at a local level. Much of it is terrible, which is why those local elections matter so much.

    But the activism that is really pushing candidates hard to the left is coming from smaller organizations that didn’t exist a dozen years ago, and many of those activists are young people who would, any other time, be looking at the gray-haired folks sitting around talking in the socialist bookstores, asking why they hadn’t accomplished anything for the last several decades and arguing with them over “identity politics”. They’re going for Sanders because he’s promising them political power. If Sanders isn’t willing to do the work necessary to deliver, he’s just another guy in the bookstore.

  9. 11

    Stephanie, you’re correct; the DNC was the source of most of the bad behavior, not the Clinton campaign. I was wrong to say that you should have been finished with the Clinton campaign.

    Here, then, is the bad behavior on the part of the DNC:

    * One: failed to use “security measures with respect to the campaign data consistent with good practices in the data processing industry.”
    Campaigns simply shouldn’t have a possibility of access to each other’s data, and this should be trivially easy to implement. As the provider of the database, and by this agreement, this is the DNC’s responsibility, and no one else’s.

    * Two: Failed to follow their agreed-on protocol, which specifies written notice, and that the breaching party needs to cure the breach within ten days.

    * Three: Instead of following the agreed-on protocol, and rather than following what appears to have been the precedent from past breaches, announced the breach to the public, created a witch-hunt and a public stink in the media, and locked the Sanders campaign out of their own data a critical point in the campaign. IMO, Uretsky, whom they knew, had worked with, and had recommended to the Sanders campaign, was the victim of the witchhunt; I don’t think the Sanders campaign could afford to keep him on, politically, but as far as I can see, the evidence against him is dubious at best. (And this aspect of it all is what *really* ticks me off as a computer professional — I’ve a *strong* suspicion that the DNC hung an innocent guy out to dry — but insufficient proof.)

    To my mind, the lax security and lax attitude around security creates a strong suspicion that the DNC wanted to snoop. However, this could all just be sheer incompetence, as opposed to malice.

    The DNC technical people appear to have known already that the breach wasn’t serious, based on their announcement — and furthermore, there’s this document that clearly treats breaches with an astonishing degree of casualness.

    Clinton, and Clinton’s technical people, did indeed stay out of the fray. However, there is a strong presumption that there was intent on the part of the DNC to smear or hamper the Sanders campaign on behalf of the Clinton campaign. In such a situation, should Clinton have intervened or spoken up? What’s your opinion?

    How do you suggest the Sanders campaign should have handled the situation differently? What should their message and response have been?

  10. 12

    I am, in fact, well aware of what happened during the data breach.

    Things the campaign should have done for crisis management but didn’t, in order of importance:

    1. Found out what their own campaign people had done before making a statement about it. Even if they had to make a statement early, “We’re shocked and disappointed and investigating to make sure we understand the problem so we can fix it” works just fine.
    2. Apologized to Clinton immediately once they knew what had happened.
    3. Assured the world that they were working with the DNC to resolve any concerns. Almost no one actually cares about the nitty-gritty of contracts, but most people have been through having their personal data exposed at this point. That’s where sympathy lies for the average voter.
    4. Not tried to turn an issue that started with bad behavior from their side into a campaign issue, because this keeps everyone looking at their problem.
    5. Otherwise not mention Clinton in connection with the problem at all, because complaining about the wronged party is a very bad look.
    6. Used the leverage they had, as another wronged party, to keep the main person responsible for the breach quiet. His statement helped no one, not even himself.

    They didn’t really have to do much to look decent. Instead, they looked panicked.

  11. 13

    Speaking as one of those supporters ā€” Stephanie, are you on social media, or reading comments sections? You seem to be expecting a traditional campaign, and not seeing it.

    Obviously I’m not Stephanie, but I, for one, am very hesitant about the Sanders campaign’s lack of attention to “traditional campaign” infrastructure. Buying lunch for precinct walkers and paying for gas money to drive one voter at a time to the polls is infrastructure. Setting up field organizing offices well in advance, hiring precinct captains, all that. Registering new voters, finding voters whose registration has lapsed, getting them to re-register by the deadline. On, and on, and on, and on.

    You can’t put off this kind of thing until the last moment, and something I’m watching very closely is how Sanders reacts to success, in terms of preparing to switch from the primary to the general in the event of his nomination. So far, the comparison to Obama/OFA is unflattering, to say the least.

    Traditional campaigning is what wins elections. Social media and comments sections are good for motivating people, but that’s a complement to traditional election activities, not a replacement.

    What really troubles me is stuff likethis:

    186,874 Iowans participated in the Republican caucus and 171,109 participated in the Democratic caucus, for a total of 357,983 or a turnout rate of 15.7% among those eligible to vote.

    The Iowa Republican caucus blasted through its 2012 record of 121,354, but Democrats could not keep pace with 2008, when 236,000 Iowans participated in the Democratic caucus. Iowa’s turnout rate was therefore down slightly from the 16.1% in the 2008 election, the last election when both parties last held competitive contests.

    After all, the promise of Bernie Sanders is on a wave of millions of people who’ve never voted before coming out to vote.

    Now, NH turnout was more promising, with accounts of 15% of voters being completely new (but that wasn’t just Democrats). So you know, I’m waiting and watching.

  12. 16

    Full-service blog! Thanks! šŸ™‚

    Of course, there is that missing space between “like” and “this”…. but I think I’d rather left it in, just because even mentioning it after you fixed the borked link makes me feel like a tool.

  13. 17

    Thanks especially for the link to that autism policy – I hadn’t heard a peep about it from any major media source (although I’ve seen loads of articles about what she’s wearing…) . Like that article’s writer, I’m impressed with how autistic-centric it is. Not perfect, but a lot better than what we’ve seen from anyone else with any political power.

  14. 18

    Stephanie Zvan@10,

    I appreciate the importance of local struggles, but they have most success and staying power when there are also national or international figure(s) andor movement(s) fully committed to the relevant aims. Even if I conceded everything you have said here to the detriment of Sanders is true, I would still be campaigning for him, and trying to help remedy the defects you point out, if I were American – because his hostility to the oligarchy appears entirely genuine. Clinton fails to inspire – because even when she can bring herself to talk about the scandal of gross economic inequality, people sense that she doesn’t mean it – how could she, when she’s prepared to take speaker fees running into six figures from the big bankers?

    It’s still very likely Clinton will win the nomination, and I’d certainly back her against any of the Republican candidates. But her candidacy, and the lack of other viable candidates apart from Sanders, both show how deep the rot in the Democratic Party runs.

  15. 19

    Thanks for your blog post. My personal assessment in a vacuum leans Bernie since Hillary is a hawk who admires Kissinger.

    But none of us lives in a vacuum, and Sanders’s lack of executive experience is indeed troubling. More importantly, as a cis-het middle-class white dude, there are a number of issues I’m not going to be jarred by unless something forces them into my attention. The fact that the Black community is overwhelmingly for Clinton (by 6:1 in SC) tells me that there are probably just such issues that I better find out about.

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