I’ve been hearing people (Bernie supporters) refer to Hillary as a “flawed” candidate. Flawed, haaving imperfections, not perfect. You know, like Jesus Bernie Sanders. Unflawed = “pure”. How pure are you?
For as long as I can remember, the Republican party has been waging an ideological battle with itself, testing candidates on their fidelity to principle, to are you conservative enough? Do you hate gays and abortions enough? by requiring that any Republican candidate for office there submit to passing a strict purity test in order to qualify for the ballot. making the sign a fucking pledge. The rules: You must certify that you have only ever had silent, awkward, straight missionary sex with the person you are married to, only while married. Never ever look at porn, not even in disgust. Gays doing marriage, or even civil unions, to each other? Uh, no. Guns for everyone, without any restrictions whatsoever, including places of worship? You bet! Capital punishment because every life is sacred except for not every life because COME ON, some people just need killing? Obviously. Dress codes and teaching kids the Bible in public schools? Duh. Driver’s license exams in English only? Naturally. Mandatory photo IDs for voting? Pffft, like you even have to ask. Democrats don’t usually have contests like this.
The goal of this exciting the Whackadoodle Wingnut Conservative Purity Test was to stop the epidemic of SECRET DEMOCRATS who have long been infiltrating the GOP and running as Republicans in order to destroy the brand, with their filth. You won’t find those moderate Republicans campaigning for office. This is where we got “RINOs” – Republicans in Name Only. For years, those on the left have laughed at Republicans as they fell victim to ideological purists (Tea Party politics being the most hilarious example). The advent of Bernie Sanders’ revolution has exposed some of the same cracks, however, on the left. Like all those Republican match-ups in modern politics, the Democratic primary race between Hillary and Bernie has 
degenerated into a demoralizing catfight over who has the greater claim to ideological purity.
For all of 2015, Hillary and Bernie shamed the GOP with their respectful, issue-oriented debate about things that matter to working Americans. The lead-up to Iowa intensified, with both sides drawing sharper contrasts. But for the most part, the Democratic candidates ran an amicable contest. In the aftermath of Hillary Clinton’s historic Iowa victory, Bernie Sanders has been giving “real progressive” (PINO) purity test soliloquies, as if he’s the High Fucking Sparrow, “of the people”, standing in judgement, like a zealot whipping up an army just to bern it all done. Negative is not Bernie’s brand and has never been his message.
In 2008, when the choice was between Obama and Clinton, Obama’s appeal was the historic breakthrough he represented rather than doctrinal difference. In earlier battles, the central preoccupation was usually electability. You have to go back to Eugene McCarthy’s anti-war challenge to Lyndon Johnson in 1968 to recall such an ideological civil war inside the Democratic party. But there’s a culture that’s developed among young folks where they are assigning moral values to political positions. If you haven’t had a spotless record, if you’ve ever changed your mind on anything, you are flawed.
Voting on your morals alone allows you to get away with being impractical But isn’t it more moral to actually win and get something close to a progressive agenda, rather than….. nothing? And who made Bernie Sanders the commissioner of progressivism, anyway? Being more liberal than someone doesn’t mean they aren’t “progressive”. When Sanders rails about the “establishment” he’s being a hypocrite. He has held public office since 1981, been in Congress since 1991. Nobody could be more part of the “establishment” than Bernie Sanders. And how progressive are you really, if you can’t be a teeny bit excited that a non-penis American is going to be president of these United States?
I remember all the times over the course of my life as a democrat that I’ve shrieked “fucking democrats!!!” Bernie is unapologetically liberal. For decades, democrats have been running from the term “liberal” because we let right wing nut jobs turn it into a dirty word; Bernie Sanders reminded us that it’s something to be proud of. He’s also reminded us that government can and should be a force for good in the lives of its citizens. He’s forced the discussion of issues like income inequality, something democrats don’t like to make too much noise about because the republicans will accuse us of fomenting class warfare and then Bubba in his single-wide painted like a confederate flag won’t vote democratic. In short, I came to believe that Bernie was good for the democratic party, forcing it to at least acknowledge the existence of its left wing. I agree that the caucus system is inherently flawed; it’s a relic of a time before electronic communication, when it took days to travel from one’s locality to the capital to participate in the process. The rules it requires to function elude people who have not studied the process and the history behind it, more of the ongoing dearth of critical thinking that plagues this nation founded on the assumption of critical thinking. Bernie Sanders is inherently correct in his analysis of what’s wrong with the country. But you can be right as you want, but if you can’t enroll people in your ideas, being “right” is the booby prize. It’s useless if you can’t get anything done. Apparently, a lot of people agree with that, mostly, apparently, us “Olds”.
Now I’m kind of like fuck that guy. He had been too good to be a democrat and now wants to use the machinery of the party to run for president. Much like Trump, Bernie’s unexpected success seems to have given him the sense entitlement routinely attributed to Hillary and now, if he isn’t given the nomination despite the fact that he hasn’t earned it, he’ll turn the remainder of the campaign and the convention into a dumpster fire like a common Trump. I half expect him to start using trump’s “crooked Hillary” epithet.
Doubtless there are Bernie supporters who, when their candidate loses the nomination, will refuse to cast a vote for Clinton in November. I hear this all the time. Of course, that just helps Trump roll into office but in their rage, they really do not care that millions of people who will lose their health insurance. They say Hillary is a “corporate shill” or has only Wall Street’s best interest at heart, but Hillary Clinton will not kill Obamacare. Let’s look at the big picture, a picture where tyrants and oligarchs like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz loom over democracy like shadows of a past we thought our Constitution had banished. As I recall, Ideological Purity Corps voted for Nader in 2000, and that worked out pretty well for the parts of the environment that didn’t get blown up. Take a long hard look at Republicans and see where that road leads. You know it takes all sorts to create a political coalition and if we frame everything around some flawed/purity test bullshit, we’ll become a permanent minority. People come from all walks of life and cultural mores, there are plenty of libtards who own guns and support gun rights, some of them don’t even know they’re libtards and instead call themselves ‘libertarian’. They can’t stand the GOP but they don’t like that all our solutions seem to be to take away gun rights, and they want to be able to smoke pot. The same thing is true with abortion- there are plenty of religious libtards who are personally pro-life but don’t support criminalization. Come onboard, there are libtards (like myself) who idolize FDR and are not complete doves about foreign policy, come onboard! If we start picking people off by saying “you’re not progressive” and deciding we’re the fucking arbiters of being progressive, we’re just shooting ourselves in the fucking face.
I’ve learned many lessons in my LONG LIFE IN POLITICS that perhaps some of you YOUNGS have not yet learned. I learned the abject disappointment of having your dreams crushed. I learned that party elections are not a process of a few months around primary election day. I learned that sometimes choosing the lesser of two evils is a necessary choice for getting to a better future. I learned that the party process requires a long term commitment, lots of long hours spent in the year to year drudge of party governance. I learned you must be involved in the countless unpaid and thankless tasks that make the party wheels turn smoothly. I learned that working your way up the ladder of leadership requires a consistent show of commitment to the success of the party. The Sanders campaign understands none of these things. They think their short lived Bernie-come-lately Santa Claus list entitles them, anoints them really, to take over a party to which they have not been committed in the past and to which they are not committed today. When did Bernie become a Democrat? Like yesterday? When this is over he will go back to his stubborn “Independent” status in the Senate. I say, between election day this year and election day in four years, SHOW THE FUCK UP as a Democratic party stalwart. Show up for the mid-term elections. Show up for local elections. Campaign for Democrats up and down the ballot. Do that and then you and I will have many long discussions at local party meetings about how to change the party.
“But, but, compromise sullies the pristine perfection of our ideals! It’s almost as if politics weren’t some sort of spiritual quasi-religious experience”.
I am truly, truly, sorry that humanity doesn’t support the ideologically pure as much as some would like them to do. Having to cobble together a coalition out of disparate constituencies with competing interests, which is necessary in order to mount a credible campaign for elective office in a democracy, means that candidates have to dismount from their lofty equines and get their hands dirty in the very brutal and messy scrum called politics. Sure, one can choose to remain above all of that and trust that the purity of your message will sell itself. And then if the hoi polloi don’t flock to you and give you their support, it just means that they have been too brainwashed to know what is good for them, and therefore deserve what they get. No need to lay out your arguments, make your case, and try to actually, you know, to convince people by (ugh) campaigning. (Let alone listen to their concerns.) Or trying to wrangle deals in order to gain support, which is the veritable definition of “politics”. The “pure vision” should be all that is needed. Since utopia hasn’t arrived yet then I guess we’re all still being sheeple, aren’t we? We need to feel less, and think more. Take Trump’s lesson to heart: Feeling only leads to Hitler salutes.
The only way to get absolutely every single element of your program adopted is to completely eliminate all opposition and outlaw all dissent. People are just funny that way; you can’t get 100% of the population to support anything without resorting to serious coercion. So in the Real World you need to negotiate and cut deals. In politics no side ever gets everything it wants. Accepting half a cake isn’t a defeat. Ideological purity doesn’t compete well in the real world of politics. The only office that the ideologically pure ever attain is “Martyr.” Also, make sure your candidate can live up his own purity tests before inflicting it on others.
Intimidating working class women at their jobs? Sounds like white male bullshit to me. Calling Barbara Boxer a “bitch”? Your Misogynist Asshole bona fides are showing. Young, please google Barbara Boxer since you don’t seem to know jack shit about her. If you had been invested in politics prior to 2015, you would know that Senator Boxer is a hero… a progressive icon really who has given 35 years of her life serving her country. Seeing you morons hiss and boo her as if she was some kind of enemy actually brought me to tears. Trying to compete against the deep dark pockets of the GOP without money? It’s called suicide by purity. It’s like the guy who steps off the curb in front of an oncoming Mack truck and gets creamed. But at least he gets to put “I had the right-of-way” on his headstone. Stop making the perfect the enemy of the good, people.
Ideological purity – the idea that following only a prescribed set of political doctrines bestows legitimacy – is inherently un-democratic, and Democrats must avoid the trap Republicans fell into when they allowed their own moderates and centrists to go with the way of the buffalo. Ideological purity is contrary to the very idea of democracy, which vests power in the hands of the people – all people, moderates and extremists alike and everyone in between. Democracy is the sum of its parts. It is also contrary to the expressed ideals of the Democratic Party, which is supposed to be a party for all people, inclusive where the GOP has become inclusive: a party for whites and blacks and everyone in between, whatever your nationality and ethnicity, whatever your religion and gender, whether you’re gay or straight or sexually fluid. And yes, you can be a Democrat whether you want to break up the banks or not, or whether you support Obamacare or want single payer, or whether you support socialism or not. The problem is not the wildly variant views we hold, but those who insist that they, and only they, are the real Democrats, the champions of ideological purity in the party where it can never be allowed to exist. It’s not an easy job, being democratic, but because one party as already given up on the dream of America does not mean we should do the same. We are the smart party, not poisoned by ideological purity. Let’s keep in mind that if Hillary Clinton is a Democrat in name only, than Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat at all, but an Independent. It’s funny how some Democrats are willing to welcome Sanders the Independent into the ranks but eject long-time Democrat Lady from them.
We Democrats are all Democrats. There has always been a spectrum from moderate to extreme and some are socially liberal and some are socially conservative while supporting Democratic economic policies. A political party is a mixed bag and that is how it has always been. We don’t all agree on every point, but that’s why we vote (btw, President Obama had the Senate and Congress with the largest majority in 45 years. Do you know how hard that is to accomplish? Bernie wouldn’t have near that kind of majority. Why didn’t the Revolution show up in 2010 and 2014)?
Certainly, the left-right political spectrum has had its weaknesses exposed by numerous commentators and analysts. And what was a spectrum that really didn’t work is now replaced by labels: “Extremist” at one end and “RINO/DINO” in the middle. There is no place, it seems, for anyone anywhere between those points. And that is a problem. A big problem. Either/or arguments, called the “false dilemma” fallacy by philosophers, are fallacious for a reason: there is almost always a third, or even a fourth or fifth choice. Our choices are almost never limited to either/or, black/white, or good/evil. We live in a world of nuance, and either/or thinking is for weak minds who don’t want to be bothered with figuring it out.We humans like to order our reality. We like definitions, but definitions, while helpful, are problematic by their very nature. We can’t agree on them for one thing. There is no definition of “Republican” that explains both teddy Roosevelt and Ted Cruz.
Think of Greenpeace, and PETA, in a self-sabotage contest, their naïveté (or rigidity, it’s sometimes tough to tell which) is kind of shocking. Which reminds of the Beverly Hills 90210 episode where Brenda gets arrested for joining a hardcore animal rights group which reminds me to add that the whole college atmosphere in the Sanders campaign really stinks. When you live in a bubble on a college campus, it gives you the luxury of having ideologically pure positions. White men can afford to be like, ‘Bernie or Bust,’” nostalgic for a past that never quite existed. besides, there’s more social capital to be gained by posting something positive about Bernie.
No politician is unflawed and we all have to make value judgments about them. But there will come a time when even the most hardcore Sanders supporter has to admit that it’s over. It is at that time we will find out who the true progressives are. If you really care about what Sanders preached you will want to see those ideas persevere and won’t let them live and die with his candidacy- otherwise you’re just a member of a cult of personality. Sitting home in November is not how any real liberal would act, voting for Trump just proves you’re in no way, shape or form progressive. And continuing to parrot GOP talking points about the candidate who is essentially the de facto nominee just shows that you’re being a petulant sore loser who puts the game of politics ahead of the ideas that you claim to cherish.
Time to grow up and face reality. Prove we should take you seriously and give you the time of day you keep demanding by acting like adults. It’s OK to be FeeltheBern and not be happy the shit shows at some of his rallies. Instead of flooding the world with dumb Youtube videos and even dumber conspiracy theories, put some effort into advancing those ideas you claim to care about- even if it means risking your “purity” by being realistic about the current state of politics. That revolution ain’t happening this fall- that doesn’t mean it never will, but it’s not going to if you continue to act like spoiled children whining about not getting every last pony in the entire fucking world. There will be other Bernies- go find one in your local community, instead of being apathetic nonparticipants until one falls in your lap by running for president. You want that change? Start changing things, instead of ignoring the process then whining when it doesn’t meet your expectations, once you finally become engaged.
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But no one will read this because it is too long and isn’t in the form of a shitty meme.
There is no ideological purity in American politics, it’s all donors and sock-puppets. We had one president who came so close to purity that he may have been made in a test-tube in a lab over in Kenya and he’s out in November and he ain’t ever coming back.