All the feelz: Bernie vs Hillary in the battle for my heart
This is the weirdest primary season yet. Amirite?
This is the weirdest primary season yet. Amirite?
I’m ridiculously conflicted about who to vote for in the New York Democratic primary on Tuesday. I’m even scared to write those words, because I know friends in both Democratic camps will start lobbing stuff at me about how horrible the Other Candidate is. Hold off there, for a minute, friends. I loves ya, but I needs to work through some stuff here.
When Hillary first started making noise about running for office, I was like, “Well, of course. And hell, she should. She’s put in her damn time.” But other than that, I wasn’t too excited about her candidacy. My ladypower self wants to see a woman become president, for sure. And I love, love, love that she is STILL standing after decades of crap being slung at her. There’s something about that, in my middle-aged-recently-turned-40 soul, that feels so… affirming. There’s something about getting to the age that my mother warned me about — when she told me that at 40, she started to finally worry less about what other people thought of her. There’s something about looking at Hillary and thinking, “Damn, grrl. Yeah.”
Of course, then there’s my loud, radical lefty self who hasn’t dug a lot of her policies over the years. War, superpredators, corporate welfare… I’m sure I don’t have to tell my lefty pals what all those are. She’s championed women globally, though, and if you haven’t ever seen the Beijing speech from 1995, you should. A few of our clients, including Planned Parenthood, endorsed Hillary along the way, and yeah, that’s meaningful to me.
Then Bernie came along and was like, “I’m here to shake it up, y’all.” (Or, something like that, I can’t remember his exact words.) I’ve been a Bernie fan for years, and this guy really holds the values that I treasure in a lefty. Do I have to name them for you? I don’t think so, right? Plus, through my work over the last decade with Jim Hightower, I’ve been able to see what a good dude this Bernie dude is. Hightower became an official surrogate for the campaign, and I’ve watched the campaign unfold into something truly remarkable.
But Bernie screwed up big time with #BlackLivesMatter last summer, his campaign has said some really sexist stuff about Hillary, and he seems to think that being an ally means banking your good karma — that marching back in the day, and doing some insanely great stuff back then, means you’re automatically vetted for life as the Good White Guy™. “Ally” is a verb. A lifelong battle to use your privilege for good. (I’ve also had to learn that.) Still, Bernie is honest. And real. And genuinely gives a s*** about making the world a better place. I’ve never seen that in a politician before.
Now that campaign has come to New York State, I couldn’t feel more confused. I’m reminded a something a colleague in independent media posted after Super Tuesday: “Bernie is finished after Super Tuesday. Bernie is just getting started. Hillary has cemented her inevitable nomination. Hillary is in real trouble. Trump’s nomination is inevitable and his prospects in the general look terrifying. Trump’s nomination is unlikely and he’ll get smashed in the general. Only Bernie can beat Trump. Only Hillary can beat Trump. Only Cruz can beat Trump. Only Rubio can beat Trump.”
Exactly.
I mostly stay away from being an activist or advocate in national electoral politics because it’s always so emotionally draining and ultimately disappointing. A while ago, I realized that my work is best suited to the connecting the insides of the movements I run in, building relationships and holding my people accountable. I love supporting the people who are bridge-building in the battlegrounds, and I also love thinking about how the issues I work on will resonate with the people I grew up with (largely conservative, rural/blue collar, salt-of-the-earthers). So, every four years, I wait for everyone to pick a candidate, and then I like to work on making sure voters aren’t disenfranchised and things like that.
I started to warm up to Hillary sometime in January, when I finally listened to Another Round’s interview with her. It felt real, and vulnerable, and like the Hillary I knew was in there all along. Tough ’n’ tender. Talking about her life and everything that’s been done to her. Listening to two young Black women ask her deep questions, and not let her off the hook. It’s what I needed.
The now-infamous BernieBro contingent probably ended up fueling my continued wandering down Hillary Lane. Bernie’s bringing in a lot of angry independent voters, which is a double-edged sword. Yay for people newly interested in shaping the future of their country! Boo for white guys so entitled in their privilege that they’ll interrupt complete strangers’ dinners to inform a table of women of color why they have to vote for Bernie! (This actually happened to people I know.)
I saw the insane amount of sexism being lobbed at Hillary from the left. And I can already hear the devil’s advocates’ voices in my head, yelling, “When? Where?” If I get up the gumption to catalog it all, I will — but otherwise, just roll with me here for a minute. I don’t think that every criticism of Hillary was sexist by any means. But there was a LOT of unnecessary stuff that made me think, “What?!”
In starting to share tacit support for Hillary’s struggle, at the very least, I experienced the worst of what the Left has to offer sometimes: our utter conviction that we are so correct in our beliefs that if we just state them over and over, the other side will become magically convinced. Just as the facts will not set us free, repeating the same message over and over will not either. In fact, it probably does your argument a lot of harm — thanks, confirmation bias. Bernie supporters have been pretty unrelenting and shrill.
So, I’ve been quietly hanging out in the whispered corners of the feminist Left, where Hillary supporters congregate, sipping tea. I’ve appreciated the nuanced articles that my feminist friends have written, supporting both candidates. On the work front, I’ve been trying to help Jim Hightower be effective in his support for Bernie — I loved this quote from his appearance on C-SPAN, for example, and the Internet went bananas for the clip I edited.
What I’m trying to say is that I’ve been in the swirl of this all along, and it’s only gotten harder since the campaigns arrived in New York. I cringed reading that transcript of the Daily News interview with Bernie; I struggled with Hillary’s “I’m a hometown girl” approach to New York. Lots of blech.
On Monday and Tuesday, I had the opportunity to travel with the Bernie campaign through upstate New York, where I’m from. Hightower was speaking at several of the events, and I rode along to support him and wrangle whatever needed wrangling. I got to meet Bernie and his staff, and witness the decades of friendship between him and Hightower. That was pretty meaningful.
Since I also went to all the rallies, I listened to Bernie’s stump speech a few times, and found myself still kind of… unmoved. Yes, each point is a core value of mine, but somehow, he wasn’t landing them into my heart. I wanted to feel Bernie in my heart. Intellectually, though, I know that what he believes is what I believe. I was ridiculously impressed and inspired by the incredible amounts of energy in his supporters everywhere we went… like, Beatles-level freakouts of excitement. Sometimes that turned to booing Hillary, which felt gross. And these were pretty white crowds… I mean, upstate is pretty white in general, but yeah. Still, I loved bathing in their fervor. I felt supported and part of something suddenly. It felt great.
My intellectual affection for Bernie only grew in those two days. I didn’t spend quality time with him or anything, although I did ask him if he wanted me to do his hair like mine at one point on the plane. (His response: “That would certainly get us into the media.”) I saw him be incredibly focused everywhere he went and on everything he did. I started questioning the bars we raise for our leaders — the charisma we require, our need to get a beer with them. I feel like if I sat down to get a beer with Bernie, he’d be like, “Great. So, now let’s talk about JP Morgan.”
It reminded me of when I met another great lefty dude a few years ago — Ralph Nader. It was at the party for the premiere of the documentary about him. I asked him how he dealt with, or prevented, burnout.
“Burn-what?” he said. It was loud at the party.
“Burn out!” I called up to him. He’s very tall.
He leaned down to me. “Heh?”
“BURN OUT.”
“Oh,” he shrugged. “I just keep going. What else am I going to do?”
There are, it would seem, a few people in this world who don’t experience burnout. (They are all named Ralph Nader.) I’m not one of them. But maybe Bernie is? He has that same kind of laser focus, this relentlessness and impatience to address the injustice he sees. (Which he doesn’t always see fully, for sure).
I started thinking about one of our clients, Jeffrey Pfeffer, who’s a professor at Stanford on leadership. His latest book is Leadership BS, and it’s one of the best nonfiction books I’ve read in years. He talks a lot about how the qualities we hold high for leaders are actually, well, BS. Charismatic leaders are often jerks and bad managers, for example. (Cough cough, Trump, cough cough.)
So maybe it’s the kind of nerdy, wonky, focused guy we want running the country right now?
Watching the Brooklyn debate last night sank my heart further, though. I loved seeing them get into their policy differences without attacking each other personally. Gloves off! It was like watching a hockey game and cheering for fights! But Bernie stumbled a few times for me again, especially when Hillary finally brought up reproductive freedom… Bernie said he was 100% pro-choice (yay), and then pivoted to LGBT rights. Those are important, especially now, with all the statewide initiatives to segregate and demean LGBT folks. But, um, could we just stick around and talk about my uterus for like, one minute here?
Hillary also didn’t win many points for me, but the worst was listening to the crowds boo the other candidates. It felt embarrassing and childish. I hate what we’ve become.
And I still don’t know who I’ll vote for on Tuesday.