Why I am Disconsolate at the Failure of the Bernie Sanders Campaign

My friends and acquaintances seem confused or at least bemused by my support of Bernie Sanders.  It is as if they think he is like all the other candidates in so many ways though some of them think the Senator is a socialist in ways they are not, as Americans, in spite of the numerous social institutions we, (as Americans,) support.  Some are frustrated I have not already transformed into a full-throated supporter of Joe Biden.  I am disconsolate about Sanders suspending his candidacy and supporting Joe Biden.  More accurately I am disconsolate at the results in Michigan and the other states Sanders did not win.  Here is why.

My first political icon was Ronald Reagan.  In my teens I was being raised by my aunt and uncle to be a strong, fundamentalist Christian.  At a younger age I remember there was a big hubbub over Richard Nixon getting impeached leading to his resignation.  Later I recall my uncle liking Jimmy Carter because he was a Christian.  I guess he voted for the Georgia peanut farmer. 

As Reagan ascended however, virtually everyone I was exposed to at 15-years-old adored Reagan.  In retrospect it seems strange.  Why would adults vote for a former movie actor.  It seemed like we should demand our best and brightest be dedicated to the craft of politics or legislating for decades at least.

As George HW Bush came to power I was beginning to question the politics of my community as well as my own faith.  I renounced my Christianity at 28 and over about the next five years I did a 180 on many of my core beliefs.  By the time Clinton won the Presidency, even though I voted for Ross Perot, I had concluded that the ideas of the American right were wrong. 

In the preceding years I had been impoverished.  I slept on floors.  I went to jail a couple of times for crimes of poverty.  I came to know what it meant to be disadvantaged and my disadvantage came from being emotionally stunted.  It came from growing up in several households because my mother was incarcerated and it came from fundamentalism being thrust upon me along with the responsibility for choosing my faith.  I went forward on February 23^rd, 1976, as ‘Just As I Am,’ filled the sanctuary of a Baptist church.  It came from not knowing or meeting my father. 

I was pissed off about how expensive being poor was.  I was frustrated at how difficult it was to gain a livable wage, which was complicated by the fact that I was extremely excited about being young and alive.  I used to joke when out drinking with friends that we were celebrating our youth and I felt absolutely entitled to do just that. 

I was surely trying to find my way.  I was focused on meeting a pretty girl who would become my partner and help me navigate all that was foreign to me. I was at ease when drinking.  I was able to laugh.  It was actually more about being with people.  I came to love the democracy of a bar setting, the freedom to move about and say whatever I wanted to say.  My money was as good as the next person’s and I cut my teeth in the bar on defending my newfound values which included being thankful for and defending the social safety net.   

I personally came to know what was wrong with our system of justice and our prisons. Having grown up a ward of the court of the county of Los Angeles and using Medi-Cal stickers to pay for fillings and vaccinations, I also knew the value of of the social safety net instinctively and intimately. I can attest to how ungreatful a kid can be for receipt of free hot lunches in elementary school but also arrive at adulthood in one piece and realize one day how generous and empathetic the good people of Los Angeles county truly are. 

I had little in the way of the power of woo.  I was a rube in the ways of the world.  I was a hayseed on transactional analysis.  I had moved away from a career fighting fire because I was not ready or interested in moving into the next phase of life, accepting a career I had fallen into and moving on to family life or whatever.  I was too irresponsible for all that, so I went back to school to become a journalist.  I took a series of low security, low paying, part-time jobs.  I landed in a bookstore and become an assistant manager, which was really just a title that allowed me to lock the doors at night but otherwise did not pay a livable wage. I lived in a saint’s living room for three years, rode a bicycle to work and took a bus to school. 

And I read.  I listened to Rage Against the Machine and read a biography of Che Guevara, (Companero.) I read the liberal ideas of Robert A Heinlein.  I read HL Mencken.  I read the classics: Hemingway and Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. I read Tayeb Salih and Chinua Achebe.  I read Shakespeare, Confucius, Hesse, and I read Henry Miller, like everything he ever wrote including his ‘On Writing.” I came to adore Milan Kundera, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Knut Hamsun, Blaise Cendrars-thank you Henry Miller.  I found life truth in Voltaire, Neruda, Emerson, Thoreau, and Wordsworth.  I cried at the end of Richard Rodriguez books and also at the end of Bridges of Madison County. 

I never understood how others could read these books and not be enlightened in a similar manner as me, which is to say to remain an American conservative.  In poli-sci classes I spoke up on behalf of unions by highlighting the strength of the American economy and how it corresponded with the strength of American unions.  I forensically defeated would be foes in class on subjects such as Vietnam, the war on drugs, supply side economics.  I was frustrated throughout the 90s at the inherent inequality in America.  We had become a society where shareholders were valued over stakeholders, factories moved to China as predicted by Marx, (and yes, I read the communist manifesto because I had a need to know.)  American workers were played like pawns in the grand scheme.  Did I tell you I also read John Reed, the great American writer who detailed the Bolshevik revolution?  I concluded that the wealthy class would always use its money to vouchsafe it from generation to generation as well as to capitalize their accounts.  I correlated the age of corporatism with the wealthy class and I deduced the only counterbalance the people had to the power of money was in organization, which is to say if and when the masses could get together, pool their money and vote in masse for the ideas and policies that benefitted them and against those that worked against them, only then could they realistically or effectively push back against the forces of capital. 

Mostly, considering how organized corporate America was, (is,) in terms of owning the levers of the dissemination of information, supporting an establishment of a two, (establishment) party system, as well as being more or less omnipotent the world over.  When Bill Clinton repealed the Glass Steagall Act I saw that both parties were true to the status quo.  Democrats were certainly not going to make structural changes that would actually alter the fundamentals of our economy nor our priorities in terms of policies around the climate, the social safety net, democracy as it relates to the electoral college, voter suppression, gerrymandering, or justice. 

In the early 2000s I became familiar with Bernie Sanders. He was an Independent Senator from Vermont and he could be heard on Fridays ‘Brunch with Bernie,’ on the Thom Hartmann radio show. For a brief moment there was a feint liberal voice on American AM radio and Senator Sanders espoused my ideals and my ideas as I had formulated them having read Noam Chomsky’s works including ‘The Common Good,’ and ‘Manufacturing Consent.’  He worked hard to take care of American veterans.  He recognized our inequality problem in a time when absolutely no one dare speak of such a thing, (let alone believe it.)

When I first heard the term democratic socialism I found it quizzical both because, what did it mean(?!), and also because why would the good Senator from Vermont openly identify with it.  Later I concluded Sanders did it to conjure FDR and his new deal and also perhaps almost tongue in cheek, as if to shock people into thinking about the meaning so that he could go about defining it for the rest of his career. 

In the nearly 20 years since I’ve been following Senator Sanders career I’ve watched closely as he advocated for veterans, his common refrain being that it was incumbent upon us as a nation to take care of our soldiers after they took care of us by risking it all. 

More he went across the Canadian border with diabetes patients to help them buy insulin at Canada’s significantly lower prices…(and fought big pharma every chance he got.)  He showed up on the strike lines with telecom workers in Boston.  H refused to accept the sorry state of our prison system. As a Senator of the United Stated he openly supported legalization of marijuana. He doesn’t only speak up for the Palestinians, which is again against the grain but the right thing to do, he also works on behalf of any number of underdogs. 

Senator Sanders understands the leverage of capital and he understands the masses get trounced in class warfare unless they can figure out how to band together.  He probably knows that when the masses didn't get together, (the usual,) conditions typically got so bad a violent revolution became the only recourse. 

In the end his run for the Presidency was always an uphill climb.  In 2015 I went to the Hollywood Musician’s Union to listen to Bernie speak.  He talked about all of positions he thought were important and not being addressed by our prominent candidates.  He was in Hollywood, (though far from “in Hollywood,” the way we think of most candidates showing up locally with hands out to the stars,) ostensibly to see if support existed for a candidate like him.  I think we were effusive in our support. 

When the Senator finished his speech I got up from my 2^nd row, (center aisle seat,) and reached him first as he stepped down two steps towards the audience. I told him I hoped he would run and that if he took a quick picture with me it would make my year.  I handed my phone to my friend Linda as Bernie smiled his agreement and we turned for the picture.  Yeah, I took a selfie with Bernie before it became a thing, certainly long before another favorite, Elizabeth Warren, began counting her selfies and reporting the statistics to the news.

Here's the thing.  We pooled our money in a corrupted system to elect our candidate to an especially powerful position.  That has been our primary hope these past six years. Otherwise, as much as I know the younger generation is true to their morals and values while the older generations preach righteousness and justify exporting arms, kids in cages, democracy crushing institutions, three strikes laws, the oil industry, lower and lower taxes on the wealthy class, union busting, and so on with all sorts of moral equivalencies and arguments about complex decisions, we know the system is influenced by money and the older generations have most of that.

We pooled our money because we know we can’t organize well enough to overcome the money poured into local elections and judges and abortion campaigns to win over the fundamentalist votes and against gun reform to win over the gun enthusiast voters and limit the vote campaigns and the torrent of right wing talk radio and the propaganda network that gets overwhelming ratings because their viewers lap up the fear and xenophobia and sensationalism they sell and the major US corporation owned corporate media that plays the foil to Fox News but in reality disseminates establishment, status quo views that may be in favor of some socially open or liberal ideas but protect the institutions and policies that protect the economic structure of the federal reserve and the stock market and the wealthy class. 

I don’t think wealthy Americans, and by wealthy I mean top 1-2%, are in any way bad people.  I do think they use their money to preserve their fortunes and I don’t think they should be allowed political power.  Bernie has been one of the few consistent voices against the Citizen’s United SCOTUS decision because he understands it allows the wealthy class to leverage their money to affect public policy and he knows that can crush the will of the people. 

So, we pooled our money because we thought if we could get one Bernie Sanders into the White House, we might be able to turn our country toward the light. We could have a President talking about the important issues like fixing our healthcare system, raising the minimum wage but more importantly about helping all Americans get a livable wage, transitioning away from fossil fuels in favor of renewables, and a sensible foreign policy based on fairness and collaboration instead of authoritarianism. 

We pooled our $27 contributions in hopes a President Sanders could allow more bright, young candidates to infiltrate our corrupted government at all levels.  We pooled our money in hopes of avoiding another Hillary Clinton.  As establishment candidates go Hillary was and is plenty capable but we know what the establishment candidates do after eight years of Barack Obama, by which I mean Timothy Geithner and the Wall Street bailout and drones and inaction on so many of the issues important to the quality of life of the masses of people on planet Earth. 

We pooled our money for Bernie Sanders because we trust him. He has been so consistent.  He cannot be bought.  One of the things the wealthy class pays to have said about Senator Sanders is that he has not been super successful in terms of passed legislation but we pooled our money because he changed the conversation and we wanted the conversation changed.  If he has been rigid about how he votes in the senate it is because he won’t play ball and we pooled our money specifically for that. 

Did we like the other primary candidates this year?  Well, compared to Donald Trump, of course we did.  We especially liked Elizabeth Warren because she had adopted so many of Sanders’ policies and she understands economy and fights bullies for justice and students and the economically oppressed.  We like that the establishment candidates have embraced so many policies in vogue if because Sanders championed them on a national stage first.  At the end however, Warren was a Republican and she was not there on many of the policy positions we espouse until much later.  Outside of Warren the candidates, particularly Joe Biden, are birds of a democratic feather.  They have been around the block.  They've played ball.  Their positions have changed.  They have secrets mostly associated with what they did for money to get into the gaggle of the powerful to begin with.  As vastly more fit as they are for high office than Donald Trump they could not be more underwhelming to us.  We pooled our money because we trust Bernie Sanders to not govern based on him but rather based on us.

Why am I disconsolate?  I'm disconsolate because in 2015 when we convinced Bernie Sanders to run for the Presidency we felt like a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens.  We wanted to change the world.  

Invisible Hayseeds

There is something about reading this story in this time.  I mean, Invisible Man.  Ralph Ellison.  The wunderkind of letters who penned only the one novel, prolific as it is. 

A moment comes in Ellison’s story when our main character, the nameless Brother, eulogizes the dead Tod Clifton.  He advises the mourners to go home and mourn no more as their mourning is impotent.  He chides them their inaction, their inability to organize and do anything, their complacency and willingness to be subjugated. 

Our nameless Brother, the Invisible Man, is a hayseed, too.  His every circumstance is a product of innocence, which underscores the fact the world has always suffered a dearth of real teachers. 

I prefer the classics and Invisible Man is just one I never happened onto previously.  However, my reading it coincided with the fact I have been in Chicago recently; the city of brotherhood.  The city of unions.  The city of high values and organized corruption.  The people are angry.  Every political discussion I was privy to, on the ‘L,’ on the tv, in the office, at the barbecue with so many Eastern Europeans, was derailed, derided, divisive, dehumanizing. 

My friend said all the violence is happening in six square blocks.  Someone else referred to it as black on black crime.  The morning after the President made a speech as part of the procession of speeches nominating Hillary Clinton for President I told my classroom I was back in a bromance with this President.  I had endured a season of disillusionment but now I was back.  I believed he was honorable.  80% of my classroom was black women and they practically cooed at me.  After all I was in the land of Obama. 

Dee, in the front row, smiled slyly at me and confirmed she would have been nowhere else but in front of her tv the night before. (That she said that felt like an unexpected surprise, like someone coming up to me standing in a long line and offering me a chair on wheels and a cool drink.  I needed to hear that from the people and Dee was the people.)  Dee being short for Deahjahnay, which is of course a pretty name, French sounding and unique and in no way obnoxious.  Other black women in the room nodded approval and I mentioned to Dee directly that President Obama had somehow regained my respect through no fault of his own but as my knowledge and insight grew and shrunk and changed and morphed. 

I am pissed about drones.  I don’t like that he appointed Federal Reserve Insider Timothy Geithner. He was the product of a corrupt campaign finance reform system, too.  He negotiated with unreasonable cavemen who were themselves products of a corrupt campaign finance system and who acted from every interest other than altruism. 

In this speech however he reminded me why I voted for him twice.  He is after all, an honorable man.  He operated within a corrupt system and ultimately succeeded beyond his rivals from the other side of the aisle, they the purveyors of a cruel sense of justice and morality.  He found a Xanadu of middle ground that seemingly did not exist between the establishment of corporate America and the moral right.  He pulled socially to the left.  He followed through on some truly noble ideas slam dunking gays in the military and re-opening relations with Cuba.  There is a real litany of good things this President’s legacy will include. 

On this night he spoke to me and a million other Bernie Sanders supporters of campaign finance reform.  His words?  He said, “Don’t Boo.  Vote.”  Three fucking words and he overwhelmed my ideas on this subject. 

Like many I am so indignant at our system.  How unjust.  How unrepresentative.  Like so many of the falsehoods I was given as an American born child here was another case that might cause so many to throw their hands in the air and choose to just fly off the rails or join the parade of soiled, silly, suckers of greed.  “Don’t Boo.  Vote,” he said.

He is right.  In the end it does come down to more than voting.  We have to work at voting.  We have to get others to vote.  We have to work fiercely.  We have to educate the electorate.  We have to invigorate the masses and create a social responsibility that becomes a cultural sea change. 

The people are mad now at Hillary Clinton for being yet another product of a corrupt campaign finance system.  They don’t know how to direct their anger.  They’re so pissed about how powerless they feel with their one vote-they are mad at the one person who has been fighting for the values they espouse, (discounting a few errors in judgment,) and who wins against the truly corrupt fascist pigs of and on the right.  It is as if they are mad at Hillary Clinton for being good at what she does.  They’re mad at her for playing their game and winning as if they want Donald Trump, or John Boehner, or Mitch McConnell, or Lindsay Graham, or any of these other creeps who hate fags, detest welfare, love war, want to sell America for their own personal gain, cheat to win, gerrymander, play to the lowest common denominator, use fear, race bait, bible thump, parade around in sheep’s clothing seeking whom they may next devour. 

“Don’t Boo, Vote,” he said.

Guilty.  I am guilty as charged by the President of the United States.  He got me.  I’m so indignant and yet, he is so right.  (And she is too.)  What a buffoon I am.

Not really.  My error is one of altruism and of not being satisfied with the slow pace of progress.  (I forgive myself.  I’m so big like that.) 

And so in a way we’re all hayseeds, we supporters of Bernie Sanders.  We are noble hayseeds.  Everyone should be a hayseed but still, we are hayseeds. 

This voting President Obama refers to will happen.  Campaign finance will change like Citizen’s United will be overturned like a woman’s right to choose will be safeguarded like our military budget will decline.  Eventually.  Change is slow, however in spite of corrections, moments of retrograde activity, things are getting better and history shows us this is true. 

Ellison’s great novel is as relevant today as ever. Similarly, it is as colorful and engaging and modern as ever.  The enmity between law enforcement and the people they are meant to protect and serve remains a constant in our society.  The hayseed is invisible.  Who listens?  Who knows?  What’s the quote from Baudelaire?  “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”  (Okay, so I looked.  It’s WB Yeats’ poem, The Second Coming.) I always took that to mean the pure of heart have nothing to feel convicted about or for, while the liars, cheaters, connivers, the unjust and unkind, the wicked and inglorious, petty,  dishonest mother fuckers of the world tend to yell and scream because they're trying to convince you of something beyond fantastic.  They are trying to sell you a bill of goods.

Brother is treated with indignity after indignity in The Invisible Man.  His best nature, his altruism, his earnestness, they’re all fodder for those who would devour.  His intentions are golden at every turn but he is seen, in the South and in Harlem, as breaking from cherished norms or wanting to place himself above others. 

Obama chided us in the same way Ralph Ellison chided us.  Ellison understood what it meant to be invisibly black in America, to be absorbed into a socio-cultural belief system.  Obama understood what it took to ascend to high office in America.  He knew of what he spoke.  “Don’t Boo.  Vote,” he said rightly.  He was telling the hayseeds in the room and across America watching on their televisions, stop talking and go do.  He must have had this awakening at one time too, right?  The day he decided if he wanted to do something altruistic, if he wanted to help the under-served and underrepresented black communities on the south side of Chicago he had best go there and try to put some of his Harvard education into practice in the real world for the purpose of helping people better their lives. 

On a night that underscored the ultimate failure of the Bernie Sanders campaign and feeling like an insignificant hayseed I understand Obama’s message, (and Ellison’s too.)  I have to find ways to go do.  We all have to do that.  Ours is a utilitarian society and in so many ways the pressures of life, of economy, will pin us to a station, but the true hayseed must find ways. 

And so, Brother is a hero.  I admire him his gift of altruism.  I absolve him of whatever he has been accused of or blamed for.  Moreover, I am so thankful for reading this book now and not because some professor forced me to read it when I was 20-something and a different sort of hayseed altogether. 

Obama too, is a hero.  His dignity in the face of so much racism and ignorance is an example I hold up to my kids when I speak of emotional intelligence.  He is and has been for my family the Commander of Emotional Intelligence in Chief.  His ability for candor, his grace under attack, his empathy, they all were and are downright Presidential.  Hence why I adore him anew, in spite of the frustration I felt almost from Day 1 of his Presidency. 

sanders vs. bernanke

ben bernanke is and has been in an especially important position. to have arrived at the prestigious position of chairman of the federal reserve, while initial privilege may have played a role, he had to have displayed an array of great skills in his arena which would include public relations. here, being questioned under oath by vermont senator bernie sanders, bernanke remains remarkably cool considering the facts of the case.

bernanke may have a sense of entitlement regarding not only the united states tax monies given to his agency to distribute to failing banks but also to the secrecy that has surrounded the transactions. however, he almost does not show it at all as he coolly answers questions as if his answers are respectable, honest and fair to the american taxpayers.

there is the one moment when sanders asks bernanke the names of the banks who received the tax monies of american citizens. bernanke has a moment where you can see his frustration. it is just a moment and it goes by fast but it is there, (for just a second.) otherwise this top banker plays his role and acts as if there are perfectly good reasons why the fed need not be accountable, (which of course is absurd.)