In a previous post today I may have gotten one thing wrong. I assumed Bernie would win Washington. I don’t think he will. It’s midnight and they are statistically tied which is a very ugly proposition for the senator. The rest I kind of saw coming. It is a pretty sound drubbing, decisive I think. Consolidation right before your very eyes. It seems like turnout was high for the second week in a row and that is a very good sign if you are invested in the idea that we desperately need a new president.
As a Bernie voter, I mourn a bit tonight, but I was ready for it. Historically, the ship won’t get righted. We work now only for influence, for representation. I think he is at home in Vermont tonight, thinking about the same things.
It was a perfect storm. South Carolina. The brilliant Dallas rally. Super Tuesday. Democratic voters running toward the familiar, afraid to take the step into the unknown of a revolution found Joe waiting for them.
And then the virus was here, and the lies and the misinformation, the dangerous advice coming out of the White House, the preposterous declarations from administration officials of having it locked up, contained, “should be gone soon.” We all knew they were lying. It was infantile in its invention, juvenile in the performance. It was scary.
There was Joe. Not scary, familiar. Safe. Hokey even. His gaffs even feel a bit familiar. We need some help right now, not at the end of an ideological war. It looked for all to see that the entire party coalesced behind him in Texas and the value offering seemed inevitable, overwhelming. And so familiar. He’s been around. He knows how this is supposed to work, the levers and the wheels.
Elections are formalized polls, and polls are snapshots of time, a frozen moment of how people felt at that moment, and they felt scared and Biden didn’t scare them.
For those of us that supported Sanders, much of that appeal is what we were voting against, and many will find it hard to share shelter with those who support the candidate of the machine. But we have a bigger issue now. Bigger because it has to be made, no matter how distasteful, and it will be made one way or the other.
Will you help elect Trump?
My Bernie or Bust buddy disdainfully calls this the Trump Gun, that we just use the bogeyman of another four years as a gun to their heads to force them to vote for something they find unacceptable. So be it.
Just understand it’s pointed at mine, too, and I can’t face the alternative. Go through denial, anger, bargaining, depression but get to acceptance quickly and make a simple value judgement.
November’s vote will be the easiest one I have ever cast. It will certainly not be the most satisfying of my life, but easiest?
Oh hell, yeah.