I am a Brave and Angry Black Woman, and I Will Never Vote For Bernie Sanders Bianca Delarosa Follow Feb 23 · 8 min read

Berniecrats are angry.

Enraged.

Furious.

Positively wrathful.

Well, so am I.

All over the web, people are talking about the anger and rage of the Sanders supporter that fuels Bernie’s campaign, and what usually follows is a soliloquy from some neck-bearded, bespectacled dude-bro about how this Nevada Caucus was PROOF that Senator Sanders has the nomination in the bag. Before Black People have even voted, of course. These emo-prog soothsayers muse to themselves on social media about how only Bernie can generate this type of energy, only he can cobble together a viable coalition, and that he would direct his band of stans, supporters, followers, bros, and assorted Berniecrats to victory, and win the nomination. Once he ascends his throne at the DNC Convention, he will have taken the nomination, and thus taken over the party with a mere plurality of delegates, regardless of what the rules say and how many silly Dem voters oppose that. Then, everyone must have his back, we must come together under his banner, we must defend him from GOP attacks, and drop our petty fears about Sanders and Socialism, because Bernie WILL WIN THE NOMINATION.

Well, perhaps he will.

Commentary:

In a statement, he urged his supporters to avoid “bullying or ugly personal attacks,” but the candidate softened this unequivocal condemnation in a subsequent appearance on PBS. “I don’t know who these ‘so-called’ supporters are,” Sanders said. “We’re living in a strange world on the Internet, and sometimes people attack people in somebody else’s name. And I’m not so sure, to be honest with you, that they are necessarily part of our movement.” He again emphasized “the nature of the Internet,” implying rather clearly that it’s not impossible that his campaign has been victimized by people pretending to sympathize with Sanders only to tarnish his reputation by association.

He never takes responsibility, never helps, yet he will show up for me to unite with him, like a King.

Guess who he won’t he find waiting to unite with his horde of hooligans at the end of that long primary road, crouched down on bended knee and singing his praises? Which woman won’t be ordered around by a bunch of merkin wearing snatch-faced cornballs? That woman is me, myself, and I wish I would take my Black, Identity Politics loving, receipt keeping, still mad one of his fans reported me to the goddamn FBI ass down to the Union Hall and mark a ballot for this old, vainglorious, non-responsive to the abuse suffered by my fellow Black Women who DON’T support him, fighting the Dem establishment that includes the CBC (who I love), gas-lighting people who have been bullied by his goons, ignoring the abuse problem and using very willing PoC and Women as shields from criticism by crying “Erasure!” whenever his fools get out of control, thereby erasing the victim and placing them in the role of the “Real Abuser” just so he doesn’t have to actually solve a goddamn problem and call out his BROS in a real way ass self.

NBC:

“You know me well enough to know if any of my supporters did that, I’d disown them. Flat disown them,” Biden said. “The stuff that was said online. The way they threatened these two women who are leaders in that Culinary union. It is outrageous. Just — just go online.”

Thanks, Joe.

Never depend on Bernie to give a shit what his supporters do to marginalized groups.

“And I’m not so sure, to be honest with you, that they are necessarily part of our movement,” Sanders said.

FUCK YOU.

See, I am just as pissed the fuck off as they are; I’m pissed that they have taken the Liberal media by the balls, and squeezed until the mouthpieces on cable news may as well let Brie Brie write them some scripts to use in their non-vetting of Bernie Sanders. Bernie, from what I hear, has no problem walking right up to news executives and jabbing his finger at them while yelling about how unfair they are, yet he had nothing to say when the Bernie friendly media was torching better candidates in the race. Was he silent because he benefited? Had they done the same to him, he would be jabbing that finger at them, working his salamander tongue while turning puce, and flapping the other arm wildly. But, they would never do that; the progressive media seem to be attack dogs who do his dirty work for him, leaving him with clean hands. They write scurrilous and sensational pieces on each person who climbs the polls in order to spread the nastiest insinuations, the most negative read of any situation, and always with zero context. And his supporters exaggerate even those exaggerations, and use their talking points to attack Dems at random. This shit pisses me off.

Commentary:

“I’m not sure Sanders’s official team has grasped the extent to which their supporters are impacting voter behavior,” observed the Daily Beast’s Sam Stein. “Lots of people at Warren and Pete town halls I talked to were weighing a Sanders vote but said they were turned off by the culture and crowds.”

I see Kamala Harris working, happy, not under attack anymore, and I have completely come to terms with her stepping away. I still don’t believe Democrats will win without her, the field is boring, even Bernie can’t inspire outside his base, but she could have. If only Bernie had stayed his ass at home. I’m pissed that one opinion article was used as a foundation to distort Kamala Harris’ record to the point that so many black people have a warped view of her. I’m pissed that the media didn’t bother to research any of the claims to find out that most were distorted, misstated, dubious, wrong, and at times, not even connected to her, as she had zero to do with that particular situation. I am pissed that “Democrats” of the Bernie camp believe that Black People should not be in law enforcement or prosecuting cases, which would leave the fates of Black men and women in the hands of mostly Whites. Which is how we got to this racist place we stand right now. And that’s just the small shit.

There was a time when I was willing to give Bernie another chance; in the wake of defeat, rolling on waves of self pity, swimming in fear, and drifting in a sense of loss too heavy to be mere politics, I was open to anyone who was not Trump, even Bernie. I tried to hear the same words I had heard from his dry lips a thousand times, but with softer ears. I hoped he would make a better impression on me.

I tried.

Eventually, I felt rather neutral.

Then, he attacked my values system.

“It’s not good enough for someone to say, ‘I’m a woman! Vote for me!” No, that’s not good enough. What we need is a woman who has the guts to stand up to Wall Street, to the insurance companies, to the drug companies, to the fossil fuel industry,” Sanders said at book tour stop in Boston.

There were many problems with this, but for me, I instantly felt humiliated, marginalized, shamed and called out, even though I was not there. The fact that I want Black Women represented within government; smart, competent, and intelligent black women, was shrunk down to the size and value of nothingness. In order for me, as a Black Woman, to be worthy, I would have to ascribe to the values of an old white man, one old enough to be my own grandfather. Wall Street. Insurance companies. Drug companies. Fossil fuel. The four bogeymen of the Whitepocalypse loom large in the mind of the Senator; he probably believes we all see these four as the quintessential pillars of the Oligarchy. He forgot the fifth and most important pillar, the one that sits in the center holding this fresh hell aloft; he forgot about Old White Men. Well, in truth? You can add the young white men into the basket, and not just MAGA. Add the BernieBros.

BernieBros are not supposed to exist.

Commentary:

While Sanders has made rhetorical overtures toward civility, he’s also surrounded himself with people who cultivate a very different atmosphere. His campaign has taken on a slate of formal surrogates who have a conspicuous habit of engaging in anti-Semitic rhetoric and who reserve the most caustic vitriol for their fellow Democrats — at least, those who do not display a sufficiently zealous commitment to his “revolution.”

Also, even though they do exist, we are not supposed to discuss them, ever. Discussing the BernieBro is a sin worse than being a BernieBro, because that’s ERASURE of the shitty ass PoC Berners who dedicate hours per day to troll troll trollin’ away. Berners, as I like to call them, are very fond of my timeline; they need to be close to me in order to question my mental health, call me fat, stupid, ugly, and sometimes wish me dead. These young men, and yes, mostly WHITE men, profess to care about humanity far more than the average Liberal, I mean, don’t they want us all to have healthcare? And aren’t Liberals the ones standing in the way by not choosing Bernie, the only man in the history of mankind to want people to have nice things?

That is the essential nature of any campaign premised on the notion that the biggest obstacle to realizing a variety of vital policy reforms isn’t their ideological adversaries but their ostensible friends.

Nobody notices how mad we are, those who suffer the wrath of these dogmatic sycophants of Sanders; they believe since we have no single message that we are simply anti-something, which is always weaker than FOR something. What people don’t see about us, me and those like me, is that we are FOR the marginalized, FOR having our demographics represented and not subsumed into a cauldron of class and social strata; we are FOR transparency, something Sanders fails at time and time again, we are for truth, honesty, integrity, KINDNESS, diversity of opinion, and we stand up to bullies. Bernie Sanders has become a bully; you can say that it’s not him, it’s his supporters, and we cannot blame him for their transgressions. You are wrong. For five years he has been ignoring our cries, gas-lighting us, dismissing us, and playing the victim when he should be showing leadership. It was the bullies in his crew that pushed me away from him the first time; he managed to push me away many times since. His weak and pathetic lack of leadership keeps me in a place where I cannot even conceive of supporting him for one second.

I don’t hate Bernie Sanders, I simply don’t like his ways.

Sanders has incubated a revolutionary consciousness within his movement that regards intolerance for deviationists as a virtue. There’s nothing unfair about observing this dynamic and making Sanders answer for it. And so far, Sanders doesn’t have an answer.

After five years of watching his revolution attack and smear GOOD Dems, even John Lewis, and destroy the very reputations of private citizens on social media, to silence them in service to him, I don’t trust him as far as he could throw me. His method of winning by engaging in a “by any means, fair or foul” internecine war of attrition is so reminiscent of Trump, that I cannot understand why more people don’t see the similarities. He wins in a nasty way, a cruel way, his supporters are MEAN, and I ain’t got time for no more cruel white men, young or old.

Sometimes you will hear people say, “All money ain’t good money,” but, I’d like to change that around a bit.

“All winning ain’t good winning.”

Sometimes a bad win now is just a worse loss to come.

I ask only this of Senator Sanders:

When you’ve stepped on and broken every toe in the room, who the fuck is going to dance with you?

NBC

Commentary