Yeah, us. Scary!

Generally the Bernie supporters I’ve met have been an interesting mix of aging peaceniks and idealistic students of every gender, orientation, race, and religion. When you ask people why they support Bernie, they say they feel like he’s real, he’s honest, etc., but mostly they like his policy proposals.

Love your policies, Bernie!

We are not drawn to Bernie Sanders because of his winning personality and GQ charisma, although I have a tendency to appreciate a wry sense of humor, favor a policy discussion over small talk, and don’t mind a bit of stroppy attitude if the cause is worth it. I think most of Bernie’s supporters, though, are drawn to Bernie’s policy positions :

We want war to truly be the last response

We want everyone to have access to affordable health care, even if we have to pay a little more

We want everyone to have paid family medical leave, even if we have to pay a little more

We want everyone to have access to a college education, even if that means the Walmart Family’s kids can also attend free public college (Bernie proposes we pay for this through a tax on Wall Street speculation, not middle class taxes — the same mechanism Clinton proposes to fund her College Compact)

We want economic justice, where the economy is not kept healthy on the backs of the middle class while the wealthy and Wall Street do their best to keep crashing it

We want racial justice and an end to institutional racism

We want law enforcement to be held to account for its behavior toward people of color, the poor, and the mentally ill

We want a robust, urgent, and comprehensive response to climate change

We want a living wage ($15) an end to exploitation of workers, and pay equity for women

We support unions

We want immigration reform and an end to separation of families

We want an end to the war on drugs, and legalization of marijuana

We want fair trade deals that protect jobs and don’t endanger our sovereignty when it comes to labor and environmental laws

We want our infrastructure to be brought into the 21st century — and the millions of jobs this will create

We want revitalization of our inner cities

I haven’t seen anything in Bernie’s platform that smacks of privilege or selfishness or lack of awareness that we will be disenfranchising someone (we want ALL of this for EVERYONE).

So it’s been surprising and disheartening to say the least that Bernie’s supporters — peaceniks and idealistic young people and working people who support these great things across the board for everyone, and much of it that would not even directly affect us — have been cast as naive, delusional, racist, sexist, motivated by selfishness and privilege, and now, violent.

It dawns on me that this really had to happen from the point of view of the opposition. If someone is offering a broad, soaring vision of generosity and fairness, what better way to shut it down but to cast it all as a grand delusion, to call taking care of one another a “middle class tax” and “free stuff that will make our kids lazy”? After all, you can’t really say “we’re too selfish to pay a little bit of taxes for the common good” or “higher education is a lower priority than bailing out Wall Street, sorry” or “preserve tax breaks and loopholes for the wealthy!” so you have to denigrate the very concepts of universal health care or free public universities as ridiculous or worse, and cast anyone who supports this stuff as somehow selfish or elitist.

This was from day one of Sanders’ campaign — very nice thoughts Bernie, but seriously, they amount to unicorn farts for all they’ll ever pass in Congress. Bernie supporters will come to their senses, bless their hearts.

If someone is talking about working together across all racial and economic divide for racial and economic justice, what better way to shut it down but to paint that person and his supporters as a bunch of “white liberals who are clueless about privilege and want to disenfranchise people of color”?

This started long before any votes were cast. Bernie’s irritation at being interrupted at Netroots Nation (note that he is consistent in that he supports protest but not “interrupting someone else’s meetings”) was cast as racially tone deaf, and when he dared to stand aside respectfully while two protesters took over a rally and insulted the crowd, he and his supporters were cast as white liberals who did not realize they themselves were racist. All protest is sacred, it was said, it’s supposed to be disruptive and no rules should be placed on it (unless the protest is at a Convention and by people with whom you disagree, apparently).

I truly believe that virtually everyone spoke their conscience during that time, but I also believe a narrative was being orchestrated as well — recall that David Brock tried to keep it stoked up when he razzed Bernie’s Iowa Ad as proving that “to Bernie Sanders, Black lives don’t matter”. It would be naive to say that “Bernie Sanders has a problem with black people” wasn’t a chicken/egg conundrum.

And that narrative remains alive and well with this week’s accusations that Bernie’s supporters act out of “white privilege” when they talk about reaching out to Superdelegates to close the gap. (Notwithstanding the fact that more than 400 of the Superdelegates don’t represent anyone’s votes because they’ve been in place since before anyone officially declared their candidacy, let alone before any votes were cast for them to represent.) But in addition to the idea that using Superdelegates to put Sanders ahead of Clinton would overthrow the will of so many voters of color, Kos went so far as to claim that Bernie Sanders supporters selfishly ignore how his policies would “disenfranchise people of color”. Scroll on up and tell me, which of those policies are threatening to people of color?

To pre-empt the inevitable responses — there are idiots and fools and jerks in every walk of life, and this is no different among Bernie’s supporters. Not “most” or even a significant number, but shitty behavior and outrage is entertaining. The media would rather flog a story about people booing rudely at Barbara Boxer or a handful of people who harassed someone than a story about 20,000 people showing up over and over to so many peaceful, uplifting Sanders rallies without a hint of anger or violence. And again, we know that there has been an operation behind the scenes flogging these ideas. In an interview with Time Magazine, David Brock gleefully took credit for playing up the provably false claim that Sanders’ supporters chanted “English Only”.

Several groups in CA got together and called a counter-protest against Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy record and immigration policies. Many of the protesters were loud and angry because those policies have had a negative effect on their lives and the lives of their loved ones. Once again this was used as an example of how Sanders supporters are loud and angry, but it’s disingenuous to claim these protesters were simply motivated by their support for Sanders when their focus is on serious issues they have with Clinton and her policies. And what happened to protest in general being necessarily disruptive and not subject to rules of etiquette? And then Bernie’s statement that “The First Amendment protects people’s right to protest outside of rallies” is greeted with outrage and disbelief?

Really?

The other day I encountered a Clinton supporter on Twitter. He was being a complete misogynistic jerk and I called him on it. His response was: “Fuck you, c**t.” (He spelled it out.) I later came across a tweet calling Van Jones the “N” word for seeming to take the side of Sanders over DWS. He indicated he gets a lot of abuse and threats. There are a large number of tweets attacking Jane Sanders for her appearance. Does this mean that all or even a significant number of Clinton supporters are sexist and racist assholes? No. And I don’t expect her to issue a statement that she doesn’t support this sort of language. Based on her history, I have no reason to believe she supports it, even if she never states she doesn’t condone it, or if she only mentions she doesn’t condone it in paragraph 3 of a statement (along with dozens of various reiterations from her campaign).

The narrative seems to be that people who are drawn to a vision of a nation that takes care of its citizens (even sometimes calling on us to pay a few dollars into the system to take care of others), a nation that chooses peace first, a nation of tolerance and cooperation and racial justice, a nation that supports jobs and prosperity and decent retirement for everyone, a nation that respects and protects the environment — that these people are somehow pre-disposed to some sort of immature selfishness, sexism, racism, and violence. The man who articulates this grand vision of fundamentally fair and inclusive priorities is somehow just an old fraud and self-promoter who, after spending 40 years asking for no type of recognition but to be reelected by his supportive constituents and work to push his policies in Congress, has decided to wear himself out at 3 rallies every day at 74 years of age because he’s selfish and egotistical. Couldn’t be he just really wants to move the country toward that vision.

Does any of this really make any sense? No. Progressives have always considered the people who believed in these things to be motivated by the best in us, not the worst. What about supporting economic justice would predispose us to be jerks? Were the OWS protesters violent jerks?

Finally, this all seems to be part of a disorganized effort and tendency to cast Bernie supporters as “other”, which allows people to say the worst about us without compunction and without the slightest charity or even identification with us as your fellow Democrats and/or potential partner liberals and independents. If we’re booing it’s not worth anyone’s time to check out why that might be happening, we can just “boo ourselves out of the party”. If we criticize, it’s because we’re haters with nothing valid to say. If we promote Bernie it’s because we’re delusional cult members. If we keep fighting, it’s because we want to destroy things.

But that’s not who we are. We’re just a regular cross-section of Americans who see a vision of something we think is worth fighting for. Frankly, I’ve been surprised at the negative reaction to that vision from some Democrats. Seems pretty reasonable to me.