On Not Feeling the Bern — Touched with Fire Media

As a youngish white liberal from a substantial coastal city, I can tell you for a fact that I am in a minority in my cohort in one very specific way: I do not, as they say, feel the Bern. If one were to look at my Facebook feed — as I do, every morning, whether I want to or not — one might be misled into believing that Bernie Sanders, a grouchy old socialist from the middle of nowhere, has created an overwhelming political following, one of the sort that will almost certainly sweep him to a titanic, Reagan-like victory in November. The feed is filled with selfies taken at Bernie rallies, articles about Bernie’s authenticity, screeds about his righteousness, and a general celebratory mood that matches Bernie’s rhetoric (if not his rhetorical style) about creating a political revloution in America that will sweep in a new paradigm of small banks, universal single-payer health care, union jobs for all who want them, an end to free trade, and a bunch of other stuff that strikes me as basically incoherent pap. Bernie Sanders, whitest liberal of the white liberals in Congress, has managed the trick of convincing many white liberals that they are at the spearhead of a revolution, largely by appealing to our common feeling that we know better than other people, and that if we just explained to [WORKING CLASS CONSERVATIVES / TECHNO-LIBERTARIANS / BLACK DEMOCRATS / SECOND GENERATION LATINOS] where their interests actually lie, and how Bernie Sanders would be the best for their interests, they would all get on board.

The idea is absurd on its face, of course. No one has ever won an election by telling people that they shouldn’t (or worse, don’t actually) believe what they believe, and they never will. This isn’t even about “telling it like it is”; in some degree one can get away with that, so long as it’s a part of a successful political brand. This is about telling people that what they think it is is actually not what it is at all — that evangelicals’ social beliefs are not more important than their economic ones, for instance. That’s what Bernie’s alleged appeal is based on. But that appeal only actually appeals to people who already agree with him. In fact, Bernie panders as much as (if not more than) anybody else. There’s a large enough faction in the Democratic Party that already agrees with Bernie that he’s able to build a substantial coalition that might (but probably won’t) win him the party’s nomination. But in the general election, Sanders would be faced with one of two options: changing his view on almost everything, or spending months upon months condescending to people who don’t agree with him. Neither one of those is going to work.

The main reason position-moderation is almost certain not to work is that Bernie’s brand — and make no mistake, it’s a brand — is built around his status as an avatar of all that is authentic and incorruptible and therefore has been chased out of our political process, largely by big money.* Irrespective of whether you think this brand’s going to sell (I don’t), it’s what Bernie has to offer, and if he changes it, he’s going to lose the base that fell in love with him in the first place. He can’t tack towards the center the way almost every politician ever has, because tacking towards the center would be an acknowledgement that he is what he is: just another fucking politician, trying to get elected.

*NB that the money thing is both accurate and not accurate at all. One of the major phenomena of 21st Century politics has been the emergence of the superdonor — the most notable being the Koch Bros, though the left has its own, minor-league version of this, as well. The thing about superdonors is that they give massive amounts of money, not just in the interests of their own businesses, but in the interest of doctrinaire ideological positions. Sure, the Kochs might benefit from some of the policies they advocate, but really they’re so fabulously wealthy that the material change to their bottom line available in this kind of transaction is fairly minor. What they have is the luxury to demand — and receive — fealty to their favorite nutty ideas. In the pre-superdonor days, what was then styled Big Money was, in fact, kind of Medium Money, given by corporations and individuals who wanted specific policy changes, some of which were liberal, some of which were conservative, but all of which benefitted the bottom line. Those people don’t matter anymore. But at the same time, the thing that Bernie has going for him, and that B Obama had going for him before, was an incredibly activated base of small donors. But who are those small donors? I put it to you that, like superdonors, small donors are disproportionately likely to be very ideological: you don’t give $250 to a candidate as a small donor unless you really, really believe in the political ideology they espouse. Transactional politicians, the ones who practice the gory business of actually making the country move, do not inspire this kind of money to come their way in quite the same way, because, honestly — if you’re trying to pay your bills and get your kids to school, are you really going to take $250 out of your budget to give to a politician who’s going to agree to things you don’t like and compromise with people you hate? Probably not. In short, a politics with nothing but small money in it looks a lot like a politics dominated largely by superdonors. h/t to E Klein on Vox’s The Weeds podcast for framing this in this particular way on last week’s episode.

And let’s be clear here: Bernie Sanders is just another fucking politician, trying to get elected. This was exposed a few weeks ago when people started talking about Bernie’s record on gun control, which is not as far left as his other positions. Why? Sanders’ response is that he comes from Vermont, which is a rural state, and blah, blah, blah . . . this is Sanders trying to pull a bait-and-switch on the kind of politician he is, really. There’s a sort of ontological question that hangs around the edges of debates like these, viz, Is it the job of a politician to reflect the views of his/her constituents, or vote their conscience? Bernie sells himself as the man-of-all-conscience, the firebrand truthteller who won’t be cowed by banks or other interests (viz his constituents), the Last Honest Man in Washington. But do you really believe that Bernie Sanders, of all people, actually has a commitment to the right of the people to keep and bear arms? Or is that just some bullshit he smears on the electorate because he knows they might vote for the other guy if he doesn’t? Yeah, me neither.

See, it’s very easy to be the most liberal member of Congress when your constituency has roughly the population of Portland, Oregon. The last time Sanders got elected, he did so — in a landslide — with a grand total of about 170,000 votes; these are the votes of lefty, white Vermonters, for whom the only real break with standard lefty politics is on guns. It’s not exactly a road of trials to get these people to vote for an old, white socialist. If Portland somehow seceded from the State of Oregon, what kind of Senators do you think it would elect? White socialists? Would those guys be viewed as avatars of all that is authentic and truth-telling in the world, or just two more hipsters from the People’s Republic of PDX?

There are other reasons that I don’t feel the Bern in the way that so many of my friends do. The first is that I don’t buy the idea that Bernie is going to create some kind of political revolution in this country. I’ve already explained why I don’t think that’s going to happen — why, in fact, it’s extremely cynical and condescending to believe that’s even on the table — but I also think it wouldn’t be good. I think political history, at least recent political history, shows that revolution tends to be very, very bad for a country. Sudden, radical change almost always gives birth to violence — both between factions, and from the state. Despite the fact that it doesn’t inspire much excitement or loyalty, incrementalism is a value — not worth fighting for, but worth preventing fights with. Can you imagine the fallout of a true revolution in America? In the current political environment, with the level of outrage and lack of cross-communication between different sorts of people, I can’t help but think that a Reign of Terror would follow revolution as inevitably as a flood follows the breaching of a dam. Much though I have fantasized about slapping around a Supreme Court justice or two, I honestly think that organized political violence is probably the most dangerous force in human history, and that playing with that kind of fire is liable to burn our house down.

But really, and much less speculatively, it’s just that I don’t trust people who only have one opinion. And Bernie really only has one opinion: that economic inequality is bad, and solving that will solve the world’s ills. While I agree that economic inequality is bad, I don’t agree with the second part of that statement. To truly believe it is to apply a rigid rubric to every problem, in order to stave off thought, and shut down alternatives. That’s a recipe for failure.

Bernie’s been tripped up by this on the campaign trail a couple of times. Does he really have the mental flexibility to navigate the maze of racial oppresion? I’m not accusing him of being a racist, not at all. But I don’t think that’s a problem you just magically solve if you solve inequality. For one thing, inequality will never, ever go away, and to believe it will is to buy into the fantasy of a perfectable society: so, if you don’t acknowledge the role that race has played in American history — including recent American history — you run the risk of “solving” inequality while once again leaving people of color, especially black people, completely in the lurch. (This is the objection I have to the older white liberals who fetishize how awesome everything was under Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson. First of all, no, it wasn’t, we were involved in a huge war that killed tens of thousands of Americans and millions of other humans. But second of all, sure, maybe it was awesome to be a white person in mid-century America. It wasn’t that awesome for anybody else, so stop pretending that the policies of the New Deal are a panacea for everything.) For another thing, there are persistent effects of racial inequality that have very little to do with economic inequality — like, for instance, the difference in how white people are policed versus how black people are policed. You can be the richest, wealthiest-seeming black dude around, and there’s a fundamental level on which the state has been built, not to protect you, but to accuse you of being a danger to others. (Just ask tennis player James Blake.) There is a class of people for whom the weapons of the state are always pointed at their heads. Will Bernie’s one opinion — that economic inequality is bad — have a solution for that? I don’t think so.

I was going to wrap this all up and put a nice bow on it, but I’m incredibly hungry and I have a slice of pizza here burning a hole in its plate. I think you guys get what I’m talking about, even if you don’t agree. I hope so, anyhow. #failingtofeelthebernifthatsokaywitheverybody