Who Decides, Who Decides?: Exit Bernie (Now Is Not The Time To Let Up)

"You are what you settle for."

<Janis Joplin>

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Let's be honest. It was always going to be a heavy lift. But it was an exhilarating run while it lasted, I learned a lot from it, and I don't feel like letting up.

That's how I feel about Bernie Sanders's exit from the presidential race on Tuesday, giving the Democratic Party establishment what it's wished for since 2016, when he first turned up to crash the party.

You can almost feel the high fiving and football spiking going on right now, all across America's boardrooms: Yeeeaaahhh! We sure showed him, didn't we? Waaa-hooo! Free college, my ass! Medicare For All, my ass! Wealth tax, my ass! The rumpled Anti-Christ from Vermont has finally, irrevocably and unalterably been put in his place.

That's the tone of pieces like the one I found on The Conversation, whose headline reads, "Bernie Drops Out, As Democrats Pick Pragmatism Over Consistency." The author happens to be an assistant adjunct professor at Colorado University, a credit reeking of irony. If somebody like this -- who apparently never won the tenure lottery -- can accept such an outcome, and by definition, the very system that keeps him at the bottom of the academic ladder, it's game over for everybody else. Telling me to head straight to the last Kubler-Ross stage (acceptance) doesn't fill me with confidence.

All's right again with the world, which is now safe for Word Salad Joe to continue with his quirky mangling of the English language.

Progressive sentiment be damned. Time to grit our teeth, as they hand us back the keys to our jail cells, and prepare to herd us into line once more, returning us to the same old, same old unforgiving muddle that's  frozen America in place for 30-odd years. Dreaming big is out; resigned exhaustion is back in. There's a pandemic raging, so what else do you expect, right? Judging by what I see on Facebook, though, more than a few folks are still expecting quite a lot. 

Reactions to Tuesday's announcement range from outright disgust ("RIP, United States," "Something is wrong"), to impatience with their fellow man's foibles ("we had a viable 'third party' candidate and fear of the word 'socialism' scared people off"), to hopes of building on the energy he let loose, as the Sunrise Movement sees it ("He inspired us to become the political revolution we had been waiting for"). 

<3D Paint Artwork: The Reckoner

Lyrics: Public Enemy ("Fight The Power")

<ii.>

If you're looking for a postmortem examination, this isn't the time or place.  Am I going to swallow hard, and vote for Biden this fall? Honestly, I don't have a clue, because I wasn't necessarily expecting to entertain the question.

It does help that Biden's pledged to pick a female running mate -- presumably to ease the pain of women voters who watched six of their own get chased out of this year's race. Maybe if he picks a progressive woman for Vice President, it'll seal the deal? Maybe. We'll see.

Progressives had other ideas, I suspect, after Biden's barrel scraping, cellar dwelling finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire. For a brief moment -- a maddeningly fleeting one, just like in 2016 -- our biggest dream finally seemed possible. Hey, Bernie might really win this thing! The stars might actually fall into alignment this time!

That's not what we got. Still, I'll always relish the panic that a potential Sanders nomination aroused among pillars of the Democratic establishment, like James Carville -- the same guy who's spent 30 years dining out on that expression, "It's the economy, stupid" -- and talking heads like Chris Matthews, who infamously equated the Jewish Vermonter's initial rise with Nazi Germany's military defeat of France in 1940. 

So what went sideways for Bernie this time? I'm sure a mini-cottage industry of books will spring up to dissect that question, but I'll save that autopsy for a different day. The only thing I'd really fault him for, honestly, was sticking by his well-documented unwillingness to air his private life more openly, which he did -- briefly, around the beginning of 2019 -- only to drop it like a stone.

Most people have long forgotten that episode, I'm sure, but it fascinated me. In some ways, Bernie's pre-fame, pre-political life reads like a Marvel Comics origin story. His mother died a renter while he was still young. She never lived to achieve her dreams of owning a home. I have no doubt that this loss, and the trauma surrounding it, cast the die for the path that Bernie would follow, from civil rights campaigner, to struggling writer and businessman, to third party insurgent upstart, and beyond. 

Should have he talked more about his childhood and early adult life, and how it shaped him, on the campaign trail? Would it have immunized him, at least somewhat, from potential red-baiting onslaughts, or helped voters relate to him better, especially the doubters?

Well, he didn't do it, so we'll never know. But it's another snapshot that tempts me to think beyond what is, and what might have been.

<3D Paint Artwork: The Reckoner

Lyrics: Public Enemy ("Fight The Power")

<iii.>

Coronavirus changed everything, of course. With so much widespread suffering and dying, it would have looked odd for Bernie to continue exhorting his micro-donor army to pledge money, and keep him in the fight. Naturally, he didn't do that, deftly redirecting the focus to fundraising for the crisis, and the various charities associated with it. 

As a donor, I appreciated knowing about them, such as the Rent Zero Tenant Organizing Fund, or the Restaurant Worker Disaster Relief Fund, for example. As a creative person, I especially donating to the Craft Emergency Relief Fund, an organization that advocates for artists. 

I'll continue giving to them when I can, because art -- and the impulse of making it -- is what keeps us human, even as the tech industry would have us become navel gazing zombie goldfish. People don't think about these things until they're threatened, but that's just good old human nature for you, isn't it?

The pandemic also killed the massive, festive rallies that provided the Sanders campaign's enduring visual signature. Virtual campaigning will never substitute for getting up close and personal with potential supporters, as Biden's awkward broadcasts from his Delaware home have already demonstrated. (Then again, Trump can't hold his massive Nuremberg-style rallies, so I guess that balances out the equation in some perverse way, I guess.)

If nothing else, however, the pandemic has brutally exposed the shortcomings of the system that's still taking millions of Americans for a ride. We live in the 21st Century, but it looks and smells more like the 19th Century: Insecurity with an app. All the shiny digital imagery and feelgood techspeak about "sharing" can't paper over those particular cracks.

The crisis also poked a hole in Trump's long-anticipated plan to coast on how well the rich are doing, as his well-documented obsession with the stock market suggests. For those at the top, it's always morning in America. For those who aren't, the mood is closer to twilight, with one missed paycheck or job loss away from total disaster.

The mainstream media's reaction to Bernie's exist has been oddly measured, and downright respectful, as this nugget from yesterday's New York Times editorial ("Bernie Sanders Was Right") suggests:

"He was right from the very beginning, when he advocated a total overhaul of the American health care system in the 1970s. 

"He remains right now, as a pandemic stresses the meager resources of millions of citizens to their breaking point, and possibly to their death. 

"He was right when he seemed to be the only alarmist in a political climate of complacency. 

"He is right now that he’s the only politician unsurprised to see drug companies profiteering from a lethal plague with Congress’s help. In politics, as in life, being right isn’t necessarily rewarded. But at least there’s some dignity in it."

<3D Paint Artwork: The Reckoner
Lyrics: Public Enemy ("Fight The Power")

<iv.>

Reading those words feels a little bit odd to me, because The New York Times -- and also, the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post -- ranked high among the complaints about how the mainstream media covered him. I'd throw in other suspects like CNBC, that hosted the now-discredited Matthews' infamous on-air meltdown.

Much of their coverage felt dismissive, jeering and patronizing, and I have no doubt the steady drumbeat of fear that they worked to arouse ("Don't vote your heart, vote your head instead/Or you'll get Trump, you'll get Trump, you'll get Trump") left its mark. This is understandable, from a historical perspective. If you beat down people long enough, they'll stop demanding, stop marching, and stop trying to hold the same empty suits who play sneaky panther power games with their lives accountable for the slow, steady erosion of those lives. 

It's a trend that picked up steam during the 1980s, when the Democratic Party rolled its eyes, shrugged its shoulders, and began forsaking its core base of blue collar, minority and poorer voters to pursue the same Big Money Chase that the Republicans already down to a science. So what's a progressive to do, exactly?

We must continue casting ballots for Bernie, who remains on the ballot nationwide. If nothing else, it'll enable Bernie to keep amassing delegates, exert an influence on the Democratic Party platform, and remind Team Biden of our energy and strength that he'll need to lift him over the finish line.

We must continue organizing around issues that matter, whether it's canceling student debt, or rent freezes, for example. Why can't we get the same national pause that Denmark gave its citizens? Sure, it's a smaller country, but people who've lost all their income shouldn't foot the bill for those who haven't, full stop.

We must continue making our case against the institutions that don't serve our interests, by any means necessary, as that shopworn saying goes -- whether that happens online, or on-air calls, op-ed pieces, and similar mediums. We shouldn't stop pointing out the absurdities of tying health insurance to employment essentially an historical accident of the post-World War II era -- or the overweening authoritarianism of the gig economy ("Hey, we're giving you opportunities to drive"), or the posturing of media outlets that cater to an established order that's never known the constant insecurity and turmoil that haunts young people today.

We must continue keeping our arguments simple, when we do make them. This ability to express complex ideas in a sentence or two proved one of the biggest assets that Bernie -- and his counterpart, Elizabeth Warren -- brought to their campaigns. The fog of nuance ("I voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it"; "Abortion should be safe, rare and legal") is no substitute for a simple message that gets people to think bigger: A job shouldn't leave you in poverty. Serious issues deserve serious discussion. You shouldn't have to choose between food or medicine.

We must continue to cultivate the deep bench, if we're serious about building a progressive movement that will outlast the man who helped to launch it. As forcefully as he came across on the campaign trail, Bernie's advanced age (78) likely threw up more roadblocks for voters who already doubted his ability to pass his agenda. In a country whose senior leadership is all over 75, it's imperative that the next generation gets a chance to make its influence felt, and its voice heard. 

I leave you with these words from that same New York Times editorial:

"One freedom 

that cannot be taken from you 

is your freedom

 not to like the status quo —

your freedom to be angry, disaffected, unimpressed,
your refusal to be cajoled, soothed or consoled with small tokens of influence 

devoid of real power.

"Mr. Sanders, ill tempered

 and impatient with pleasantries, 

embodied that freedom, 

and he offered it to you."

The last sentence irks me -- isn't the constant demand for pleasantries what's bogged us down in the first place?  But the rest of it is well taken. We have the blueprint, we have the energy, and we have the technology to gain so much more than the system seems willing to allow us. We owe ourselves nothing less. Now is not the time to let up--The Reckoner