I go to juice bars. Willingly.
I feel like I need to throw that out there before I can really dive in. Just so you understand exactly how much of a yuppie I have become. I am white, aspiring to middle class and wildly educated beyond what is even vaguely beginning to be good for me--and certainly beyond my wildest dreams. I read The New Yorker and feel like I have a legit reason for enjoying Malbecs more than Sauvignons. I have a strategy for the Friday Crossword in the NYT. I have a career, not a family, and believe in effective politics.
But despite the juice bars. I voted for Bernie.
So here’s the thing. I don’t have to be against Hillary to vote for Bernie. In fact, I like Hillary, I (in some cases) adore Hillary. My respect for Hillary Rodham Clinton is as deep-seated and unmovable as the bedrock underneath New York City. If Hillary is the Democratic Candidate for President you can bet your bottom dollar that I will be phone banking like you would not believe for her.
But I still rocked up to my primary (in this case Democrats Abroad) and threw my hat in for Bernie. Because guess what? I do not have to dislike Hillary to vote for Bernie. I’m not voting for Bernie because my other option is a bad option, or because I hate women. Or the poor. Or my mother.
Nope. My preferred political party (of the WHOPPING *two* choices I have) happens to have fielded two excellent candidates. Mine is the one with a bird on the podium.
I voted Bernie because I, like so many Americans who have lived before me, really really do believe in an American dream, not an American nightmare or the continuation of a deeply flawed American reality. And it’s a damn good dream too.. A dream about equality and opportunity and liberty and freedom. A dream about a nation that seeks to be the best it can be. A dream about an America that has yet to be realized, but a dream that Americans have not forgotten and are willing to fight for every day. An America defined not by what is, but by what can be. Not by poverty and inequality, and degradation of human rights—our past as a species—but a nation that seeks to imagine a future better than the past.
And yes. We have fallen flat in seeking out that dream. We have succumbed to warmongers and the purse strings of billionaires. We have caved to economic interests and sacrificed human rights (and lives) on the altars of racism, sexism and inequality. We have trampled our own citizens and those of other nations underfoot in the pursuit of economic and military dominance. We have torn that dream to shreds time and time again, only to pick the tatters up from the blood-stained ground where they paved the way forward for sociopaths and narcissists who made us forget the best in ourselves, and we have pieced them back together. We have failed. But we have not given up.
And I am voting for Bernie not because I distrust Hillary or believe that she has some secret plan to destroy liberal values. Quite the opposite in fact. Hillary has a career behind her of pushing for a better world. No. I am voting for Bernie not because I have abandoned my feminist principles, and not because Hillary has a bigger Super PAC. I am voting for Bernie not because Hillary isn’t a good candidate—in the current system she is perhaps the best candidate. But I am voting for Bernie because I believe America is at the cusp of a crossroads. We are facing the spectre of fascism and the utter destruction of what our shining Statue of Liberty stands for. I am voting for Bernie because placating the conservatives in our political system over the last twenty years has gutted the middle class, threatened women’s rights and allowed racism to flourish. We are at a juncture where a presidential candidate is capable of essentially endorsing the KKK and then still comes out on top in the Republican Super Tuesday Primary. Where his supporters pepper spray women for defending themselves from sexual assaults in his rallies. Where anyone who is not white is forcibly removed. America is choosing between the worst it has ever been, and a better future than we have ever known. Hillary represents a continuation of today, rather than a regression to the past. But Bernie represents a future that hopes to fulfill what we as a nation have always stood for. Equality, liberty, freedom and opportunity---for ALL.
I respect Hillary deeply. And my heart aches at the misogyny that has been spewed at her as a candidate. And I think she’d actually make a damn good president. I just know that today wealth and privilege of all stripes are destroying the American I dream of, and I am ready to fight to get that America back. HiIlary has not promised me a fight. She promises that things will get a little bit better, and she has promised an effective government. Those are promises I am confident she can deliver.
And Bernie? Bernie has promised me that fight. Maybe he can't win. Maybe it’s a risk. But it’s one I am ready to take.
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