Hillary, Bernie, and Me

I was a strong and early supporter of Bernie Sanders, especially the Bernie Sanders of the early campaign: the guy who took the high road, who spoke truth to power, who organized at the grassroots and refused to engage in negative campaigning. The guy who said on her worst day Hillary Clinton would be a better President than any of the Republicans.

But I have a confession to make: I never thought he’d win.

It wasn’t lack of faith in the message or devotion to the agenda he espoused. That faith and devotion is what drove my support. To me Bernie Sanders was only a vehicle for getting the word out and starting to organize. It was clear the man himself was an imperfect vessel (he is, after all, a career politician). It was also based on a cold, hard political calculation. Remember the incident in Seattle about a year ago, when two #blacklivesmatter activists stormed a stage he was set to speak on? The way Bernie and, more importantly, his most ardent supporters handled that told me all I needed to know. However you stand on the incident, nobody gets the Democratic nomination without support from African-Americans. And while Bernie has done a great job of mobilizing younger African-Americans, they were outnumbered by their elders, who were less willing to take a chance.

Still, I advocated, and donated, and when the time came I caucused. All along I tried my best to keep to the high road the Bernie Sanders of the early campaign laid out.

Sadly, my candidate chose not to. Somewhere along the way, some subtle threshold got crossed. It was about Bernie now. Bernie the man, the visionary, the leader of a revolution, though what the revolution meant or would look like was never made clear. He started throwing punches, insisted he was going to win despite the fact that the path to victory only got narrower and less likely with every primary and caucus, even the ones that he won.

Continue reading “Hillary, Bernie, and Me” →

This Is What Democracy Looks Like, a Report from the Washington State Caucuses

Will Rogers once joked “I belong to no organized political party. I am a Democrat.” It’s as true today as when he said it, as I was reminded when I attended the caucus held in Seattle’s Capitol Hill, a neighborhood so liberal our local City Councilmember is Socialist Kshama Sawant.

The caucuses were scheduled to begin at 10 am, and as someone who hadn’t pre-registered I was encouraged via text message by volunteers for the Sanders campaign to arrive by 9 am to make sure I got my paperwork filled out in time to properly participate in the caucus. I thought that was probably a good idea, but I got a wee bit tipsy the night before, and didn’t make it til 9:30.

The caucus was held at the Century Ballroom at the corner of 10th and Pine, a giant space usually reserved for Salsa, Swing, and other couples-style dancing. It occupies most of the second floor of the old Oddfellows building, a large, old structure smack dab in the heart of one of the most liberal neighborhoods in one of the most liberal cities in the US.

When I arrived, the line to get inside was already around the corner and down the block almost to Pike Street. I was immediately grateful to have brought a thermos of coffee and a book. Continue reading “This Is What Democracy Looks Like, a Report from the Washington State Caucuses” →

Planting Seeds in Common Ground, or Why Don’t These A-holes Agree With Me?

I’ve been thinking a lot in the last few days about something that happened to me back in 2004. It was primary season, Howard Dean was all the rage, MoveOn.org was filling my inbox every day, and I went with a friend to a Democratic party Meet Up at a bar somewhere in Seattle’s Eastlake neighborhood. George W. Bush was running for re-election, and who to put up against him was the topic under discussion at the big table we all sat around. What I remember in particular is that there were these two guys kind of in the center of the group who kept hijacking the discussion, talking about how what we really needed to do was purge the ranks of DINOs so that a pure, unadulterated liberal message and messenger could emerge, which would then, through some magical Underpants Gnomes-type process, rally the faithful, convert the skeptics and doubters, and win the White House back from the disastrously incompetent administration occupying it at the time.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I wanted and want that, too. And though I found their continual hijacking of the discussion off-putting and rude, in the end I have to thank them, because they provided the opportunity for something of an epiphany for me.

Now, let me back up for a moment and reiterate that in terms of desired end-states, these two insufferable prigs and I were in more or less complete agreement. Where we differed was in our assessment of where we were at the time and how to get where we all wanted to go.

I don’t remember exactly what I said once I managed to get ahold of the conch for a couple of minutes, but the gist of it was simply this: we didn’t have the numbers. There simply were not enough people who agreed with our desired ends for their strategy to work. Continue reading “Planting Seeds in Common Ground, or Why Don’t These A-holes Agree With Me?” →

A Strategy of Containment in Oregon

So a bunch of domestic terrorists have seized a wildlife refuge in rural Oregon. They say they’re peaceful but armed (and willing to kill and die), have provisions enough to last a couple of years, and they’ve invited like-minded “patriots” from across the country to join them. They are, by any sane definition, engaged in sedition, and attempting to undermine the political and philosophical underpinnings that make the United States of America possible.

So what do we as a political commonwealth do about that?

It’s very tempting, even from where I sit, to say “Well, if a fight’s what they want, we should give them one. They got away with it last time, and now they’re doing it again. If we don’t slap them down now, they’ll just keep doing it.” After all, the notion that a company-sized force of irregulars could hold their own against a determined assault by the Oregon National Guard or pretty much any branch of the US military is laughable on its face. And while I’m sure the soi-disant patriots involved genuinely believe in their hearts that their long guns and the Second Amendment guarantee their liberty, it’s actually the social compact and the tenets of our political commonwealth that do that, as they would no doubt discover to their brief but lifelong chagrin should it come to any sort of violent confrontation.

The problem is that that’s what their leaders probably want. They want to be martyrs, like the Branch Davidians before them, the spark that will ignite the revolution of long oppressed yet heavily armed Christian White Men who’re frightened to death of long-term demographic trends that will undermine their assumed and inherited hegemony of the US of A. Should the National Guard or the BATFE or any federal agency whatsoever engage, they’ll win the battle decisively and quickly, and start a war that’ll last lifetimes.

That’s why the Bundy brothers’ father Cliven got away with it last time. And thank whatever divinity you pray to we have a President whose prudence outweighs his pride for that.

No, it’s not really an option to storm the gates, satisfying though it would be in the short run, and easily as it might be accomplished. In that sense, they’re like Daesh: fighting them on their own terms only strengthens them.

So what’s to be done?

My answer is there in the title of this post. Let them have their occupied visitors’ center. Let anyone who wants to come join them in their white Libertarian Patriot Paradise do so. Let them prove the workability of their social model and survive as they can off the land. Let 100+ men share a single bathroom (ok, two, since I’m guessing they aren’t going to need to set one aside for ladies), and eat canned beans everyday for a year or two. Let them show us how the land can sustain them, all by itself, without a social compact or government to allocate its fruits.

Just don’t let any of them back out. Not until they’ve learned their lesson, and voluntarily surrender.

I’m betting that it won’t take more than a couple of months before a stint in federal prison starts to look right appealing in comparison.

Why I’m Voting for Kshama Sawant

I’ve been meaning to write this for a few weeks now. And while mail-in ballots have been out long enough that some folks have undoubtedly already cast their votes, I still think it’s worth chiming in to say that I whole-heartedly support Kshama Sawant’s bid for re-election to the Seattle City Council.

This is not to say that I whole-heartedly agree with her every position and precept. And to be clear, I am in no way affiliated with her campaign (though I am personally acquainted with some folks who are). I haven’t volunteered or worked for them, and though I still intend to donate money, I have not yet done so.

But whatever our (minor) differences of opinion on policy, I find a lot to like about Councilmember Sawant, both in terms of her accomplishments and in terms of the policies she’s currently pursuing. Continue reading “Why I’m Voting for Kshama Sawant” →