2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Election rant about being a millennial [View all]BobbyDrake
(2,542 posts)Democracy is a system of government in which everyone participates. If you successfully convince a majority of people to agree with you, you win. If you don't, you lose. That's it. And nowhere along the way has the Bernie Sanders "movement" made any effort to appeal to people who don't already agree with what they think. In fact, it's been more of your allies insulting and castigating their way through this primary than anyone else. Your fellow Berners have become mouthpieces for rightwing lies, all because they let their emotions get manipulated into HATING a political opponent, instead of being able to be grown-up enough to understand that people can disagree with you without being transformed into a caricature of Satan Incarnate.
Bernie supporters have repeatedly called African-Americans for Clinton "low-information voters" who "don't know what their best interests are." That African-American voters would undoubtedly be voting for Sanders "if they knew more about him," as though anyone who doesn't vote for Sanders must automatically be too stupid to understand what they're doing. The implication has clearly been that African-American Democrats need white progressives to tell them how to vote and for whom to vote. Do you genuinely believe this attitude was supposed to GROW the Bernie Sanders coalition? I sure hope not.
Bernie supporters have also repeatedly insulted the women who have voted for Clinton, of all races, by implying that they're "voting with their vaginas." Sanders surrogates like "Killer" Mike (Great idea, btw, getting a surrogate who calls himself "Killer" like it's nothing) embarrassed themselves by saying such offensive stuff like "having a uterus doesn't make you qualified," as if that were Clinton's sole argument for her candidacy. So many male campaign surrogates for Sanders have been caught making this argument, which is offensive to women who've been putting up with patronizing speech like that for their entire lives. Do you genuinely believe that insulting women voters, who make up a majority of Democrats, was supposed to GROW the Bernie Sanders coalition? Again, I sure hope not.
I'm really losing my patience with the kind of voters like you who think that participation entitled you to automatic victory. You can't acknowledge that you backed a candidate who ended up less popular in a system based on majority voting than you expected. Do you see Martin O'Malley supporters throwing shit-fits online about the injustice of their candidate not winning? No, you don't. So what's the difference between you and Martin O'Malley supporters, where they're mature enough to accept the results but you're not?
A national election in a nation of more than 300 million people is not, NEWSFLASH, about your feelings. If you need a hug, go upstairs and ask mom or dad for one. The Democratic Party is the most diverse party in this country, and yet your side thinks you should be put in charge exclusively because you demand it. That's not how democracy works, but it is how "privilege" works. And if you're tired of hearing that, find a new hobby. I heard there's a new Harry Potter story coming out; maybe you can get excited about that instead.