So let me start this by saying I’m not anti-third party. In fact, I do hope that one day we can have more realistic, viable options to choose from in future Presidential elections. But let’s go back, for a second, to the year 2000. A year when only 537 votes separated Bush from Gore in Florida, thus giving the state to Bush and (with additional help from the Supreme Court) the presidency. Now in this same state, Ralph Nader received a little over 97,000 votes. Had Al Gore received even half a percent of those votes, he would have won the state and, thus, the Presidency. Which means we wouldn’t of had a Bush administration. Which means that a lot of his economic policies wouldn’t have taken effect. Which means that major companies wouldn’t have given tax breaks (or greatly reduced tax rates) for companies that shipped jobs overseas. Which means that my dad’s employer wouldn’t have shipped his work to China, leaving my dad jobless. This also means that there wouldn’t have been the deregulations in the banking industry that lead to our financial collapse. Which also would have meant that the sub-prime mortgage crisis (as depicted in The Big Short) would most likely not have happened. Which also means that Countrywide Home Loans wouldn’t have lied and tricked my parents into signing a sub-prime mortgage while trying to start my own business, thus a year and a half struggle for us to keep our home from foreclosure wouldn’t have happened (though luckily we were able to keep it thanks to Obama’s Making Home Affordable Program). So yes, normally I am not anti-third party by any stretch; but if you can’t tell, this election is pretty personal to me. And we don’t have someone like a Kasich on the other side, someone who we can get by with four years with until the next election: we have the potential to elect someone in Trump that’s somehow even worse than Bush by at least a hundred times over, if not a thousand. We can’t take that risk. And in a time where I know a lot of people are saying that “my vote doesn’t matter,” or “elections don’t matter,” my family is textbook proof that one election can, in fact, change everything. Eight years of Bush nearly drove my parents to bankruptcy and financial ruin. I do not want the risk of that happening to me or my family, or anyone else, ever again (this is also why, while I’m sure Gary Johnson is a nice guy, and he seems like one to me, his support of deregulations and minimal government interference in business means that there’s no way in good conscience I can vote for him..especially with my family’s history).
Now let’s contrast that to the Clinton years. From 1992-2000, my dad worked for an automotive company in Michigan and was getting promotions yearly. We had two nice jeeps and a gorgeous ranch house that sat on a half acre of land. I had a wonderful childhood with everything one could possibly want. And when my family wanted to move out to Arizona (for nicer weather and my allergies), we had the resources to be able to do so, and my dad started an engineering business that later received a contract from Allied Signal. A contract that was lost, as I said earlier, a few years into the next administration. Now the ‘90s weren’t perfect; I recognize not everyone was fortunate to have a childhood like mine, that there were injustices (as there are in every decade), and that there was a “tough on crime” culture that spawned some well-intentioned but incredibly misguided in hindsight laws that everyone from the Clintons to Biden to Bernie supported. But I’ll tell you one thing we didn’t have: an economy that was in complete shambles like it was in 2008. And the reason why most of us can reflect fondly on our childhood and share Buzzfeed listicles of our favorite toys of the ‘90s is because of the budget surplus economy that was formed under Bill Clinton’s leadership. So yes, I get the disappointment and disenfranchisement a lot of people are having with this primary right now. I was disappointed when my first candidate of choice, Wesley Clark, lost to John Kerry. And I was even more heartbroken and devastated when he lost to Bush when I thought there was no way on God’s green Earth would vote for him after those first four years (but then again, I was watching Keith Olbermann and Fahrenheit 9/11 at the time, so I was getting a very one-sided view, no matter how correct it was or may have been). But when you’ve had to, at two separate times in your life, comfort a parent as they sob uncontrollably on your shoulder, worried sick about what the future will bring and depressed of what was taken from them, you realize that life is more important than just one election cycle or one candidate. The fight goes beyond that.
Now Bernie Sanders was a great candidate. There’s no doubt about that. But one of the things I liked best about him, other than his in-depth knowledge of economics, was that he always focused on the issues. He rarely, if ever, gave into distractions. He was the guy that said, back in October, that he didn’t “give a damn about any e-mails.” He didn’t talk about things like Benghazi because, on top of these issues being used by Republicans for years as a distraction (http://mm4a.org/1KbqMbU), those debates took away from the real issues we needed to care about. Sure, he talked about the Goldman Sachs speeches (which was worth bringing up), and of course he was going to bring about differences (what’s the point of even having a primary if you only have candidates that agree on everything?). But even then he said during debates that, on their absolute worst days, they were still 100% better than anything the GOP had to offer. Now I don’t know if some people think he was joking when he said all of this, or if they didn’t take it seriously at the time, or maybe they weren’t paying attention, but I always thought that he was serious when he said those things. Again, that’s why I liked him. Having said that, he wasn’t a perfect candidate for me (his knowledge of foreign policy wasn’t as in-depth as his knowledge of economics, he wasn’t as strong on gun control as other Dems, and he’s as old as Reagan was in the second year of his second term), so it was a close vote for me until the very end. But I will say that, while I absolutely sympathize with those of the “Bernie or Bust” movement, I would be lying if I said that it didn’t wear me down as the campaign went on, as well. Mostly because a part of me thought that a lot of people were not only ignoring those things that Bernie said, but were also falling prey to the same thing that I thought he did such a good job avoiding: distractions.
I know there are some people that will disagree with me on what I said above, and that’s fine. And I know quite a few people are still feeling strong emotions about this primary election, particularly with the DNC (which is why I’m avoiding talking about that). But the one thing I’ll say is this: if you can make progress, go for it. Always go for it. But you can’t always fling a boulder over a mountain every time. Sometimes you have to grind at it, slowly push the boulder up the hill, pause to take a breath and rethink, recalibrate and re-strategize, then keep pushing on. Eventually, if you work at it, you will achieve what you set out to do, even if it isn’t instant, even if it takes decades or centuries. But giving up or being cynical or pessimistic because of one election cycle isn’t the solution to anything. And come January of next year, refusing to work with those who are in office because you disagree with them isn’t the solution to solving problems, either. Being the liberal version of the Tea Party, shouting in an echo chamber while refusing to work with those of different viewpoints, will get nothing done. Just as the Tea Party has done nothing but bring the Republican Party farther down than it already was. And again, this is where Bernie Sanders gets it. He knows that the changes his campaign brought to the Democratic Party platform, one of the most progressive platforms in recent election years, is progress that’s worth celebrating. He understands the importance of working with others to get things done, hence the announcement of an education plan with the Clinton campaign to help those who can’t afford to go to college (and I’m sure he’ll continue to fight for this plan in the Senate, as well). And he knows that this country can’t afford even one year of a Trump presidency, let alone four, and we can’t afford to undo what Obama has spent eight years doing.* And on behalf of not just Bernie, but what my family went through, I hope that you feel the same way.
* On a side-note: has Obama’s presidency been perfect? No. But no presidency will ever be perfect: presidents will fail, they will make mistakes, they will fail to get things passed (like Guantanamo [thanks, Congress]), and sometimes they’ll pass laws that have unforeseen ramifications. But a presidency that has taken us out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, ended (or, at the very least, greatly reduced our efforts) in two wars, passed an Affordable Care Act that can hopefully pave the way for universal health care in the future (and helped people in my own family), and put in place two Supreme Court judges that helped gay marriage become the law of the land, is a presidency worth celebrating. And who knows what would have happened if he had a Congress that was willing to work with him, like Newt Gingrich was willing to do with Clinton in the mid-90s.
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