I don’t like my choices. I want to have the chance to vote for another Barack Obama, or a Bill Clinton without a zipper problem. I’m not seeing either on the horizon and if the Supreme Court wasn’t so old, political and narrowly divided I might even take a pass on this election. But they are so I can’t.
From the luxury of the whitest state in America, one of the most clean-politics, secular places south of the Canadian border, I welcome the insistence on clearly articulated progressive principles. I share the anti-war, pro-equality vision. Overdue. On the other hand, a tempered warrior with incredible span, who has done retail politics in one of the poorest, most rural states and in the state that epitomizes wealthy cosmopolitan urbanity. Who went from being a political outsider , literally married into trailer trash, to defining inner circle in the course of a couple of decades of determined, grinding effort, showing that political position is something that can be created by sheer will. Who has the audacity to unapologetically have a Muslim woman heading up her staff. I should love them both.
But I don’t. They feel stale, wrong for the time, not enough. Trying too hard at the wrong thing, not trying hard enough, too soft, too hardened, disconnected, overly connected, zealots, publicans...
I’ve been spoiled by living through the reigns (I use the term deliberately) of a couple of the most talented politicians a person could hope for. Both wanted to find a way for America to move ahead together, not in splinters. One took a strategy of looking for a third way down the middle. One tried to help us see ourselves as citizens of the world. What each got for their efforts was their butts handed to them by a party of opposition that defines itself by that opposition, decades of ever more expert division-baiting, and a mushy center that does not hold.
Whatever gifts the current candidates have, both are going to start with a much harsher oppositional face-off. I haven’t heard anything from either that persuades me they’ll overcome that. Clinton’s long demonstrated ability to clench her jaw and swallow ordure isn’t very attractive to people who brush their teeth after every meal. Bernie’s idealism sounds risky to people who have weathered a cliff-hanger loss and subsequent World War III mid-wifed by a third-party idealist and a runaway Supreme Court.
What I want and won’t get: Someone who speaks to the center with ringing idealism. A grounded vision of what replaces our relationships of production and value when industrial employment goes away (because industry doesn’t depend on American labor) and when capital arrangements that were the cleansing, accelerant scavengers of a robust system become the corrupt stench of a moribund economy. Someone who can articulate humane and compassionate values that include a wide span of beings. A candidate who demonstrates healing discourse, not identity politics. Someone who makes me laugh and soar by feeling how connected I am with people who are different from me. Someone whose light erases fear’s shadows.
Since that paragon isn’t running this time out (and I don’t see her/him waiting in the wings of a brokered convention) here’s what I’m shooting for this cycle.
A primary that leaves us strong for the fall, sprinters and marathoners alike. Enthusiasts willing to pledge themselves for the slog even if they lose because the November loss really IS that much bigger. Bernistas who understand that even if they don’t get to overthrow the order, they need to press just as hard to keep it from being replaced by a patriarchal theocracy based on triumphalism, torture and white supremacy. Clintonians who cherish the spark, who delight in the fresh passion of newcomers and take care not to confuse cynicism with caution.
Most of all, because without this it doesn’t matter a minute who wins the presidential primary: A powerful push to bring the vision of a good community to seats all down the ticket. Lots of seats in the Senate are in play this year! Dare to dream of recovering the House. State legislatures—where the redistricting lines that create permanently entitled political classes are drawn. County and municipal government—because that’s where we play out whether black lives actually matter.
Here are my heroes: people like my Mayor and City Councilors who take on the hard and often excoriated task of balancing mind and heart and open ears for their whole community in the real, difficult daily work of making a small town a shining place. Saunders and Clinton and all their impassioned supporters, but especially the ones that insist that dignity is not a zero-sum game. People who know they can’t see both sides of the moon and so seek out people whose worlds look different from the one they can see.
People who keep going even after they realize it doesn’t end here. Especially when they realize it doesn’t end.
