I'm Still For Bernie
Title
I'm Still For Bernie
Creator
Jacob Schlitt
Description
"Until I Switched to Hillary."
Date
2016-08-23
Format
application/pdf
Type
text
Language
en
Coverage
2016
Identifier
I'M_STILL_FOR_BERNIE
Text
I’M STILL FOR BERNIE
(It was April. It is now August
Observations in February, March, April and now)
UNTIL I SWITCHED TO HILLARY
It is February 2016, and there were the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. Hillary won Iowa by .6% and Bernie took New Hampshire by over 20%. What is going on? What has happened to “conventional wisdom?” Bernie was supposed to push Hillary to the left, excite young people, and then exit.
It is March, and there was the Michigan caucus and Bernie won that, losing Mississippi. Hillary is getting annoyed. Michigan wasn’t supposed to happen. Some of Bernie’s supporters thought that he might do in Ohio, or Missouri or Illinois, what he did in Michigan. I was thrilled that he took Michigan, but by how much? One and a half points. Not a very impressive win. It is not 20 points, or 10 points or even 5 points.
Bernie has to keep saying that it is only the beginning. He is not quitting the race. He can still win it. He has to say that. He is leading a movement and there are millions of people who have joined the movement. They are not Democratic Socialists, but they have gotten the Democratic Socialist message. I am a Democratic Socialist. Bernie is a Democratic Socialist. We both pay dues to DSA. And DSA has less than 10,000 members. And that is the way it has been for a long time.
The difference now is that, where in the past, socialists and “Progressives” ran on a third party ticket, we have a socialist running for the Democratic Party nomination. There were a few elections, local and state, where a third party candidate got elected, but not an election for the President of the US.
I was thinking that “It is déjà vu all over again” as I remembered the 1948 election. I was a senior in college, I was 20 years and 11 months; one and a half months short of being eligible to vote. And I was an enthusiastic supporter of the Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace. The Democratic Party candidate for reelection was Harry Truman, and the Republican Party candidate was Thomas E. Dewey. America was caught up in a Red Scare, and we were engaged in a cold war with the Soviet Union led by our Commander in Chief, Truman. Communists supported Wallace. I was neither a Communist nor a Communist sympathizer, but I was opposed to the hysteria and to the saber rattling. To many Americans, you were a Commie if you were going to vote for Wallace.
As usual, the choice was between the Republican party “establishment’s” candidate, Dewey, or the Democratic party “establishment’s candidate Truman. On top of everything, the Democrats had a civil rights plank which upset the Southern Democrats, so they put up Strom Thurmond. It appeared that Wallace would take away votes from Truman on the left, and Thurmond on the right. Similar to today, young people supported Wallace (Sanders), and their parents supported Truman (Clinton). The obvious difference: then the fight was between the Democratic candidate and a third party candidate. Now, it is between two candidates, one establishment and one anti-establishment, for the nomination.
Those of us who supported Wallace did not expect him to win. Ours would be a protest vote. We would be telling America and the world that there is a substantial number of Americans opposed to the cold war. In fact, opposed to all war. In addition, Wallace spoke out strongly for a progressive domestic agenda, for workers, for civil rights, for everything Sanders is advocating. How could I not support him? True, Norman Thomas decided to run, but that would be throwing away my vote (which I didn’t have,) My mother, and I suspect the parents of all my friends who were for Wallace, voted, thank God, for Truman.
It is April, and Bernie took a whole bunch of states, but Hillary is ahead by a lot of delegates. The exchange has gotten nastier, which I regret. The big NY primary will take place April 19, and the debate in Brooklyn will take place April 14. I assume Hillary will take NY, and in my heart of hearts, I am not unhappy if she does. I am still for Bernie, but from the beginning, I assumed Hillary would get the nomination. I just wanted Bernie to get his message out, and to be listened to. To push Hillary to the left.
It is August. The Republicans nominated Trump and the Democrats nominated Clinton. Trump is getting uglier, and he is losing in the polls big time. He is changing staff, back pedaling, making appeals for the black vote, looking for excuses to explain his eventual loss—rigged elections. Hillary can’t shake the email situation, now being linked to the Clinton Foundation when she was Secretary of State. I suspect most Americans would like two different candidates, but are stuck with Trump and Clinton. Bernie has been quiet. The Green Party (Stein) and the Libertarians, Johnson and Weld, are going to get more votes than usual. But it won’t change the outcome—a big win for Hillary.
I have been most upset by the picture of the typical Trump supporter—a blue collar worker, white, unsure of his future, with no more than a high school education, persuaded that the government is the enemy, and is more concerned about minorities than about him, and that the big danger is “them”—the Mexicans, the Muslims, the Terrorists who will sneak in as refugees. He gets a kick out of the fact that a candidate for President is saying what he, himself, thinks, and knows that it is politically incorrect to say it. And a lot of people still believe that the polls are not finding them because they arte not telling the pollsters they support Trump, because being for Trump is not “politically correct.”
And very troubling is the phenomenon of the extreme right, the Nationalists, the bigots, the KKK, the neo-Nazis, the xenophobes, who come crawling out from under the rocks to support Trump. They are the ones who are coming to his rallies, and cheering his dog whistle allusions.
There was a time when unions were strong, when union members felt they had a voice and had hope. That when they organized, they would win a contract that would improve their conditions, and that government supported them in their efforts. And that their union, their voice, was instrumental, together with other like-minded groups, in getting laws passed that benefited them and all Americans. More than a third of American workers were union members. They, together with small farmers, young people, retirees, storekeepers, small businessmen, immigrants, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, constituted a majority. And they voted. But Big Business, Wall Street, The One Percent, feeling threatened, cracked down. They weakened and broke unions, moved jobs overseas, wages stagnated and declined while their profits and executive salaries skyrocketed, they pitted group against group, put obstacles in the way of voting, gerrymandered Congressional districts, and silenced the voice of the majority.
Thank you Bernie, for pointing some of this out: Supporting the Fight for $15, Medicare for All, Consumer Protection, Early Childhood Education, Exposing Income and Wealth Inequality, Calling for overturning Citizens United, and for a Political Revolution, and inspiring a new generation of young voters.
Bernie’s backing Hillary, and so am I. It will be an interesting couple of months.
(It was April. It is now August
Observations in February, March, April and now)
UNTIL I SWITCHED TO HILLARY
It is February 2016, and there were the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. Hillary won Iowa by .6% and Bernie took New Hampshire by over 20%. What is going on? What has happened to “conventional wisdom?” Bernie was supposed to push Hillary to the left, excite young people, and then exit.
It is March, and there was the Michigan caucus and Bernie won that, losing Mississippi. Hillary is getting annoyed. Michigan wasn’t supposed to happen. Some of Bernie’s supporters thought that he might do in Ohio, or Missouri or Illinois, what he did in Michigan. I was thrilled that he took Michigan, but by how much? One and a half points. Not a very impressive win. It is not 20 points, or 10 points or even 5 points.
Bernie has to keep saying that it is only the beginning. He is not quitting the race. He can still win it. He has to say that. He is leading a movement and there are millions of people who have joined the movement. They are not Democratic Socialists, but they have gotten the Democratic Socialist message. I am a Democratic Socialist. Bernie is a Democratic Socialist. We both pay dues to DSA. And DSA has less than 10,000 members. And that is the way it has been for a long time.
The difference now is that, where in the past, socialists and “Progressives” ran on a third party ticket, we have a socialist running for the Democratic Party nomination. There were a few elections, local and state, where a third party candidate got elected, but not an election for the President of the US.
I was thinking that “It is déjà vu all over again” as I remembered the 1948 election. I was a senior in college, I was 20 years and 11 months; one and a half months short of being eligible to vote. And I was an enthusiastic supporter of the Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace. The Democratic Party candidate for reelection was Harry Truman, and the Republican Party candidate was Thomas E. Dewey. America was caught up in a Red Scare, and we were engaged in a cold war with the Soviet Union led by our Commander in Chief, Truman. Communists supported Wallace. I was neither a Communist nor a Communist sympathizer, but I was opposed to the hysteria and to the saber rattling. To many Americans, you were a Commie if you were going to vote for Wallace.
As usual, the choice was between the Republican party “establishment’s” candidate, Dewey, or the Democratic party “establishment’s candidate Truman. On top of everything, the Democrats had a civil rights plank which upset the Southern Democrats, so they put up Strom Thurmond. It appeared that Wallace would take away votes from Truman on the left, and Thurmond on the right. Similar to today, young people supported Wallace (Sanders), and their parents supported Truman (Clinton). The obvious difference: then the fight was between the Democratic candidate and a third party candidate. Now, it is between two candidates, one establishment and one anti-establishment, for the nomination.
Those of us who supported Wallace did not expect him to win. Ours would be a protest vote. We would be telling America and the world that there is a substantial number of Americans opposed to the cold war. In fact, opposed to all war. In addition, Wallace spoke out strongly for a progressive domestic agenda, for workers, for civil rights, for everything Sanders is advocating. How could I not support him? True, Norman Thomas decided to run, but that would be throwing away my vote (which I didn’t have,) My mother, and I suspect the parents of all my friends who were for Wallace, voted, thank God, for Truman.
It is April, and Bernie took a whole bunch of states, but Hillary is ahead by a lot of delegates. The exchange has gotten nastier, which I regret. The big NY primary will take place April 19, and the debate in Brooklyn will take place April 14. I assume Hillary will take NY, and in my heart of hearts, I am not unhappy if she does. I am still for Bernie, but from the beginning, I assumed Hillary would get the nomination. I just wanted Bernie to get his message out, and to be listened to. To push Hillary to the left.
It is August. The Republicans nominated Trump and the Democrats nominated Clinton. Trump is getting uglier, and he is losing in the polls big time. He is changing staff, back pedaling, making appeals for the black vote, looking for excuses to explain his eventual loss—rigged elections. Hillary can’t shake the email situation, now being linked to the Clinton Foundation when she was Secretary of State. I suspect most Americans would like two different candidates, but are stuck with Trump and Clinton. Bernie has been quiet. The Green Party (Stein) and the Libertarians, Johnson and Weld, are going to get more votes than usual. But it won’t change the outcome—a big win for Hillary.
I have been most upset by the picture of the typical Trump supporter—a blue collar worker, white, unsure of his future, with no more than a high school education, persuaded that the government is the enemy, and is more concerned about minorities than about him, and that the big danger is “them”—the Mexicans, the Muslims, the Terrorists who will sneak in as refugees. He gets a kick out of the fact that a candidate for President is saying what he, himself, thinks, and knows that it is politically incorrect to say it. And a lot of people still believe that the polls are not finding them because they arte not telling the pollsters they support Trump, because being for Trump is not “politically correct.”
And very troubling is the phenomenon of the extreme right, the Nationalists, the bigots, the KKK, the neo-Nazis, the xenophobes, who come crawling out from under the rocks to support Trump. They are the ones who are coming to his rallies, and cheering his dog whistle allusions.
There was a time when unions were strong, when union members felt they had a voice and had hope. That when they organized, they would win a contract that would improve their conditions, and that government supported them in their efforts. And that their union, their voice, was instrumental, together with other like-minded groups, in getting laws passed that benefited them and all Americans. More than a third of American workers were union members. They, together with small farmers, young people, retirees, storekeepers, small businessmen, immigrants, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, constituted a majority. And they voted. But Big Business, Wall Street, The One Percent, feeling threatened, cracked down. They weakened and broke unions, moved jobs overseas, wages stagnated and declined while their profits and executive salaries skyrocketed, they pitted group against group, put obstacles in the way of voting, gerrymandered Congressional districts, and silenced the voice of the majority.
Thank you Bernie, for pointing some of this out: Supporting the Fight for $15, Medicare for All, Consumer Protection, Early Childhood Education, Exposing Income and Wealth Inequality, Calling for overturning Citizens United, and for a Political Revolution, and inspiring a new generation of young voters.
Bernie’s backing Hillary, and so am I. It will be an interesting couple of months.
Original Format
application/msword
Collection
Citation
Jacob Schlitt, “I'm Still For Bernie,” Autobiographical stories & other writing by Jacob Schlitt, accessed September 11, 2024, https://tsirlson.omeka.net/items/show/379.