Clarissa's Blog

What I find tiresome is that, for way too many people, their support for Hillary / Bernie is not about politics at all but about their obnoxious and vapid tribal allegiances.

I, for instance, have no problem saying, “I want Hillary to win but I recognize that Bernie is a fantastic candidate, too. He is honest, he gets the base super energized, he has some great ideas. It’s good to have two promising, good candidates.” I don’t need to convince myself that Bernie is a white supremacist and a sexist evildoer who will destroy the universe if he is nominated.

I wish I saw more people who could say this or, alternatively, say, “I want Bernie to win but I recognize that Hillary is a fantastic candidate, too. We have managed to come up with the first truly viable and vastly supported female candidate, and that’s a huge achievement. And look how fantastic Hillary stood up to the Benghazi panel bullying! That was very inspiring. It’s good to have two promising, good candidates.”

At the same time, it would be nice if people could liberate themselves a tad from the overpowering need to pursue tribal allegiances and could actually say something critical of their supported candidates.

For instance, “Hillary is great but I’m convinced she is not being honest about her lack of support for the TPP.” Or, “Love Bernie but he might have trouble getting his free universal healthcare through Congress.”

One of these people will be our nominee, we will have to support her 🙂 in the general election, no matter what.Maybe it’s time to look at the positive sides of our candidates and reserve the unhinged vitriol for the actual opponents. All of this juvenile in-fighting is weakening our field. There is absolutely nothing useful that comes out of it other than an opportunity for lonely infantile people to feel less alone. Let’s do more politics and less junior high clique forming.