What about Gary Hart, or RFK, or the Most Interesting Man in the World guy, or your mom?
What about Gary Hart, or RFK, or the Most Interesting Man in the World guy, or your mom?

It was inevitable. Of course the Bernie loyalists have been saying it all along but even they had the good taste to keep their voices down in the first 24 hours of rage grief. I first saw it in print here in the Independent, but they're British, so it's not their fault. Then, today it was in the Washington Post, which is harder to forgive. The argument that Bernie Sanders would have beaten Trump is on its way to divert us from the job of dealing meaningfully with the nightmare already in progress. It's a grotesque, sour grapes-y exercise in victim shaming. And like anyone who comes to a person in mourning with advice about how they could have made better choices, it truly can fuck off.

Maybe he could've won, sure. But the Washington Post doesn't know that and neither does anyone else. Because he didn't win the nomination, which is the first step to winning the election.

Is the premise that the rednecks who rallied around Trump hate Jewish socialists less than they hate women? That was an argument that floated around The Stranger offices in the weeks leading up to HRC's nomination. Again, maybe, but I don't buy it. Antisemitism runs every bit as deep as the misogyny and racism that fueled his rise.

Regardless, the issue is the 46.9% of Americans who didn't vote FOR ANYONE. And saying they weren't given an exciting enough candidate is to excuse and forgive them and that's absurd. Voting is not shopping. You don't always get everything you want. And holding out because you don't feel inspired, or because the 25 year old Republican conspiracy to discredit HRC was so effective that non-Republicans can't quite shake it off, is not a behavior I am prepared to flatter with magical thinking.

Magical thinking kills.

HRC was not my first choice. But anyone in any world who couldn't see that she was the best choice and, more to the point, that A CHOICE WAS GETTING MADE ONE WAY OR ANOTHER does not get my liberal sympathies today or ever. Privileging your biases over the needs of everyone else leads precisely to where we are. Which is why I say "later" to that Bernie could've won shit and anyone who propounds it.