Early on, Bernie Sanders sparked hope. But with Clinton and Trump leading their parties, the choice is between bad and worse – enough to put anyone off
‘Senator Bernie Sanders and Secretary Hillary Clinton began a spirited and substantive contest, full of clashing policies and differing approaches to education, foreign affairs, Wall Street regulation, and healthcare.’
Photograph: Seth Wenig/AP
Early on, Bernie Sanders sparked hope. But with Clinton and Trump leading their parties, the choice is between bad and worse – enough to put anyone off
This election, white people in the Republican party settled upon the angriest, meanest, vilest person they could rally around – a con artist whose con they may well have been in on. He embodied their rage, and the possibility of enacting revenge for a black president, a declining white majority and a rising Black Lives Matter movement.
Fortunately, though, people of color had different ideas about who should be America’s leader. In the Democratic primary, some of those ideas took shape – and a socialist channeled the conversation in surprising new ways.
Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton began a spirited and substantive contest, full of clashing policies and differing approaches to education, foreign affairs, Wall Street regulation, and healthcare. Sanders won an astounding 43% of the Democratic primary votes (and handily won its young people), after running against the biggest family machine in Democratic politics. But he never effectively made his case to black or Hispanic voters, his team wasn’t ready for primetime, and he lost – though not exactly fairly and squarely. Leaked emails revealed that the Democratic National Committee was no unbiased arbiter in the primary. Meanwhile Sanders was harmed by the fact that, by some estimates, Trump got 23 times the media coverage he ever did.
Then, after the primary was over, the quality of discourse dropped - particularly with regard to subjects that were important to young people and people of color. If you were against Trump, the options varied between conservative and unimaginative. Gone was the spirited debate of the primary; assuming that progressives and people of color had nowhere else to go, Clinton welcomed the endorsement of neocons like John Negroponte and offered up pabulum like “America is great because America is good”. Black Lives Matter – the most exciting movement in contemporary American politics – was never mentioned in the general debates, not even in St Louis, a few miles away from the scene of Michael Brown’s killing.
Many black voters, including me, came to feel the Democratic party had little or nothing to offer us. This is not simply because Hillary Clinton once spoke of “super-predators” – a whole lotta black politicians in the 1990s voted for that crime bill, too – but because the Black Lives Matter movement has changed the conversation about respectability politics. It made us ask if black politicians, or our alleged allies, are actually helping achieve black liberation. After we went all out for Barack Obama in 2008, only to discover that having a black president didn’t change how black people are disproportionately unemployed, arrested, incarcerated and killed by police, it’s little wonder that early voting is down among black voters. Not only that; as Luvvie Ajayi points out: “This is also the first major election since 1964 where the Voting Rights Act hasn’t protected us”. We are tired of fighting GOP voter suppression, Trump’s attempts at voter intimidation, and the fact that black people wait twice as long as white people to vote.
Hispanic Americans have also found good reason to be disillusioned. When Trump called Mexicans “rapists” and criminals, NBC cut ties with him – only to welcome him back to host Saturday Night Live a few months later. The message was symbolic and clear: America would tolerate Trump’s disdain for Mexicans if and when it seemed profitable. A handful of politicians distanced themselves from Trump’s “grab them by the pussy” remark and his lewd comments about a white woman. But Paul Ryan, Newt Gingrich and the entire Republican establishment embraced Trump after he demonized Hispanic people. Hillary Clinton, likely to continue the deportation policies of the Obama administration, is not offering a satisfying alternative.
Native people are disillusioned, too. They are the most likely to be killed by police and, in North Dakota, are supposed to accept having their water threatened in a way the white people of Bismarck didn’t. And while they have mounted a beautiful and sustained protest at Standing Rock, they have been assaulted by the state for peaceful demonstration while the Bundys got off scot free.
And all the while the burden of keeping Trump out of office is being unfairly heaped upon people of color. Our anger has been sidelined this year, while white rage has been front and center.
In 2008, we had “Joe the Plumber” (actually a man named Samuel Wurzelbacher), an aggrieved white man who got to set the presidential campaign’s agenda in its final days. Joe/Sam got ample airtime simply because he was white and male and angry – and was amplified for his anger in a way a woman or a person of color never would be in America.
In 2016, we got Joe the Plumber on steroids, reincarnated as the actual Republican candidate.
And so, we slouch towards the finish line, our political imagination battered, our discourse made small, our political options reduced to “Are you for fascism or not?” For the first time in my life, I have begun to understand why people don’t vote.
This was the election of disillusionment
Early on, Bernie Sanders sparked hope. But with Clinton and Trump leading their parties, the choice is between bad and worse – enough to put anyone off
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This election, white people in the Republican party settled upon the angriest, meanest, vilest person they could rally around – a con artist whose con they may well have been in on. He embodied their rage, and the possibility of enacting revenge for a black president, a declining white majority and a rising Black Lives Matter movement.
But as the campaign wore on, the angry white man at the top of their ticket made Republicans, who have long fancied themselves Christian moralists, look increasingly hypocritical. He openly bragged about the size of his penis, said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without losing voters, mocked a disabled reporter and boasted of grabbing women “by the pussy”. It didn’t seem to matter. By the time he wrapped up the primary, I predicted Trump would become the 45th president – and if it were up to white men alone, he probably would.
Fortunately, though, people of color had different ideas about who should be America’s leader. In the Democratic primary, some of those ideas took shape – and a socialist channeled the conversation in surprising new ways.
Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton began a spirited and substantive contest, full of clashing policies and differing approaches to education, foreign affairs, Wall Street regulation, and healthcare. Sanders won an astounding 43% of the Democratic primary votes (and handily won its young people), after running against the biggest family machine in Democratic politics. But he never effectively made his case to black or Hispanic voters, his team wasn’t ready for primetime, and he lost – though not exactly fairly and squarely. Leaked emails revealed that the Democratic National Committee was no unbiased arbiter in the primary. Meanwhile Sanders was harmed by the fact that, by some estimates, Trump got 23 times the media coverage he ever did.
Then, after the primary was over, the quality of discourse dropped - particularly with regard to subjects that were important to young people and people of color. If you were against Trump, the options varied between conservative and unimaginative. Gone was the spirited debate of the primary; assuming that progressives and people of color had nowhere else to go, Clinton welcomed the endorsement of neocons like John Negroponte and offered up pabulum like “America is great because America is good”. Black Lives Matter – the most exciting movement in contemporary American politics – was never mentioned in the general debates, not even in St Louis, a few miles away from the scene of Michael Brown’s killing.
Many black voters, including me, came to feel the Democratic party had little or nothing to offer us. This is not simply because Hillary Clinton once spoke of “super-predators” – a whole lotta black politicians in the 1990s voted for that crime bill, too – but because the Black Lives Matter movement has changed the conversation about respectability politics. It made us ask if black politicians, or our alleged allies, are actually helping achieve black liberation. After we went all out for Barack Obama in 2008, only to discover that having a black president didn’t change how black people are disproportionately unemployed, arrested, incarcerated and killed by police, it’s little wonder that early voting is down among black voters. Not only that; as Luvvie Ajayi points out: “This is also the first major election since 1964 where the Voting Rights Act hasn’t protected us”. We are tired of fighting GOP voter suppression, Trump’s attempts at voter intimidation, and the fact that black people wait twice as long as white people to vote.
Hispanic Americans have also found good reason to be disillusioned. When Trump called Mexicans “rapists” and criminals, NBC cut ties with him – only to welcome him back to host Saturday Night Live a few months later. The message was symbolic and clear: America would tolerate Trump’s disdain for Mexicans if and when it seemed profitable. A handful of politicians distanced themselves from Trump’s “grab them by the pussy” remark and his lewd comments about a white woman. But Paul Ryan, Newt Gingrich and the entire Republican establishment embraced Trump after he demonized Hispanic people. Hillary Clinton, likely to continue the deportation policies of the Obama administration, is not offering a satisfying alternative.
Native people are disillusioned, too. They are the most likely to be killed by police and, in North Dakota, are supposed to accept having their water threatened in a way the white people of Bismarck didn’t. And while they have mounted a beautiful and sustained protest at Standing Rock, they have been assaulted by the state for peaceful demonstration while the Bundys got off scot free.
And all the while the burden of keeping Trump out of office is being unfairly heaped upon people of color. Our anger has been sidelined this year, while white rage has been front and center.
In 2008, we had “Joe the Plumber” (actually a man named Samuel Wurzelbacher), an aggrieved white man who got to set the presidential campaign’s agenda in its final days. Joe/Sam got ample airtime simply because he was white and male and angry – and was amplified for his anger in a way a woman or a person of color never would be in America.
In 2016, we got Joe the Plumber on steroids, reincarnated as the actual Republican candidate.
And so, we slouch towards the finish line, our political imagination battered, our discourse made small, our political options reduced to “Are you for fascism or not?” For the first time in my life, I have begun to understand why people don’t vote.