Clara Jane Hendrickson | Feeling Bernt Out

Praxis | Reflections on attending a Bernie rally

By Clara Jane Hendrickson 04/10/16 9:55pm

This past week, I attended Bernie Sanders’ rally in Philadelphia, marking my first time attending a presidential campaign rally. Reflecting over the past several days, I found myself fiddling with my contradictory feelings. The rally was both thrilling and disappointing. It was both unifying and alienating. It made me both hopeful about the plausibility of change and worried about the long-term consequences of populist politics.

While waiting for three hours in the cold to enter the stadium, I heard a variety of reductionist — even if entertaining — comments. “I just want to move to Norway. Bernie’s going to make the U.S. into Scandinavia!” — as if Scandinavia does not confront a whole host of political issues including xenophobia and severe budgetary constraints. While waiting, some people near me began to light up. As the smell of weed set in, the people around me began chanting “Burn for Bernie.” I felt a little bit like I was back home in San Francisco at a music festival, not a presidential rally.

During Bernie’s speech, some of the most exciting moments were dampened when one person, visibly angry, yelled out, “Mention Latinos!” or when another responded to Bernie’s call for gender pay equity with, “Yes! Stay the f**k out of my uterus!”

I have been an avid supporter of Bernie Sanders and his campaign for a while now. I have brushed aside the think pieces on “Bernie Bros,” believing an attack on a candidate’s supporters to be unfair criticism. I am still skeptical of those who use politicians’ supporters as the primary argument to dismiss a candidate. Our country is too big and too full of wackos to believe that any candidate can guarantee that their supporters demonstrate political nuance and a sophisticated understanding of policy. In American democracy, politics most often trumps policy.

The masses attending political rallies merely reflect the current American political climate. But, whether it is fair or not, I believe a presidential candidate ought to model the terms of political engagement they wish to inspire among their constituency. And this is where Bernie unfortunately fell flat.

At Wednesday’s rally, Bernie addressed Hillary Clinton’s doubts concerning the Vermont senator’s presidential qualifications. Sanders told the enraptured Philadelphia crowd, “I don’t believe that [Hillary Clinton] is qualified if she is, through her Super PAC, taking tens of millions of dollars in special-interest money ... I don’t think you are qualified if you have voted for the disastrous war in Iraq. I don’t think you are qualified if you supported virtually every disastrous trade agreement which has cost us millions.”

In the middle of an inspiring speech that touched on every reason why I support Bernie, this comment on Hillary’s qualifications irritated me. It didn’t irritate me because Bernie’s campaign decided to stoop to the petty remarks that have dominated this election season. The comment irritated me because Bernie justified his stance based on Hillary’s voting record, equating professional qualification with political position. The comment did not merely signal intraparty conflict; it embedded itself in the much larger issue of the divisive politics of disgust that have dominated how fellow liberal Americans refer to their fellow conservative Americans.

It is the sad reality that Barack Obama’s primary campaign platform of bipartisanship has turned out to be a pipedream more than anything else. He took responsibility for this failing during his last State of the Union address, but I am of the belief that this failing is more a reflection of the obstructionist politics of the last eight years than a reflection of Obama’s personal failure.

Before Wednesday’s rally, I had ignored every piece comparing Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, finding the correlation annoying and unproductive. One is a committed public servant running an honest campaign; the other is a rich bigot engaging in the political process in the basest way. But, the truth is, the wild differences between these candidates do not change the fact that both are populists and both are running populist campaigns.

Populism might be appropriate for the political moment, but I worry about the long-term consequences of such intransigence. I do not want to live in a country where we believe that only those who share our opinions are qualified to make good policy. Smart liberals need smart conservatives. Show me a political rally that fills a stadium of people who believe this, and I think we’ll be well on our way.

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