I owe John an apology.
Twenty-five years ago John paused in our grad-school hall, waved the school paper down low, and raised one discreet thumb. My name was boldly emblazoned on the Coming Out ad he flashed, so why the discretion? I drew this brash conclusion: John was queer as a three-dollar bill.
I was wrong.
Years later, our beautiful wives would divorce us in symmetry, cementing a friendship that has pulled me across state lines for a quick coffee during a brief layover.
John seems to admire my loud-mouthed activism — he may have termed it “passion.” He says I don’t owe him any apology for doing what I thought was right, but he’s wrong.
It happens to the best of us.
You see, in 2015 I became enamored of a guy named Bernie. I loved Bernie. An old socialist Jew with a familiar accent, I trusted him. The programs he pitched to progressives and rednecks alike inspired me to knock on doors for him. Slow, tedious work unsuited to my personality, I pulled on my Bernie t-shirt, practiced Bernie bullet points, and dragged my introverted hubby and underage kid out to proselytize.
John remained steadfastly in the bag for Clinton.
I’d been all-in for the dully competent wonk in 2008, her history-making potential adding the flair I craved, but after she ignored environmentalists literally camping on her campaign doorstep, I flounced off.
If I’m honest, I was nearly as angry with her for branding on “Hillary.” I’m old enough to remember my mother’s outraged efforts be addressed as “Doctor,” but young enough to resent Sec. Albright’s suggestion that I owed Sec. Clinton my vote.
Gen X sits perpetually outside. I wrote something I hoped would help feminists older and younger than myself rediscover mutual respect. It went internationally viral, launching my writing career — first hit’s free!
At our primary caucus, I discovered anomalies among the absentee ballots. Attending district meetings, I encountered open nepotism. The more involved I got, the ranker the Democratic sausage smelled. As Bernie’s path narrowed and party power structures aligned, I self-polarized. At least, I thought I had.
When Russia leaked DNC emails I told John: “I really don’t give a flying damn where they came from, they prove what we’ve been saying: this nomination was rigged!”
John pointedly raised a digital eyebrow.
Even Bernie went all-in for Clinton after he lost the nomination, but I just couldn’t. I was mad.
Pissed. Disappointed. Vengeful. Morose. Incandescent. Sulky.
Callow.
With the election looming, I stewed. I wasn’t certain Trump couldn’t win and I harbored no illusions that he’d “moderate once in office,” but I had faith that Republicans would choose country over chaos, if push came to shove.
I was so wrong.
I also believed that DNC corruption needed to be taken down a peg. I wanted a tight race, with a visible signal. I strategized about bringing a third party to 5% nationwide — that would send a warning shot across the bow of our entrenched two-party system!
I argued passionately for these ideas I’d curated, cultivated, and considered. I was aware of Russian infiltration — I told more than one angry Clinton backer that the “Bernie Bros” infuriating them were Russian trolls — but I never considered that Russians could shape my own, carefully evaluated ideas.
Fancy Bear’s infiltration of the Clinton campaign was patient, creeping inward from residual 2008 email lists until it hit paydirt: they accessed the email of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign manager.[1] The resultant psyop campaign convinced Sanders supporters we’d been systematically cheated, while online trolls persuaded Clinton supporters we were irredeemably sexist assholes. Russia tore open a wound so ragged, Clinton and Sanders people are still fighting about it two campaigns later.
In the end, lifelong feminism couldn’t convince me to cast a vote for the first female, major party nominee, and I was mad about that, too. Instead, I spent hours speed-dating purple state voters until I found a newly minted American who distrusted Clinton, but feared Trump. I cast the only Libertarian vote of my life, in a state so blue my Presidential vote never matters, while he tried to save us from Trump. After the election, he DMed me one final time. He was in shock, asking what would happen now. I assured him our checks and balances were robust, and the Republicans weren’t going to betray democracy.
I was wrong.
Russia funded Republican campaigns[2], buying American politicians and right-wing organizations like the NRA outright. On command, they fell in line behind an absolutely corrupt charlatan who would tantrum an insurrection after his loss, steal national security documents, and invite Russian agents to the home where he stored them. Whether our checks and balances ultimately hold remains to be seen. We’ll have resolved another election before we know.
When 2020 finally arrived, I was thrilled with the field of nominees. Sanders might not recover Clinton Democrats, but he had a worthy successor in Warren. John and I were on the same page this time, proving she could draw “bipartisan Dem” support. I thought Buttigieg was smart, but a bit too green this round. I liked Booker. I believed Gillibrand was unfairly hung out to dry over “the Franken thing.” Even O’Rourke seemed interesting.
There were only two I disliked: Biden and Bloomberg. When Black Southern voters weighed in decisively for Biden, I was heartbroken. After all that promise, we were getting the old, white moderate.
That’s when I did it: I said I might not vote for Biden.
I was just so disappointed. So many great options, and we get the old, white moderate again. I didn’t trust Biden either. When he said abortion was “settled law,” I heard “until it isn’t.” Nothing in his forty-year career suggested he would be anything but a recalcitrant, corporate moderate, dragging his feet at every progressive priority.
John finally lost his shit. He asked me if I hadn’t learned an ever-loving gosh darned thing in 2016. He told me he, too, wished Warren were the nominee, but he’d vote for a bowl of hot dog shit before he’d risk another Trump win.
No, he didn’t say anything remotely like that. That’s what I might have said, if my emotions were running a different direction. John cocked another eyebrow (he has two), and said “Really, Shasta?
“How’d that work out last time?”
In the end, I didn’t repeat my 2016 mistake. Unpersuaded by pragmatic arguments, it was an essay by a Black author that showed me my out. He mentioned that the Black community remembered Biden graciously playing second fiddle to Obama. It hit home — even “enlightened” men rarely subordinate willingly to powerful women. As I bubbled in my ballot for Biden, I repeated this mantra: “Black voters chose him.”
What changed wasn’t my analysis — when I cast my vote, I believed Biden would be a corporate moderate. I hated that he was the choice left to me, but I’d gained some practical cynicism. Uncannily accurate Bernie had endorsed a local candidate I truly loathed. Clinton had accepted defeat with more grace than I thought she possessed. The DNC hadn’t learned a damned thing, and the Republicans had piled money bags into Trump’s getaway car.
Congressional inquiry, of all things, had also demonstrated that Russian manipulation played a larger role in 2016 — perhaps a larger role in my thinking — than I had realized. In 2020 I was less inclined to let raw emotion drive my actions.
So maybe I don’t exactly owe John an apology. Some of the arguments I advanced then make me cringe now, but I made them with the best knowledge I had at the time, as I do now. I was wrong, but I learned from my mistake. In 2020, I voted for Biden.
I’ll vote for him again in 2024, but this time I’ll do it with enthusiasm. Here’s why.
Black voters were right.
Biden has been a vastly better President than his political career suggested. The man who betrayed Anita Hill has made 66% of his judicial appointments women or minorities. He hasn’t stopped fossil fuel extraction, but he’s nearly ended new leases.[3] His investment in infrastructure, manufacturing and blue-collar training is a refreshing take on rebuilding the American economy, and it’s paid off with a world-leading recovery from COVID-19.
Perhaps most compelling was Biden’s response to the fall of Roe. I expected him to give a few speeches, clutch his pearls, and lament his lack of options. Biden is a practicing Catholic who, as Vice President, used his longstanding endorsement of the Hyde amendment, which bans federal funding of abortion, to help rally support for Obama’s Affordable Care Act. I expected nothing beyond performative hand wringing.
Boy, was I wrong about that.
When Roe fell Biden implemented security for mobile abortion clinics, bellied up to state lines. He reinforced legal protections for medical travel rights, commissioned a roster of pro bono lawyers for women charged with reproductive crimes, expanded access to reproductive medications and to the ACA, funded Title X clinics, and reinforced medical privacy standards. [4]
I missed it when Biden quietly transformed from a mainstream moderate Democrat into whatever he is now. His long career supported my 2020 viewpoint, but now I see a guy with the driving ambition to reach the Presidency, and the humility to prioritize accomplishments over accolades. Perhaps the same humility that made an ambitious white man with no particular history of anti-racism work genuinely enthusiastic about playing second fiddle to Obama. Biden doesn’t seek headlines — fortunate when the media discounts him the way they once did Bernie — but he gets an astonishing amount of shit done.
Could Bernie have done it? Could Warren? I don’t know. I think we deserve to find out, but living in Seattle, in one of the bluest Congressional districts in the nation (Pramila Jayapal is my rep), my sense of the country’s midpoint is skewed. The progressives beside whom I earned my Bernie badge sound like I did in 2016. They insist Biden can’t win Michigan without ending the war in Gaza, can’t win young voters while oil drilling continues, and can’t win Latino voters with border issues on the ballot. Most say he’s too old. The day before Super Tuesday, I was told he should step down. I replied that my ballot is sitting on my kitchen table, and if Jesus himself were on it, but someone convinced me my neighbor Dick had a better shot at beating Trump, I’d vote for Dick. I invited her to pitch me on who has a better shot than Biden.
She said it wasn’t her job to know. She’ll vote for Biden if it comes to that.
It’s the others who won’t.
If you don’t know who the stronger candidate is, the day before Super Tuesday, then there isn’t one. If your concerns are about a faceless “other” who hasn’t told you who they do want, you should interrogate your data. She cited the 13% undecided vote in Michigan as clear crisis, but was unaware that Obama had a 10% undecided vote as an incumbent, with no protest movement. [5]
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." - Mark Twain
In 2016 I discounted this: psyop works by manipulating emotions. Because disinformation doesn’t have the truth on its side, it sows fear, suspicion, paranoia, disagreement — the base emotions that estranged Sanders and Clinton voters in 2016. That, we now know, was Russia’s killing stroke: they identified a tendency in Americans like me toward division, and they stoked it into fire.
Sometimes I helped.
John’s placid personality has fewer hooks. The calls to castigate voters like me flowed around him. Periodically we’d talk politics, me with my gale-force opinions, and John with his incisive queries. John and I aren’t that far apart on politics, of course, but neither are most Clinton and Sanders supporters. We vary in how far we want to go; how quickly, how disruptively.
To listen to the debate that still flares up, you’d think we were mortal enemies, sworn to mutual destruction.
Emotion is how we interpret what facts mean. Hillary Clinton authorized unsecured email servers. Was she a geriatric woman with limited computer skills who made a mistake, or an imperious, corrupt power-monger who disregarded laws that would get mere mortals tossed in jail? Sanders isn’t a Democrat. Was he an opportunist subverting a private apparatus for selfish purpose, or a visionary working within a corrupt system for desperately needed reform? Is Biden losing his mind, or is it just a stutter? Has he betrayed his “no new drilling” promise, or do record-low lease offerings indicate he’s doing what he can, despite court losses?
Politics isn’t objective. It’s more like one of those pictures where right-brained people are supposed to see a horse, while left-brained people will see a young lady. Most of us focus on one image quickly, seeing the other only with effort. Priming can affect which image we see: if someone tells you it’s a horse, you’ll likely see a horse.
Russian psyop is a hostile foreign agent whispering to some of us that it’s a horse, to others that it’s a woman, and to a few that it’s our lizard overlord, come to vaccinate us with deadly microchips. Some lackey in Crimea whispers down the wires that anyone who sees a different picture is not just an idiot, but an existential threat. We Americans have always been prone to excesses of passion, of course. We’re proud of our fire, and it often serves us well. Every strength contains the seeds of weakness though, and ours is being leveraged against us. [6]
Southern Black voters just showed up for Biden in a landslide — again. [7] I think I’ll listen.
They were right last time.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/technology-europe-russia-hacking-only-on-ap-dea73efc01594839957c3c9a6c962b8a
[2] https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2018/05/08/how-putin-s-oligarchs-funneled-millions-into-gop-campaigns/
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2023/biden-oil-drilling-permits-willow-project/
[4] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/03/07/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-continues-the-fight-for-reproductive-freedom/
[5] https://statuskuo.substack.com/p/the-defection-math-is-hard-for-some
[6] https://www.wired.com/story/russia-ira-propaganda-senate-report/
[7] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/04/biden-nets-landslide-victory-in-south-carolina-democratic-primary-winning-96percent-of-votes.html
If he did that all for the fall of Roe why didn’t he use the same executive power to at least slow down a genocide?
Genocide Joe is a big NO.