Bernie, Trump, and the White Guys

By Lisbeth Freeman

This Presidential campaign season has been nothing if not revealing.  Revealing of the anger of our people.  Revealing of the enduring nature of our -isms: racism, sexism, heterosexim, xenophobia, isolationism, . . ..  Revealing of our attraction to simplistic solutions to intrenchable problems.  Of course, those of us who consider ourselves liberals, lefties, even moderates can easily point to those on the Right as being the source of those societal ills.  But perhaps the most revealing aspect of this campaign season is the strength of sexism and racism in both political extremes.

Trying to parse the dynamics of demographic trends is difficult, perhaps impossible, work.  But we can see certain dynamics rise above the fray, and those trends require further examination.  Here, in this political season, that dynamic is the predominance of white males in both extreme camps – the followers of Donald Trump and Senator Bernie Sanders.  There is no doubt when watching the frenzied  rallies that there is something driving these white males to rise to a frothy fever in response to their chosen candidates (or is the word Savior more appropriate?).  So the question is this:  Why, when the candidates are advocating positions at opposite ends of the spectrum (with some notable exceptions), do their followers look so very much alike?

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks at a campaign rally, Monday, July 6, 2015, in Portland, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

This is not to imply that the followers of Trump and Sanders are somehow of the same ilk.  No, it is clear that Trump’s people are motivated by a hatred of the “Others” who have garnered some degree of political power in the last decade or so, while the Sanders people are motivated by a frustration with the “Rigged System.”  But that understanding fails to explain why they look the same.

Since I started writing this particular piece, a few startling things have occurred within the Trump and Sanders campaigns.  Trump recently stated without impunity that women who have abortions should be punished.  Now, that is the undeniable result of outlawing abortion, which all the candidates on the right support.  After all, how do you enforce abortion bans if you don’t punish the people getting the abortions?  But Trump’s willingness to say it out loud is nonetheless shocking.

On the other side of the aisle, so to speak, we have the Sanders followers waging a secondary campaign commonly called “Bernie or Bust.”  That movement has coincided with increasingly sexist and downright vicious rhetoric about Hillary that reduces her to the ever-reliable sexist tropes – the Bitch, the Witch, and even the C**T that should be RAPED.

This movement has been building for several weeks, even spawning an online pledge campaign to urge fellow Bernie followers to commit to NOT voting for Hillary – and choosing an alternative path by writing in Bernie, voting for Jill Stein of the Green Party, or voting for Trump.  All of which equate to a vote for Trump.  Yes, the far left is contemplating voting for Trump either passively or directly in a collective foot stomping temper tantrum that their Man didn’t win the nomination.  The political revolution failed so, hey, lets have a real revolution.  A violent revolution.

That movement reached its zenith when actor Susan Sarandon appeared on MSNBC a few days ago and indicated a willingness, even a rationality, to consider voting for Trump if Secretary Clinton is the nominee.  Her explanation was baffling: “Some people feel Donald Trump will bring the revolution immediately if he gets in then things will really, you know, explode.”  So Sarandon apparently feels that a violent revolution triggered by a Trump presidency is preferable to continuing the progress of the Obama administration with Clinton as the next President.  As Charles Blow of the NY Times so succinctly explained, “[t]he comments smacked of petulance and privilege.”

Indeed.  Which brings us back to the question of this piece – why do Trump and Sanders followers look alike?  Because they can afford to.  They are predominantly white, predominantly male, predominantly not recent immigrants, predominantly not Muslim. Sanders followers are individuals whose concern about economic inequality resonates with them so strongly that the other societal ills fade into background.  They aren’t overly concerned with racism and sexism and xenophobia and heterosexism.  Well, they may try, like Bernie does, to say the right things about these injustices.  But that is not what they really care about.  They are concerned with their lack of economic opportunity, the unfairness of the system to people who used to hold all the cards. They feel cheated out of their continued economic advantages and they want the playing field returned to the old days where white men dominated across all classes. They are the people who will not suffer, and in fact may benefit from, a Trump presidency.

Susan Sarandon is a privileged older woman.  If Donald Trump is elected, her world and lifestyle will continue unabated.  So will the millions of young men following Sanders as their messiah.  They will remain at the top of the totem pole of privilege in the United States.  The economic inequality in this nation has long existed.  Only now has inequality become extreme enough that they now feel some of the pain that the rest of us have felt our entire lives.  They stand to lose little if Donald becomes President.  We stand to lose everything.  Arguably, they will be actually be better off because Trump will smash down the Others – the Blacks, Mexicans and Hispanics, Immigrants, Gays, Women – so that these white men can once again ascend to their rightful place in American society.  Right at the top.

So don’t tell me about voting with your conscience.  Don’t tell me that Clinton and Trump are practically the same (because that is simply a lie).  Instead, tell me how you are going to protect your Brothers and Sisters from the promised attacks, the criminalizations, and the slaughters that Trump has outright promised.  Will you take up arms to protect us, or will you only take up arms to ensure YOUR economic opportunities are rehabilitated so that YOU can achieve the American Dream, while the rest of us are left in the ashes.  Because that is the choice you are making with your infantile Bernie or Bust movement.

 

Hillary’s Missing Victory Speech

By Lisbeth Freeman

Last night, Tuesday March 8, 2016, was a rough night for supporters of Secretary Clinton as she works to become the first female President of the United States.  While she won Mississippi by a nearly unprecedented margin (83%/17%), she suffered a surprising and painfully close loss in the major state of Michigan. As I went to bed last night, I was under the impression that Hillary had foregone the victory speech given the closeness of the Michigan vote.  I was wrong.  Hillary did give her well-earned victory speech; we just didn’t see it because the networks thought that Donald Trump’s meaningless ramblings were of more value to their bottom lines.

I suspect there is more than one Clinton supporter who woke up with a nasty headache this morning. That headache, however, may not be from staying up too late or by having one too many cocktails as we mourned the loss in Michigan.  No, it may very well be from having to endure that meandering nonsense of a “press conference” by Donald Trump after  he was proclaimed the winner of both Mississippi and Michigan.  I mean, that guy can really filibuster the TV networks when he sets his mind to it!  Maybe he should run for the Senate where he could have the opportunity to utilize that talent.  My household actually switched to a half-hour sitcom to avoid hearing him, and afterward, HE WAS STILL TALKING.  ABOUT NOTHING!!!

But that is not the real point of this short post.  The real point is that many viewers, including me, had no idea that while Trump was rambling on and on, Secretary Clinton was also giving a substantive victory speech in Cleveland, Ohio.  Yup, she was.  But apparently the only network than broadcast it was C-SPAN.  You can see it here.

So the question that should be asked of the networks is Why?  The Democrats are locked in a tight battle.  Her speech was surely more newsworthy than Donald chatting about his vodka and trains and whatever.  Have our major news networks devolved to the point that the primaries have become a precursor to something that looks more like The Hunger Games than the selection of the leader of the free world.  Are the networks only committed to higher ratings at the expense of civic duty?  Is there more value in giving Trump the opportunity to engage in his grotesque dog whistle politics, thus giving him another opportunity to stir up his Red Meat Republicans?  CNN and MSNBC are equally culpable here.  There is a general understanding among nearly every serious political thinker that Donald Trump will be a disaster for the United States and perhaps the world.  It is a disservice to the nation that Secretary Clinton’s speech was not broadcast, and indeed, barely noticed by the networks.

The Hunger Games  is an entertaining enterprise.  However very few of us want to see our nation and our politics continue down that road.

Trump and the Rise of Red Meat Republicans

By Lisbeth Freeman

Traditional Republicans are in a panic.  They are appalled (and rightfully so) that Donald Trump has seized front-runner status and a near-inevitability for the Republican nomination.  Now they are also concerned that the person who may be able to stop Trump is the  similarly offensive Ted Cruz.  They are strategizing to thwart this coupe of their party.  Mitt Romney has waged a personal campaign to Stop Trump and apparently promote Marco Rubio or hims, whose star appears to be fading quickly.  But an outsider might ask – Where was all this outrage when the party implemented  and perpetrated its effort to divide America by exploiting fears and prejudices, an effort that has inexorably led to this situation?  After decades of this exploitation and dog whistle politics, the dogs are loose, they want their red meat, and they think that only Trump can deliver.

Heil Trump!

I ask this after first recognizing that a significant portion of traditional Republicans are not outright racists, sexists, homo-and trans-phobes.  They are fiscal conservatives, regular rational people, moderates, who believe that high taxes and spending damage the economy.  We liberals can debate those points with conservatives, and we can do so in respectful ways.  But do moderate Republicans get a pass on blame for the Trump phenom?  Perhaps not.  Perhaps none of us do.

The truth is that individuals who have voted consistently with Republicans over the last 50 – 60 years have given their implicit nod to the use of race and social issues such as gay rights and women’s rights to win elections.  Innate racism and bigotry among our population was the leverage the party has employed to win at the margins of elections at the local, state, and national levels.

In the sixties, Republicans implemented the “Southern Strategy” to capture white votes in the south by appealing to the racial underbelly of white southerners.  Barry Goldwater (1964) and Richard Nixon (1968) won their nominations in part by grasping the effectiveness of this strategy.  This strategy has manifested in many ways – the scapegoating of “welfare queens,”  the Willie Horton ad, the war on drugs.  The natural extension of that strategy  reached its nadir with the rise of Barack Obama as a legitimate Presidential contender and later as President, allowing the right to perpetrate fear of a supposedly dangerous and un-American President.  An undisputed  truth of the Republican Party is that it has relied on race and social wedge issues to drive turnout and win elections for decades.  As the social issues shift over time, so does the Republican platform.  But at the base of its strategy is a consistent assault on the challenges that people of color face in America.

And then there were the hot-button social issues.  In the late 1980’s, the Christian Coalition, an offspring of televangelist Pat Robertson’s failed 1988 Presidential campaign, rapidly gained power within the Republican party and seized on one wedge issue after another to drive high voter turnout.  It’s leader, Ralph Reed, was famously quoted about his organization’s approach: “I want to be invisible. I do guerrilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don’t know it’s over until you’re in a body bag. You don’t know until election night.”  Under leadership of the Christian Coalition, the religious right fought President Clinton on his pledge to end the ban on gays in the military.  They crafted state legislation to drastically limit a woman’s right to choose, even going so far as to value the life of the fetus above the life of the woman.  They gained control of local school boards to impose their Christian beliefs on education policies. They used LGBT people to foment hatred in this nation against sexual minorities, creating a fever-pitched attack on the basic human rights of a portion of citizens and damaging the fabric of our society by creating false divisions among people claiming to be kind, loving, forgiving Christians.

The Obama years have been devastating in their damage to racial relations in this nation.  When he was first elected, there was an expectation that we, as a nation, might finally be able to transcend racial discord.  But that hope was as false as it was naive.  The rise of the Tea Party, the Birther Movement (with Trump as a defacto leader), the nearly complete obstructionism by the Republican Congress against anything Obama seeks to achieve as President, the disrespect aimed at him (such as member of Congress yelling “You Lie!” during an address to Congress regarding health care in 2009) – these examples are all evidence of a rising overt racism in the Republican Party as a means of driving a wedge smack down the middle of America.  Just hours after Obama was sworn in, Republican leadership made its Number One Goal to prevent Obama from achieving anything in his first term and subsequently defeating him in 2012.  The plan didn’t work, but it was manifested on the backs of regular Americans who voted for  a kind of “hope and change” that was thwarted for no reason other than to ensure a failed Obama Presidency.  And by playing to racial divisions, the Republican leadership often succeeded, thought not nearly as much as they hoped.

The Republican establishment did nothing to stop the ugly rhetoric.  In fact, despite an apparent discomfort with the racial discord at times, the party still rode the wave of hatred and racism to seize control of the U.S. Senate in 2010.  It did nothing to disavow the “take back America” Tea Party politics of this decade.  It embraced Donald Trump and his birther accusations against President Obama.  In fact (and now ironically), its nominee for President in the 2012 election, Mitt Romney, took great pride in Trump’s endorsement of him, even as Trump was acting as though Barack Obama was a member of Al Quaeda.  The fact that Obama’s mother was a white woman from Kansas was not enough for Trump or many in the party.  His color, his father’s heritage – his very Otherness – was enough to keep the Obama hatred at a fevered pitch for the entire duration of his Presidency.

So now, Trump has continued his path of destruction, steadily ramping up the hate rhetoric at each stop of his campaign with a clear understanding that he is feeding the hate monster as a means of Winning.  The hate has gained a foothold to a degree that mainstream Republicans are now uneasy, squirming, and seeking some way to stop him from becoming the nominee for the 2016 general election.  But more importantly, they don’t even trust his conservative cred.  There is talk of the possible destruction of the Republican Party.  We liberals are watching this dance with a mix of glee at their dilemma, satisfaction that they now must face the blowback from their decades-long hate campaign, and a visceral fear that Trump (or Cruz) could somehow be elected as the next POTUS.

But those of us who have been a target of the hate – Blacks, LGBTs, Immigrants, Women (yes) – know the truth:  The Republican Party leaders sowed these seeds long ago, and they then tended them, watered them, ensured they received plenty of sunshine and fresh air, pruned them when necessary, and hoped for a crop of sustained conservative dominance of American politics.  But the fruit from that crop is bitter and dangerous, and certainly not what the party sought so long ago.  Instead, all the hate, all the targeting, all the wedge issues, and all the dog whistles aimed at stirring up the underbelly of racism, sexism, and hetero-sexism have worked.  The dogs are no longer satisfied with talk, though.  They want action.  They want their Red Meat.  They’ve been hearing that dog whistle for decades, and now the dogs want to feed.  And they think Trump is the only one that will deliver.

Congratulations, Republican Party.  Your crop has come in.  Your dog whistles have been effective.  But now the dogs are hungry, and the fruit you’ve harvested isn’t enough.  Trump’s crass, overt racism has coalesced the rise of the Red Meat Republicans. How you handle this situation will play a very large role in determining the ongoing viability of this nation as we know it.

Please get it right.

On Bernie and Women

By Lisbeth Freeman

There’s something about Bernie that troubles me.  As a former Vermonter, I am not new to his rhetoric, but his Presidential campaign has been a constant din of the same concepts of economic inequality and Wall Street repeated over and over.  While I generally agree with his concerns, I’m left with a discord in the base of my brain when I watch him on stage during debates, or when I hear him discuss economic inequality as though it is the only ill that confronts American society and culture.  Why do I cringe?  Unfortunately, the problem is that Senator Sanders has a problem with women.  Especially women he is campaigning against.

A brief history lesson provides some context.  Back in 1986, Bernie decided to run for Governor of Vermont against incumbent Governor Madeleine Kunin.  Tim Murphy chronicled this run in an article titled That Time Bernie Sanders Said He was a Better Feminist than His Female Opponent  in Mother Jones in February of this year.  He made the decision to run despite warnings that an independent candidacy might result in Republican Peter Smith winning the election and his own left wing coalition concern that it was merely a “vanity campaign” that could hurt other down-ticket progressives.  Governor Kunin has reflected on that time, noting that in a rally in Burlington, VT, then-Mayor Sanders “declared that ‘he would be a better feminist than I.'” Sanders shouted that Kunin had “done nothing for women.”  In another article penned by Governor Kunin herself, she notes that
“[w]hen Sanders was my opponent, he focused like a laser beam on ‘class analysis,’ in which ‘women’s issues’ were essentially a distraction from more important issues. He urged voters not to vote for me just because I was a woman. That would be a ‘sexist position,’ he declared.”  Hmmm, that sounds strangely familiar.

Bernie had this to say about the 1986 campaign, from the Mother  Jones article:

“‘Liberals were angry I was running against a female Democrat,’ Sanders recalled in his own memoir, Outsider in the House. Sanders, for his part, inflamed the tensions, arguing at the time that Kunin was an empty suit. ‘[M]any people are excited because she’s the first woman governor,’ he told an interviewer in 1986. ‘But after that there ain’t much.’ In another interview, he suggested the governor was coasting by on superficial approval. ‘I think [her] popularity is not very deep,’ he said. ‘In other words, she does very well on television. She has an excellent press secretary.'”

Which of course brings us to Killer Mike and his now-notorious statement that “a uterus doesn’t qualify you to be President.”  Senator Sanders responded to the mild uproar over that statement by explaining:

“What Mike said essentially is that … people should not be voting for candidates based on their gender, but based on what they believe. I think that makes sense,” said Sanders. “I don’t go around, no one has ever heard me say, ‘Hey guys, let’s stand together, vote for a man.’ I would never do that, never have.” … “I think the media is blowing this thing up.”

Ugh.  Really, can there be any worse comparison?  This statement, as logical as it may appear on its face, completely dismisses the oppression of women –  politically, physically, sexually, and violently – by men since the beginning of history.  Bernie knows this is a silly comparison, but he went with it.  Was it a dog whistle aimed at his fanboys?  Or simply another example of his tone deafness on race and gender?  Indeed, this is a clear echo of Chief Justice John Roberts declaration that “[t]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”  Turning discrimination on its head like this is a clever trick, but it does nothing to end discrimination.

And let’s look at the basic premise of his statement.  Should women voters give preference to female candidates in today’s cultural and political environment?  Is it “sexist” for women to trust other women to protect their rights more than they trust male politicians?  Bernie lays that sexist judgment squarely on women’s heads, just as he did back in 1986.  “People should not be voting for candidates based on their gender, but based on what they believe.”  To an extent that may be true.  But it is also true that women in this nation have been figuratively screwed by the male-dominated political forces since before the formation of the United States, before there was a Wall Street, before economic inequality was something other than the institution of slavery –  and therefore isn’t it completely reasonable and perhaps responsible to give preference to female candidates?

I wrote the majority of this article prior to the Flint, Michigan debate on March 6, 2016.  That debate brought my dis-ease with Sanders into clear focus.  Senator Sanders has behaved gruffly, even rudely towards Secretary Clinton in previous debates.  While any comparison to this year’s Republican debates is unhelpful, candidates were expected to behave with a certain decorum in previous election cycle debates.  Remember Al Gore’s sighs in the 2000 campaign that were so widely ridiculed in the media?  Bernie has been allowed to grunt, groan, wag his finger, wave his arms, laugh, cough, and clear his throat – all while Secretary Clinton is speaking – throughout the debates thus far without any media criticism.

In Flint, though, Bernie took it to a new level.  In what has already been well documented in response to the heated debate, Bernie shushed the Secretary by yelling “Excuse me, I’m talking!” as well as several other similar outbursts, causing the audience to gasp.  And he had this to say about his racial blind spot:  “When you’re white, you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto,” Sanders concluded. “You don’t know what it’s like to be poor. You don’t know what it’s like to be hassled when you walk down the street or you get dragged out of a car.”  Not only is this ignorant of the fact that there are poor white people who may indeed live in a “ghetto,” but also entirely fails to recognize the harassment, physical assaults, and other challenges faced by non-poor black people, as well as all women and all LGBT people.  Bernie went all in with his white straight male privilege in the Flint debate, and that behavior incited immediate uproar in social media.

Bernie’s laser focus on economic inequality, campaign finance reform, and Wall Street during his long political career has been lauded for its consistency and authenticity.  But maybe, just maybe, that focus comes with the price tag of his failure to grasp the very real barriers that Women, Blacks, Latinos, LGBT, and immigrants face separate and apart from the general causes of economic inequality.  Bernie disrespected Governor Kunin’s validity as a feminist in 1986, and he continues that angle against Secretary Clinton in 2016.  Thirty years have passed and he’s singing the same old gender song.  Maybe Bernie should be the one to shush and pay better attention to Hillary’s message – that it is time to break down ALL the barriers to economic and social justice, and Wall Street is just a small part of that equation.  Indeed, perhaps his own white maleness is his biggest problem – and not Hillary interrupting him.

Update:  I’ve added a new article that talks further on Bernie’s white male problem.

 

 

 

Hillary Clinton and Compromise

By Lisbeth Freeman

We are in the middle of intense Presidential primary season.  Like many people, I find myself quite interested in the outcomes for both parties, but in particular, the Democratic Party, where I almost always direct my votes.  This year, my interest may be described by some people as, well, an obsession, and they are probably right.  My partner has suggested that I write about the issues percolating among the various candidates and their surrogates as a sort of therapy.  Well, she hasn’t actually used the word therapy, but I think that’s what she’s really trying to say.

I’m a fervent supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton now, as I was in 2008 when she faced the formidable candidacy of Barack Hussein Obama, and as I was in the 90’s when she was under constant attack by the right wing.  I was terribly disappointed that she did not win the nomination in 2008, but I proudly cast my vote for Obama in the general election and have been generally pleased with his two terms as President.  But it is Hillary’s time now.  This is a tough primary season in both parties.  I plan on using this blog to add my own thoughts and insight into what should be a crazy political season right up to November 8, 2016.  Better than arguing about it in Facebook, right?

The Clintons and Historical Perspective

There have been endless news articles, commentaries, and analyses of the tendency for young liberal voters to go heavily with Senator Sanders in this primary season.  So yes, we get it – young folk’s, and particularly young white men, feel the bern (or perhaps after Super Tuesday, it’s the burn?).   Lot’s of talk about “free stuff” and a desire for authenticity (of which they find Secretary Clinton lacking) is offered as explanation.  But I’ve been puzzled because so many of my like-minded friends are supporting Sanders.  So why, beyond the traditional psychobabble about Millennials, is this divide so stark and inextricable.  I mean, we are not switching sides in this contest, are we?!

After reading endlessly and engaging in sometimes painful facebook debates, a thought bubbled up:  The millennials weren’t here to witness the pain of the 1992 election, the bashing that Hillary took for simply asserting her right to a career and a separated identity from her husband, and the subsequent two terms of the Clintons.  They don’t understand the assault the Clintons were under during their entire time in the White House, not to mention a the year before and the years after.  And perhaps they don’t understand the intense sexism many of us have suffered our entire lives, personally, professionally, and sometimes politically.  Many millennials were babies in 1992.

So why is this important?  Because those of us who were engaged in the politics of the time understand the compromises made.  We elected Bill partly because he promised to end the ban on gays in the military.  But once in office, he hit a brick wall of anger and obstructionism, so that the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law was the best that could be had.  Was it a wise compromise?  Maybe not.  Maybe if he had held out he would have succeeded in truly ending the ban (unlikely).  But for those of us who had been marching against that ban for years and were thrilled with Clinton’s election, the compromise was a bittersweet taste of the ugly politics to come during Bill’s two terms and beyond.

Hillary wasn’t the President then, but she did have a prominent voice in his administration, so I’ve accepted that she is being held accountable for the actions of her husband to some extent.  But I understand the compromises made.  I understand that black leaders were screaming for the crime bill that has been so loudly derided in recent weeks (and that Sanders voted for, by the way).  I understand that Hillary spoke inartfully when she used the term “super-predator” (although she was referring to people working for drug cartels and never mentioned race).  I understand that the welfare reform bill has been damaging to some parts of our society.  But it was a compromise after two vetoes of worse bills by Bill Clinton. None of it happened in a vacuum.

I also know how hard Hillary worked for health care reform.  More than Bernie Sanders or Ted Kennedy, Hillary was truly the health care czar.  For Sanders to now assert that the Secretary is not progressive on health care is simply disrespectful and insulting.  Differences of opinion on how to achieve goals are expected, but in BernieWorld, differences are grounds for being banned from his revolution.

The truth is that Hillary has worked diligently in a slow, plodding march toward economic and social justice.  She has made mistakes. But mostly she has made compromises made necessary by the unrelenting attacks on her and her husband by a vast right wing conspiracy.  Yup, she named it back then and it is true to this day.  Only now, there is a left wing that has soaked up those years of attacks and are now stating those smears as fact.  Really, Bernie?  You’re going to sit back as your surrogates sling all the mud that the right wing has fabricated against her as though these things actually happened?  Vince Foster, Benghazi, Bill’s affairs and her daring to stay with him.  And the criticism of the fact that she was paid very well for speeches delivered to corporations?  Hell, I’m happy that a woman of substance and vast experience around the globe is being paid fairly for her time and thoughts.  What a novel idea!

Those of us that have witnessed this decades-long campaign against her are now ready to battle for her. More so than in 2008.  Against right or left wing.  We understand why she made the compromises she has made over the years, just as we understand why Barack Obama has made his compromises.  Because they were politically necessary.  We understand, because so many of us have endured the same sexism, racism, workplace harassment, pay inequity, and compromise of our personal life choices out of necessity or because we placed others’ needs above our own.  We understand.

And the pain of observing this fierce woman undergo attacks yet again, but this time from the left, only stiffens our reserve.  We are winning this primary this time, and we are standing tall against the facebook and twitter attacks.  There’s too much water under this bridge, too much collateral damage, too much historical pain for us to not support her and defend her.  We’ve been with the Clintons for a long time, and we understand.  Perhaps some of these young men driving the Sanders campaign could benefit from a little historical perspective.  Or perhaps they’re just feelin’ the bern and, in the words of Metallica, “nothing else matters.”