Tuesday, February 09, 2016

The Left

I'm not interested in convincing anyone to vote for Sanders over Clinton or vice versa. I don't really have that power, anyway. I am, however, sensitive to the way that our mainstream discourse treats The Left as deviant, while the mythical "center" beltway consensus is treated as tablets from heaven, and right wing lunacy as True America. And right now Sanders is the representative of The Left. His leftism is hardly outside of what should be mainstream political ideas. Whether achievable or not, they're really aspirational mainstream liberal ideas. He isn't calling for the nationalization of all of the means of production. Make America a bit more like Scandinavia. Really not crazy.

That's not an argument for voting for Sanders. Vote for who you want! There are good reasons to vote for Clinton. I don't know who I'll vote for, though by the time my primary rolls around it likely won't matter much. Maybe I'll write in Kodos. But spurning Bernie-ism, which is distinct from spurning Bernie, is spurning liberalism.