Hillary Clinton and The Identity Crisis of Young Progressives

By Zack Boehm on July 26, 2016

As the Democratic Convention begins to kick off in Philadelphia’s sweltering summer heat, and as Hillary Clinton prepares to formally accept the Democratic nomination for President of the United States, young people on the left (myself included) seem to be experiencing something of a crisis. The grueling Democratic primary process left many of my peers feeling disillusioned and disaffected, and a recent leak of DNC emails that revealed the apparent existence of institutional biases during the nominating process has only worked to stoke an already smoldering sense of indignation. But come Thursday evening, whether anybody likes it or not, Hillary Clinton will be the confirmed candidate of America’s only major left-of-center political party, and the unsavory decision confronting young progressives will be made stark and inexorable. Do I vote for Hillary? Do I vote third party? Do I abstain? (If you’ve decided to vote for Trump, this article isn’t exactly directed at you, but here is a very short video you may enjoy).

I think the central issue that continues to bedevil young voters on the left is how enamored the overwhelming majority of us were with Bernie Sanders. Bernie had a philosophy of unrepentant idealism that, I think, mirrored the big thinking, woke-progressivism of young voters. He was a fringe but fearlessly outspoken legislator, a devoted champion of the poor and working class with an irreproachable history of liberal activism. He spoke bluntly about real, deeply entrenched problems like income inequality, outmoded healthcare services, and the rising costs of education. He introduced ambitious policy ideas that, even if sometimes impractical, signaled that he was comfortable agitating for sweeping, structural, forward-thinking reform. For the many of us who were critically engaging and participating in presidential politics for the first time, Bernie seemed like one of the (very, very) few authentic, uncompromising liberals in Washington whose politics were guided by a moral imperative to fight for social justice. Bernie was the candidate of young progressives.

But Bernie lost. And it’s important that we recognize how and why he lost.

via theatlantic.com

In reality, Hillary won the nomination quite comfortably, beating Sanders by over three million popular votes and garnering 2,205 delegates to Bernie’s 1,846 (not including superdelegates).  These numbers are clear. They are decisive. They aren’t the kind of figures you might see in an election where the victor was gifted the candidacy through some kind of shady backroom graft or malfeasance. There are reasonable and important criticisms of the primary process that the Democratic Party should absolutely address, but to claim that the electoral process itself was responsible for Hillary’s resounding victory seems, at least to me, untenable and specious. This is especially true considering that Bernie himself benefited from one of the most glaring deficiencies in the primary structure: Bernie performed exceptionally well in state caucuses, which are wildly held to be among the most patently undemocratic and exclusionary formats for the casting of individual votes. The primary system is deeply flawed, but I find it impossible to believe that these flaws, which beset both campaigns, handed Hillary a three million vote advantage.

Claiming, as some have, that a broken primary process handed Hillary the nomination also ignores Bernie’s failings as a candidate, chief among them being his abject inability to engage with voters of color, especially in the South.

During the primaries, I noticed a particularly distressing strain of paternalistic racism from Bernie supporters that seemed to suggest that if only people of color knew which politics were in their best interest, then they would certainly vote for Bernie. This line of thinking is obviously destructive, condescending, and bitterly insulting, but it also betrays a grave misunderstanding of the responsibilities of a candidate.

It is the obligation of the candidate to reach out to the public, to construct a clear, comprehensible platform, and then to work hard educating people about the details of that platform. Bernie did not do a good enough job of fulfilling this indispensably important responsibility, and I find it especially grievous that Bernie, the candidate of social justice, failed to adequately connect to one of, if not the most, marginalized population of people in American history, southern people of color. Ultimately, the demographics of Bernie supporters skewed white, well educated, and among older cohorts, male. Bernie failed to build a coalition of voters that represented the party he was vying to lead.

via newyorker.com

Conversely, Hillary has spent her entire career building coalitions. She has worked closely with political allies and partisan nemeses. She is a fastidious and collaborative legislator who understands how paramount relationships are in governance. Her popularity with people of color didn’t just manifest ex nihilo, it is the product of years of hard work and conscientiousness outreach. She is a politician who inspires fierce loyalty.

But this is all not to say that I am thrilled with Hillary’s candidacy. Some of the decisions she’s made demonstrate a propensity for lapses in judgement at best and a real, troubling venality at worst. Why any left-leaning politician with even vague presidential ambitions would ever accept hundreds of thousands of dollars to deliver a speech to a room full of Wall Street plutocrats is beyond me. The email controversy was eventually made into theatre and farce by the frothing republicans, but it too is was an exasperating example of Hillary exercising questionable judgement on an issue that seems obvious. Add her vote on the Iraq War, her late adoption of support for same-sex marriage and other LGBTQ causes, and some of the disastrous policies advocated by her husband, and you have a candidate with profoundly dubious progressive credentials.

But here we are.

I think one major point of frustration for young liberal voters is the feeling that Hillary’s candidacy was a fait accompli. There was a feeling of determinism about the whole process that seemed to chafe against our sense of political agency. To go from passionately supporting one candidate whose values hew closely to your own, to feeling like you’re being compelled to support another candidate who was chosen for you and of whom you are deeply suspicious understandably breeds resentment. But, again, to think that Hillary was unfairly handed the nomination by some omnipotent, distant power structure discounts her years of careful coalition building, within the party apparatus and with the voting public, which facilitated her present success. To say that she was coronated because she was “next in line” simply does not track with the recent history of presidential politics. Was Barack Obama, a first term black senator, really “next in line” in 2008? Was reality TV star and noted fake university scammer Donald Trump really next in line for this year’s republican nomination? Hillary won because of the party infrastructure, networks, and recognition (none of which are illegal) that a long career and a strong political facility affords.

via wsj.com

A question I’ve been asking myself lately is, “Can I honestly call myself a progressive while voting for Hillary Clinton?” And I think I’ve decided that I can. I feel comfortable voting for what is perhaps the most progressive policy platform in the history of American politics (shouts out Bernie). I feel confident that Hillary Clinton, despite her foibles, has a breadth of experience and qualifications that will render her a competent executive. I sincerely believe that it is a solemn duty of any liberal American to keep the virulently xenophobic, blithely racist, and gleefully misogynist Republican candidate out of the White House. I think that politics is a glacially slow and tedious process full of setbacks and incremental gains, and I think that Hillary excels in exactly this kind of wonky, granular legislating. Most importantly, I believe that the kind of unsparing idealism that so many young voters seem to harbor will endure, and I think that if voting for a candidate that may not have been your first choice extinguishes that idealism or forever jaundices that passion, then it probably wasn’t even really there to begin with.

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