By Marc Jampole
In the nearly eight years I have been writing OpEdge, there
are only two issues that have attracted large amounts of negative response on
Twitter. By large, I mean more than 20 people making uncalled-for attacks on me,
including at least one who bombards my Twitter account with a rapid-fire series
of negative tweets, out of what is now 38,500 people receiving my Twitter feed.
Until this week, I have received this relative onslaught of negativity only when
I have come out in favor of gun control or advocated raising the minimum wage.
Now a third issue has led to a “firestorm” on my Twitter
account: my support of Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders. I have been flamed
and shamed on Twitter all this week for endorsing Hillary in an OpEdge article.
I have also noticed a lot of ad hominem attacks against
Hillary Clinton coming from Sanders supporters among my 1,800 plus Facebook
network of mostly progressive friends. By ad hominem attacks, I mean
unnecessary insults and unproved accusations. It’s absolutely amazing how much
Democrats who hate Hillary have absorbed the right-wing’s decades-old campaign
against her. By contrast, I have seen almost no comments from Hillary
supporters on social media that I would consider negative campaigning against
Bernie. To a person, the Clinton supporters go out of their way to show Bernie
the love, although usually adding “but Hillary is more electable and will get
more done.”
Here’s another small piece of anecdotal evidence that Bernie
supporters are going negative: For the first time ever, someone accused me of
being an unethical hack who accepts money to color my political and social
opinions. A Facebook comment by a woman named Barbara L. Bowen suggested that
the Clinton campaign paid me to write an essay endorsing Hillary. Nothing could
be further from the truth. Although I own a public relations agency, I have
never accepted money to support any position or product on OpEdge, nor has my
work for any client affected my OpEdge opinions, nor have I ever been involved
in a “stealth” campaign of any sort. Ms. Bowen created the accusation out of the
same thin air from which the rightwing has created nonsense about Hillary
through the years. FYI, the only reason I mention Ms. Bowen’s name is that I
contacted her via Facebook email and gave her the opportunity to apologize and
withdraw the comment, which she did not do.
My social media universe isn’t a perfect microcosm of the
real world, so the negative campaigning I have seen from individuals supporting
Bernie constitutes anecdotal evidence only. It points in a certain direction,
but it doesn’t prove.
When people respond with irrational anger towards candidates
it makes them think in funny ways. I discovered this anew when I misused
“flip-flop.” My comment was that the fact that Hillary has changed her mind
about issues such as the Iraq war and overly strict drug sentencing laws is a
good thing: it shows growth, rationality and the ability to admit when you’re
wrong. She was therefore not a flip-flopper. It turns out that I was wrong to
write that to “flip-flop” you need to vacillate between two views. “Flip-flop”
is merely a nasty way to say someone changed her-his mind on an issue. Many
Bernie supporters corrected me, always repeating that Hillary’s “flip-flopping”
was by definition a bad thing. But as it
turns out, “flip-flop” is a meaningless invective, a piece of mud thrown at
people whom we don’t like. Applying the term “flip-flop” turns additional
study, new facts, maturity or a personal epiphany into a negative trait. Did
Obama flip-flop when he came out in favor of gay marriage?
Ironically, the ugliest comment I have seen so far hasn’t
been on social media and didn’t come from the Sanders campaign. It was former
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright declaring there is a “special place in
hell for women who don’t help each other,” meaning that women should vote for
Hillary just because she is a woman. I would hope that no woman would help or
vote for Nikki Haley, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman or Joni Ernst for any
reason. Albright, who later apologized,
was entirely in the wrong, but the comment did bring into sharp focus the age
divide that separates younger and older Democrats, men and women, when it comes
to Hillary versus Bernie.
I was young once, too, and an ardent supporter of the anti-war
candidacy of Eugene McCarthy in 1968. After Humphrey won the Democratic nomination,
I saw my progressive peers of all ages stay home from the polls thinking there
was no difference between the Happy Warrior, a long-time liberal and one of the
very earliest of mainstream white voices to stand up for civil rights, and the
man who defeated him and then disgraced the presidency, Richard Nixon.
It was not the last time that progressives didn’t vote for
the nominated Democrat because they thought he was too centrist and thereby assured
that a conservative who practiced crony capitalism and thumbed his nose at laws
would be elected. It happened again in 2000, when nearly 2.9 million
progressives voted for Ralph Nader believing that there was no difference between
Al Gore and George W. Bush, whose administration later failed to read the signs
pointing to the 9/11 attack and then responded by misleading the American
people, fought a war for no other reason than to give out military contracts,
created a worldwide torture gulag, lowered taxes on the wealthy to create an
enormous deficit, tried to privatize Social Security, created a Medicare drug
benefit that guaranteed that drug prices would soar, proved incompetent in its
handling of natural disasters, fought environmental regulations and ignored
global warming. No one suspected Bush II’s incompetence during the election,
but his conservative ideology and dedication to crony capitalism were always
apparent.
Then came 2010, when millions of young people who had been
energized by Obama and voted in 2008 decided to stay home. The result was a
Republican sweep of state offices that led to the gerrymandering a Republican
Congressional majority and the passing of dozens of state laws that extended
the rights of gun owners at the expense of public safety, restricted a woman’s
right to an abortion, cut support of education and aid to the poor, and made it
harder for people to vote.
My concern, then, is not with the nastiness I see from
Bernie supporters per se, but with the possibility that it will cause the
millions of people excited by Bernie’s campaign to stay home in November. This
year’s Republican candidates for the most part are lying racist demagogues who
want to lower taxes on the rich, reward their cronies and those who are
bankrolling them, gut social welfare programs even more than they already have
been and embark on military adventurism abroad. That the rightwing John Kasich
is able to present himself as the most reasonable of the Republicans
demonstrates what a sorry lot the GOP is fielding.
The primarily older Hillary supporters lived through these
awful elections, which may explain why so many of them go out of their way to
write, “But I’ll support Bernie if he gets the nomination.” In my Facebook
world very few Bernie supporters have made a similar pledge to support Hillary.
I am not telling Bernie supporters to back off their
criticism of Hillary. But I am asking them to remember that no matter how much
they love Bernie, they must support the Democratic candidate, no matter who it
is. Hillary Clinton is not the perfect candidate for progressives, but neither
is Bernie Sanders. But the alternative to either should
make all progressive, liberals and centrists fear.
It’s okay to be angry, but don’t let that anger lead to the
three most terrible words anyone in this country could ever utter, “President
Ted Cruz.”