I have many thoughts related to Bernie's exit from the 2020 presidential race. It's taken a minute for these thoughts to materialize as quarantining with two small children and a full-time job is all-consuming, but I finally found a minute. In the interest of brevity, these are the three most important ones:
1. Let's get this out of the way: I will almost certainly vote for Joe Biden in November.* I am too beholden to our stupid, stupid version of democracy to do otherwise. I say "almost certainly" because there are seven months remaining in this campaign, and I do not want to commit to casting a vote for the worst possible version of a Joe Biden candidacy. Furthermore, Ohio is not going to be the tipping point state in the electoral college, so who even cares.
*I don't believe anyone reading this is ignorant or disingenuous enough to think that my ambivalence about Biden means I would entertain voting for Donald Trump. But just in case that person exists, let me confirm that I will not.
What I will commit to in this race is not telling anyone else what to do with their vote. While I've made my own moral calculus to (almost) always vote for the least bad major-party option, I feel disinclined to hector anyone who has made a different choice, especially since such people tend to be far less privileged than me. And I certainly can't bring myself to champion my admittedly abstract moral logic to those with more direct reasoning - specifically, those who see themselves in Anita Hill, or those who have experienced sexual assault, or those who are simply young people crushed beneath the weight of 40+ years of austerity.
2. The vision of America that Bernie's campaign presented was the most good and moral case for the continued existence of our nation I've seen in my lifetime. Regardless, it came up short in its main goal of actually winning, so some introspection is needed. To be very clear there is valid, good-faith criticism of the campaign's approach to be levied: Bernie played too nice with fellow candidates (especially Biden), the campaign's focus on door-to-door canvassing didn't quite match its theory of activating non-voters, the organization of the campaign was suboptimal and didn't always match the rhetoric, etc. But none of these critiques hold a candle to the clear proximate cause for the defeat: establishment forces using existing power structures to give Biden the advantage at every turn.
It is not hard to make this case. On one hand there is no simpler explanation for why, in an election that was hyper-focused on the issue of healthcare, voters who overwhelmingly support Medicare For All chose to overwhelmingly vote for the candidate who is firmly against it. On the other hand, there is a good deal of direct evidence for how these forces shaped this very race! Corporate media was clearly supportive of Biden and almost single-handedly invented the "electibility" narrative that propped him up. DNC power brokers planned for months how to defeat Bernie (with the help of Obama), which resulted in the unprecedented move of Iowa victor Pete Buttigieg dropping out before super Tuesday in order to consolidate the vote of the right-wing of the party (while concurrently a single tear-free billionaire kept Elizabeth Warren's campaign afloat through Super Tuesday with the express goal of splitting the left-wing vote). And the democratic process itself was fraught with disenfranchisement, from the Iowa clusterfuck to a Biden-backed pandemic vote in Wisconsin that may have led to a second surge of coronavirus in the state.
It's easy to look at all of this and despair. But instead I think this is all very edifying. In the face of generational despair, creeping fascism, and existential dread (now on multiple fronts!), the powers that be refused to back down, instead orchestrating their clearest act of malice against the public I can remember. There should be no doubt now that the very idea of working within the system to reform it is a pipe dream. The goal of the left moving forward must be to destroy these power structures, which moreso than any individual (even Trump) are the primary drivers of oppression in our nation.
3. This loss is a clear blow for every area of progressive policy. Nowhere is this more clear than with environmental policy, due to both the scope of the problem as well as the short timeline we have to act on it. While I am aware that a Bernie victory would not have guaranteed a full reversal of global warming (nor does a Biden or Trump presidency guarantee climate disaster), it is clear that our best shot to pursue a habitable future through formal channels has come and gone. This does not mean we should fully abandon electoralism - there are a lot of strong downballot candidates to support in 2020, and presumably someone will take up Bernie's mantle in 2024. But it does mean that we need to accept that the most likely method of successfully taking the drastic action needed to preserve life as we know it lies outside of politics as we know it (and while this has likely always been the case, now we know for sure).
As for what that method actually is, I have no idea. My goal now is to focus my time and my money on this. If anyone has any suggestions to this end, let me know. I still have faith that there is a way forward, but I also know that no one is coming to save us. We must act now.
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