Friday, April 22, 2016

Not a single issue candidate

Bernie Sanders seems to be running a single issue campaign. Close to the only thing he talks about is reforming Wall Street and getting corporate money out of politics.

I heartily approve of both of those goals.

However, as Aphra Behn of Shakesville says, she doesn't have the privilege or luxury of a single issue revolution.

She lives in a red state intent on closing down Planned Parenthood.

She lives in a red state in which the GOP demonizes its opponents as being corrupt (code for "run by black people").

She lives in a red state in which big business is working to protect her from the excesses of the GOP intent on dehumanizing LGBT people and on making guns ever present. (Big business is sometimes my ally? Hmm. In some cases I'll take them where I can get them).

Behn concludes:
My house is burning, the Fire Department has arrived, and your guy [Sanders] is telling me that turning on the water is a distraction from reforming the Mayor's Office.

Screw. That. Noise.

I need a candidate who can do many things at once, who thinks in complex ways, and who gives a shit about people facing intersectional axes of oppression. In Hillary Clinton, I have one.

I'm under no illusion that she is perfect, but she clearly understands that my house is on fire. She's not lecturing me that I'm "distracted" from the real issues.

She's picking up the hose, and fighting the goddamned fire.

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