Dark Qiviut

This past month has been a big wake-up call for me as far as elections go. For those who followed me and talked with me, it's no secret, but for others, it isn't. Despite being a registered Democrat in a deep-blue state, I was Bernie or Bust. I followed his primary closely and supported him more and more as he rallied throughout the country. During the primary campaign in New York, I started to like Clinton less and less for various reasons, such as Bill Clinton admonishing BLM protestors to Hillary's shadiness in the debate to Hillary goysplaining to Sanders before the primary election in a pro-Isreal news site. After a Clinton Super PAC spent more than a million dollars trolling Sanders supporters online, I was done! Clinton lost my vote, period.

Yet, despite that, a part of me at the time considered voting for Clinton in the general election, anyway. I'm generally not a single-issue voter except for one: the Vice-President. Ten years ago, when I was more supportive of right-wing stances, I juggled between voting for Obama or McCain. McCain chose Sarah Palin, a factually-worse VP choice over Biden. After that, the choice was easy, and I voted for Obama in '08 and '12. Despite going BoB, I liked Stein more than Clinton, and while Kaine is so centrist, I hated Baraka for calling Obama the "UT" racial slur and claiming that the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine was a false flag operation, a conspiracy theory rivaling 9/11 truthers. Yet, despite that, I went ahead and voted for Stein/Baraka on the Green ticket.

Come this year, I pledged to never vote for Cuomo in any election or primary. In the primary, I voted for Nixon. Come the election, I was steadfast into voting for the Green Party's Howie Hawkins. But on election day, I voted the entire Democratic Party ticket, including Cuomo. So what changed? The day before, a poll came out showing Cuomo's massive lead diminishing into the teens and was trailing when polling among Independents. Cuomo's an atrocious gov, but given enough pressure (and bribes), he can be swayed leftward. Mark Molinaro would've been a sworn enemy to progressives. Safe blue or not, I couldn't afford to have a Republican in Albany's top seat, so I held my nose for Cuomo.

And come over the last month has been a time of reflection. I'm an avowed left-winger and not shy in my support for both communism and socialism. Yet, I feel manipulated by many fellow leftists on Twitter who…

1. Posted convincing nationalistic propaganda supporting Cuba's, China's, the old USSR's, Syria's, and North Korea's totalitarian governments. Our government's completely shit at civil rights both at home and abroad. We have an internally imperialistic government that bullies others if the U.S. doesn't get their way. America's treatment of AA's, Native-Americans, Latinos, Palestinians, other Arabs, and Muslims both nationwide and worldwide come to mind. But that doesn't make their governments any better. Totalitarian governments upset my very own morale, but the push for regime change doesn't make the situation any better. Every time we get involved, we make things worse. Our war crimes in Vietnam, overthrowing democratically-elected governments in Chile, Iran, Guatemala, and Honduras (and a more recent attempt against Nicaragua's left-wing government), our oppressive treatment of North Korea, and "operations" in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen come to mind. Regarding Yemen, we're working with Saudi Arabia and the UAE and contributing to the worst humanitarian crisis since the Holocaust.
    
2. Decried the Democratic Party as exactly the same party as the Republicans. Criticism of terrible Democrats and the DNC is healthy, and a lot of the policies and laws that Trump passed were aided by many Dems, such as Wall Street deregulation, the passing of SESTA/FOSTA (in which only two Senators voted no: Wyden an Rand Paul). The Young Turks and Kyle Kulinski are great in letting off on establishment Democrats. But even at the end of the day, TYT as a whole and Kulinski (despite voting for Stein) know that the worst Dem is better. As much as it stung two years ago, Sarah Silverman's off-the-cuff, cross response to the "Bernie-or-Bust" delegates chanting was right on point. Going back to this later.
    
3. Reacted irrationally after another leftist dared to praise a Republican. The reactions toward Ocasio-Cortez for praising John McCain (who she likely knew personally when she worked for Sen. Kennedy) and Ro Khanna after initially endorsing Joe Crowley come to mind. As bad as Gillum's RW talking point of declaring accountability towa Central-American countries and his pivot to the center are, he's to the left of many other Democrats and was a billion times better than DeSantis. We didn't need leftists who don't live in Florida, including myself, to sway other Floridians to not vote for Gillum. Florida's beautiful and diverse, but it's also a southern state and home to white supremacy like any other in the South.
    
4. Completely dismissing the possibility that Russia worked with Trump or colluded with Trump in the campaign. Now, some of this criticism of Russiagate is fair. The recent report of Russia campaigning on social media to convince African-Americans is a major stretch and stinks of absolving Hillary's own campaign screw-ups. But there IS evidence of Russian corruption with Trump, and it's aplenty. The fact that Trump's so reactionary when it comes to Russiagate further fuel the suspicions.

Going back to Senator Sanders, there are people who are Hillary supporters and not left-wing who have fair criticism of Senator Sanders's record, blind spots and faux-pas. He's an excellent senator and would make a great president, but like anyone else, no track record's perfect. Many of these same leftists were also fair in criticizing him, too, for various reasons, such as being anti-BDS, going against the grain and saying that anyone regardless of spectrum should eat peacefully, voting for the Crime Bill (I don't care if it included the Violence Against Women Act and the decade-long assault-weapons ban; it was a really bad bill that drove mass incarcerations), and voting for SESTA/FOSTA. But he also said an embarrassing faux-pas after Gillum and Abrams lost their elections, one in which Sanders (through staff) had to clarify quickly after; those who got upset or angry at him for this (both moderate and left-wing) were completely right. Even I admit to being guilty of retorting to fair criticism. The big problem, unfortunately, is that White-Wing/"centrist" Dems mask this criticism with Neo-Nazi talking points and Trump-esque conspiracy theories (i.e., supporting the Jane Sanders bank fraud investigation, which was started by Trump's Vermont campaign manager), heavily implicating that their hatred for him comes from primarying Clinton and being a non-stereotypical, left-wing Jew, which completely negates any meaningful discourse.

As for Democrats, they're unquestionably better, even if they're to my right.

1. Even the worst Democrats will vote with the Dems more than a Republican. Manchin's atrocious, but compared to a Repub who'll vote with Trump about 90% of the time, at least he'll vote with Trump less. Many Republicans pan Trump's actions, yet they vote with him 80-90% of the time. Bill Nelson's better then Rick Scott. Lipinsky's better than Arthur Jones (a Holocaust denier; even Ted Cruz endorsed Lipinsky). Abrams is better than Kemp. Evers is better than Walker. You get the picture. Often, when Republicans have the chance to criticize Trump, they don't. When you vote for a Republican, you're voting for a cult-right/Trump puppet. The Republican Party is the Party of Trump, and that is a fact.
    
2. The Republican Party of Wisconsin continues to pursue a major power grab, making Governor-elect Evers and LG-elect Barnes more like lame-duck officials. Combine that with the racist Voter ID Law, massive gerrymandering to institute GOP control, and now less early-voting days, the GOP looks for ways to grab more power. This also happened in North Carolina in 2016 and Michigan this year.
    
3. Protests by the Sunrise Movement are occurring to push the Democratic Party into approving a Green New Deal, thereby treating climate change with the urgency it deserves. Instead of protesting Republicans, they protest Dems. Why? Because at the very least, most Democrats will listen to their constituents. Those who don't will either risk more pressure or a primary on their corrupt asses. The GOP's a zombie bought and paid for from top to bottom.

This leads me to the Green Party and, in particular, Jill Stein. There's a reason why Hillary supporters view her as a spoiler. She's a phony. A politician with no substance during presidential runs and plenty of baggage. Last night @PathfinderCS showed me on Discord a link of her doubling down on 9/11 truthrism, which I didn't know about. I would've voted for Clinton in a swing state then, but if I knew she's a truther, then she would never have gotten my vote, period. At least, Ralph Nader's a very good, smart, authentic person. If any of you don't regret voting for her, cool. For me, it was. Neither she nor Baraka will ever get my vote again.

Coming 2020, I will vote for the best candidate in the NY primary. If Bernie's in it, unless there's someone better or if he drops out, he gets my vote. But come election time, there will be no "Bernie or Bust." Whether it's Kamala Harris, O'Rourke, Joe Biden, Richard Ojeda, Abrams, Gillum, Andrew Yang, Bernie, Gillibrand, Warren, or someone else, they'll get my vote.