Amidst #FeeltheBern and #HillarySoQualified, I had my own Twitter debate and it escalated to a troubling conclusion. (This is a long post with some considerable exposition so I won’t be mad if you scroll down to the end.)
After the Wisconsin Primary results came in, I shared a blog post I wrote, “Bernie Sanders is Disney Princess,” inspired by the Birdie Sanders meme. Unsurprisingly, I received a response from Sanders supporter @Barkley4Bernie.
I welcomed and appreciated this response. My post is intended to be humorous media and political commentary. I was hoping both Sanders and Clinton supporters would see it as such. @Barkley4Bernie then shared some more opinions.
These are fair assessments. Okay, so he doesn’t agree and takes issue with my assertion that all politicians make promises to gain support. But that’s fine. I responded:
I truly believe that while the Sanders campaign has generated unparalleled enthusiasm, it is not encouraging as much ground game development for the progressive movement as people believe or claim. There needs to a concentrated effort to change voting habits and make people realize the value of their votes on local issues. That is how you build a lasting political revolution beyond a presidential primary.
@Barkley4Bernie counters. He’s really gonna make me see how the devoted Sanders supporters are going to change local level politics.
Wait. Did you just tell me you have never voted? NEVER VOTED. I hope @Barkley4Bernie means in Wisconsin…
That being said, I do like this anecdote. I even said as much during this back and forth. Any political engagement is good, especially coming from a 33-year-old who has never voted. That speaks to the value of #FeeltheBern.
I’m admittedly a cynic. I’ve worked on many grassroots campaigns in Jersey City for nothing more than a dream of a good candidate, a better community and a desire to put up a good fight. I’ve canvassed until my feet bled, phonebanked until my voice was hoarse. I know how much work is needed to get the needle to barely move. The difference between me and @Barkley4Bernie is that I actually play the game in an equally corrupt Democratic city. Because to make any change, you need to play the game in the places where it already exists. In JC, people on both sides of the Democratic aisle work together to improve their community. They will fight for you and against you like no one else. It’s a great city to participate in politics; it’s fun and enlightening.
Do I get tired? Sure. Did I spend the last two years in grad school rather than being as active as I would like? Yes. But I also know that changing our political systems takes more than believing in one presidential candidate.
Here the conversation pivots from “Look at how Bernie supporters are advocating for good progressives” to “Hey you know Elizabeth Warren? She’ll be your first female POTUS”.
I also don’t know who these “many of us” he’s speaking on behalf of are. (Oh wait, I do. Bernie supporters who will never vote for HRC and lash out at any democrat who will gladly support either. Got it. That’s what I’m dealing with here.)
Anyways, I disagreed with the presumption that I’d only vote for Hillary Clinton because we’re both women.
This argument is baffling.
HRC is “bugling the cause”? How so? Because she’s a flawed candidate? Just so we are clear. The Sanders campaign, in recent days, has also been bugling the cause of not being sexist.
He quotes me back to myself in order to mansplain to me what I meant. Thank you, I know what I wrote and no, I’m not referring solely to HRC. Gender politics are universal. Even if Elizabeth Warren were a presidential nominee, she would not be impervious to gender politics. She wasn’t when she ran for Senate in 2012.
And the Bernie Bros would gallantly defend her via memes? What ridiculous logic is that? As I point out, elections are not won via memes. They simply aren’t.
Really? Ok @Barkley4Bernie, let’s unpack this thought in more than 140 characters. No, I haven’t seen an election like this before. But the absurdity of this particular election does not change the fact that political campaigns need infallible ground games to win. Not all post-Bernie progressive campaigns will be fueled by money, ego and dudes with an exorbitant amount of time to spend on Twitter. If you’re building a political revolution, as the Sanders campaign claims in every email, then they should also be encouraging their supporters to learn the ins and outs of campaign work.
In other words, you can’t predict the future. Has the game really changed? No and we won’t know until the midterm elections in 2018.
Also millennials may not give a fuck, but to what extent? Plus don’t assume all millennials are ardently pro-Bernie. Millennials are not something you can tie a bow around and package as one thing. Many are apprehensive about both a Sanders or Clinton White House because they can see the bigger picture. The push back against either White House will be enormous and possibly more of the same we’ve seen during the Obama administration. As one side of the aisle becomes increasingly more left, another side is becoming increasingly more right. And that is terrifying.
Remember I’m a cynic. I’ve worked on campaigns in a city where people are much slower to accept changes to their communities. What I want to see is this level of engagement surrounding a presidential election continue. 
Why would I know any of this about you, @Barkley4Bernie. You told me you’re a 33 year old lawyer who never votes. You’ve made it seem like you’re suddenly enthralled by a politician – who is a symbol, no less! – for the first time and now you’re actively involved with a campaign for the first time. Meanwhile, I live in a community that doesn’t buy into the symbolism of Bernie Sanders. They want to believe in change, everyone does, but they also see the empty rhetoric of Sanders as president. He’s as you say, a symbol. Why would anyone vote for a symbol and not someone who can get shit done? 
By this point, this comment, as many before, irritated me. I don’t need to be lectured about the Sanders campaign anymore. I also won’t be convinced by a Twitter diatribe. I don’t need to told how to volunteer on a campaign or mansplained to anymore. So I responded.
And then.
Thank you? I didn’t realize we were going through old tweets and correcting each other’s grammar. In that case, I’d like to… no, I’m not going there. You can certainly find @Barkley4Bernie’s typos yourself.
So there we have it. This is perhaps the most interesting and insulting set of Tweets I’ve ever encountered. (And this isn’t my first time getting into disagreements on social media that devolve into sexism.)
I did not engage with @Barkley4Bernie as much as he engaged with me. He would fire 4 to 5 tweets before I’d even craft a response. Never once did I point out how completely messed it is that @Barkley4Bernie is 33 and never voted. Yet he wants a pat on the back for volunteering for Sanders. Never once did he ask me who I support; he just assumed Clinton because obviously I am only interested in voting for a woman. Never once did I call him or his views stupid, whereas the moment I asked him to stop being patronizing, he snapped and attacked my intelligence. How does his reaction encourage a healthy political debate? (It doesn’t) How does his reaction reflect on the Sanders campaign? (It does.)
Clearly, we disagree but to what extent? I’m perhaps not feeling the Bern but I’m also not going out of my way to support HRC. I’m not interested in empty rhetoric but I’m also not blinded by a desire to see a female president to also not see her flaws. I just don’t hate Hillary Clinton with the same vigor many Bernie Sanders supporters want you to feel. I’m also not someone you need to have this argument with. I am deeply invested in my community and local Jersey City politics. That seems to be the difference between us.
Because here’s the caveat: If Bernie Sanders is the Democratic nominee, I will vote for him and I will support his campaign. I will canvass my community. I will phonebank. Presumably @Barkley4Bernie will never vote for Hillary Clinton. Why would he? His capacity to giving a shit is limited to only getting involved with the rhetoric is high and the results are tbd. Oh wait, I forgot, did I realize he’s a lawyer who gives money and goes to judicial campaigns. Wait, you also said you don’t vote. Now I’m confused.
(Yes, I know the argument that Sanders supporters are mostly Independents without an allegiance to the Democratic party. That’s not an excuse to be condescending.)
Rereading these tweets now, I realize @Barkley4Bernie from the beginning didn’t care for my blog post. He just wanted to fight and when I didn’t share either a hatred for Hillary Clinton or a crazed passion for Bernie Sanders, he resorted to being a patronizing dick.
This election is enormously peculiar. It’s exposing the deep flaws of many people, myself included. People can’t engage in political debate without launching into diatribes or worse, unnecessary insults. When someone has the audacity to call you out on literally the least offensive part of your rant, we resort to pettiness and bullying. I recognized years ago during my first campaign that Twitter is a terrible place to engage in any conversation or debate. Yet it’s also ironic my one and only Twitter debate of this election happened this week, when gender politics have come back into the foreground. It’s all just unfortunate and signals a troubling problem within our wider political discourse.
As Rebecca Traister wrote in New York Magazine today: “It’s too bad this is where Sanders’s invigorating campaign, one that is passionately supported by many ambitious feminist women, may be turning in the final stretch: to a depiction of a female rival that is reliant on some of the very double standards that have helped to ensure that there have been too few female rivals — and no female victors — in presidential politics to date.”
But what do I know? I’m not as bright as I think I am. I’m a hack. I’m pretentious and I don’t know the different between “hear” and “here”. Just like how @Barkley4Bernie doesn’t know the difference between “your” and “you’re”. Oh darn, I went there.
