If You’re Sick of ‘Feeling the Bern,’ Just Remember You’ll Feel It With Hillary Too
First things first, this isn’t the kind of article I enjoy writing. Ha! What am I saying? Of course I’ve taken great pleasure in putting this one together. Even if, in terms of the topic, this one is a bit more auto-biographical than my usual fare.
All said, I’ve felt about as much “of the Bern” as I care to at this point in the 2016 election cycle. Have you?
For those who are unfamiliar, I work and live in San Diego. Specifically, in the somewhat trendy Pacific Beach neighborhood of San Diego. It’s an eclectic zip code, the 92109. Old money is here, in stately homes that date back a century and to a time in which lemon groves populated the area. (If you visit, take a moment to realize that 100 years ago, everything north of Diamond Street was farmland).
There’s new money too, in residences both contemporary and ultra-modern. And there are bars, clubs, apartments, condos, and rental properties that cater to working professionals (people like me) and the college crowd that started flocking to the area in the mid-1970s when the surfing community put Pacific Beach on it’s collective map. The college crowd here trends heavier towards San Diego State than it does University of San Diego or Point Loma Nazarene. San Diego State is known locally as the “party school”. With a demographic like this, it should come as no surprise my frequent run in’s with Bernie Sanders supporters.
The first such encounter was peripheral. It was as peripheral as it was predictable. I had relatives in town from back-east for Christmas. We decided to go out for breakfast at The Broken Yolk, a popular San Diego chain restaurant. Where were we seated? Two tables down from the poster boy for the millennial generation, replete with MSNBC glasses, long hair combed over to one side, and a Bernie Sanders campaign shirt that conjured Star Wars with it’s slogan “Help Us Bernie You’re Our Only Hope”. (Those shirts sell for $24.00 on line no joke – “Wall Street versus Main Street”, are you serious?).
That’s right. The Bernie crowd sees Bernie both as a pop-culture Star Warsey caricature and as their only source of government sanctioned salvation. In 2016. After eight years of “hope and change”. And while every sane human being understands that Star Wars caricatures are, well, Star Wars caricatures – making Bernie Sanders just another Senator from all those obscure flyover states liberals love to hate so much.
My next encounter happened on New Year’s Day. Unlike many, I don’t “ring in” the New Year in a boozy sort of way around midnight. I enjoy the outdoors and I enjoy fitness. For 2016, I pointed the nose of the Corolla eastward and hiked a couple of minor mountaintops with a quick roll through Oak Canyon on my way to the car afterwards. Guess who I ran into somewhere between the canyon and my Corolla? Hint: he had a Bernie t-shirt on.
Yes. Amid the hikers coming and going from the various trails and those enjoying the remains of an 18th Century dam put there by Father Junipero Serra during the Missionary-era, there was the Bernie guy. He was negotiating. With his toddler. It wasn’t just that his toddler wanted to be carried. It wasn’t just that he wanted to carry his toddler. The Bernie guy and his child were negotiating the parameters by which the latter would be carried by the former, conceivably on a 3+ hour hike to two mountaintops plus a canyon like what I’d just done. Their negotiation went something like:
Bernie Guy: Do you want me to carry you?
Child: Nuh.
Bernie Guy: But I can carry you. Do you want me to carry you?
Child: Umm.
Bernie Guy: What if I carry you like this? (Bernie Guy demonstrates carrying the child on his back).
Child: Nuh!.
Bernie Guy: Well, okay. Do you want me to carry you?
It went on and on endlessly.
My imagination ran two-fold as this spirited repartee continued. In one sense it was payback. After way too many months of listening to Bernie Sanders and his minions gripe about everything but the kitchen sink, it was nice to see a Bernie Sandersista subjected to a toddler griping about everything but the kitchen sink. And, it was nice to imagine how the Sanders political model would play out in the real world:
ISIS: The way this caliphate thing will turn out…you know we’re coming for you right?
Bernie: Nuh.
Iran: How do you spell world’s newest nuclear power? I-R-A-N.
Bernie: Umm.
Climate Change: You know I’m not real, right?
Bernie: Nuh!.
Putin: After we finish up in the Ukraine I’m thinking we might have to take a look at Alaska. It used to be ours you know.
Which sounds vapid, but less so than what the Democrats intend to offer for November 8, 2016. Barring an indictment – which isn’t likely given current Department of Justice ownership – Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. Her wagon to Washington will be filled to the brim with every clap-trap socialist idea she can find. She, after all, has so many ideas the country “can’t possibly pay for them all!”. Vapid just emailed Hillary’s private server. They want their claim to all that is uninspiring back.
Her response to anyone that dares to challenge her ascendancy:
“Umm” and “Nuh!”. The language of toddlers, and of the left in 2016.
Under a Hillary Dianne Rodham Clinton Presidency is there any reason to expect that we’d be feeling any less of the Bern? She’s as nutty as he is; he just happens to have a more clever method of campaigning than she does with her weird “H” logo and arrow pointing to the right (shouldn’t it point left?). She’s as much of the Bern as he is.
Haven’t we already felt enough of the Bern?
Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/19199400883