My Head & My Heart: Why I Voted for Bernie Sanders
Many voters have been struggling over their vote in the Democratic primary, wondering if they should vote with their heart (who do I like?) or with their head (who has the best chance of defeating Trump?).
When I filled out my ballot, I went with my heart AND with my head — and voted for Bernie Sanders.
My heart tells me Bernie Sanders is the best candidate, with the clearest vision, the soundest theory of change, and by far the best platform to confront the challenges facing Los Angeles and the district I represent — the homelessness crisis and the climate crisis. Both challenges are extreme, urgent, and demand bold action and strong national leadership.
For me, Bernie is the candidate best able to provide that leadership. He is the one I trust to make sure my 6 year-old doesn’t grow up on a planet that is on fire. I have faith he can build my son and his generation a society where everyone has a home, health care, a good paying job, and an education. Sanders is the candidate I trust most to dismantle the deep, ugly systemic racism that scars this nation.
And my head tells me that Bernie is the strongest candidate against Trump. In fact, I think Bernie is the only Democratic candidate who can beat Trump.
A lot of my friends disagree. They feel that Bernie is too far left, and only the familiar and reassuring figure of Biden can win. Many Biden supporters and I agree on a lot of things, but we have a very different theory of how much change we need, and a very different understanding of the American electorate.
Biden, for the most part, considers the fundamentals of our society and our economy to be strong, but feels that our government is led by really bad people who are wreaking havoc on those systems and tarnishing the soul of the country. He calls for a return to normalcy, a restoration of civility, and the election of significantly better stewards for our system.
Bernie’s worldview is very different. He feels that our economic and political system are broken and corrupt, captive of special interests and elites. He doesn’t feel that our system needs different managers. He feels our system needs significant, structural repair. Sure, a Democrat managing a broken system is better than a Trump trying to destroy it, but our kids and our planet are still screwed unless we change the system.
A lot of my fellow Democrats — including the stampede of former candidates and party regulars frantically rushing to Biden’s side over the past few days — cringe when Bernie rails against the establishment. They should look around at who’s nodding in approval when he does so. It is a diverse, multiracial, multigenerational movement — particularly strong with the working class, young people, and Latinos.
Most Americans don’t want a return to what Biden considers normalcy, or to the pre-Trump way of doing things. Yes, they’d like someone less cruel and less crazy than Trump, but they don’t want the pre-Trump status quo either.
Most Americans feel the system is not designed to work for them. They see a system that bails out big banks while leaving millions of people homeless. A system that lets the architects of the financial collapse off the hook while throwing young black and brown men in jail for low-level drug offenses. A system that gives more breaks to corporations like Amazon than to a waitress at Denny’s.
Increasingly, Americans don’t feel that our institutions are working for them. Not just government institutions and both political parties, but religious institutions, and the media as well. In his recent book, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes has described this phenomenon as the “twilight of the elites.”
There are very few American political figures who understand this and give voice to the feeling of millions of Americans who feel like they’re getting screwed by institutions and by elites. Two of them remain in the presidential race: Bernie Sanders, who channels the energy into ambitious policy proposals for the common good; and Donald Trump, who channels it into racism and xenophobia while actually enriching the elites.
Offering Biden as an alternative to Trump is folly. Of all the Democrats who entered the presidential contest, Biden most represents the establishment. For decades, he was a faithful advocate for credit card companies and banking institutions, and an opponent of consumer protections. He voted for unpopular wars. He has been a familiar face in national politics for generations. In a general election campaign against Biden, the Trump message will be “Been There, Done That.”
On cable news and in many Democratic Party circles, the conventional wisdom today says that Biden is the safe choice. The conventional wisdom is wrong. It isn’t shaped by people skipping doctor’s appointments because they can’t afford the co-pay. It isn’t shaped by low-wage shift workers eating Ramen noodles for three days, stretching their grocery budgets until the next paycheck. It isn’t shaped by people who lost their homes during the mortgage crisis, or their retirement savings during the last recession. They want an advocate to change that system, not one of the architects of it.
Nominating Joe Biden is a gift to Donald Trump. It lets him run against Status Quo Joe. It’s making a bet that most voters believe that the system itself isn’t broken, it’s just that the people running it are. That’s a fool’s bet.
Trump is deranged. His administration is a disaster, causing irreparable harm to our democracy, and regularly, routinely, and gleefully harming hundreds of millions of people. Defeating him is a moral imperative. That’s why both my heart and head voted for Bernie Sanders.
