It's A Bernie V. Hillary Knock-Down Drag-Out Fight! (At My Mama's House, Starring Us)
It had been a very good day. We went to the corner of Beard and Farrall in Shawnee, Oklahoma, and held signs that read Bernie (my mom, husband, and daughter) or Yellow Dog Democrat (me)! Most people waved back instead of giving us the finger! (I am very good at waving and smiling and holding signs. I am also very good at continuing to smile while returning someone's middle finger right back at 'em.) We wore T-shirts! The valves on the poop tanks of the Wonkette Mobile Command Center were no longer frozen shut! The grandma and the baby laughed and played! We went to Norman, and saw our hippie cousins and ate vegetarian food! We drove by the house in Tecumseh with the TED CRUZ LIYEER signs, and admired the unknown inhabitant for his or her outsider art!
WHAT A SATURDAY!
Then Bernie Sanders got a whompin' in South Carolina, and my mom lost her shit and I lost my shit right back at her, and there was screaming and yelling and hullaballoo!
I think we should go to the tape, except that my tape is different from my mom's tape, like Rashomon -styley, I assume, since I'm far too young to have ever actually seen it. We agree that it all went south once Hillary started her victory speech, and my mom began imitating it in a rather unflattering manner! And that I then screamed at her that Bernie Sanders was a FUCKING IDIOT and SHE WAS TOO and there WASN'T GONNA BE A FUCKING REVOLUTION and ... I'm not sure, that's when my tape runs out. I know I gathered my things and gently and gracefully -- balletically even! -- glided out to the RV. My tape is sure of it.
We'd had a good time watching the GOP debate on Thursday, my birthday. We'd missed the first few minutes in favor of a Bernie Sanders interview with Chris Matthews, which we both really enjoyed. But I don't hate Bernie Sanders -- who could??? -- I just think Hillary would be better at running an actual administration. I feel that loathing her is buying into every slander the GOP has laid at her door for the past 30 years. And yes, everyone wants single payer! But can we hold off on that, fix the GOP-created sabotage that was red states refusing the Medicaid expansion, and maybe try our hand at keeping Miami from drowning for at least a few more years instead?
My mom sees Hillary as somewhat cowardly, maybe craven, totally phony. Everything about her grates my mom's last nerve, most particularly her voice. Meanwhile, here's Bernie, who never won't say what he really thinks (with the tiny exception that he evades questions about whether he believes in God; I think he should do the shruggy emoticon and say, as Jewily as is humanly possible, "EH."). He really did do important work in civil rights at the University of Chicago, and the friends of Hillary made him sound like a liar. His trillion-dollar infrastructure proposal is exactly right, and Hillz's, which quarters it, is better than nothing but not nearly enough. I'm happy to find common ground with my mom. I'm happy to agree.
My mom sees a deck that is stacked against Bernie from the media to the DNC; telling her the media treats Hillary like they treated Al Gore would be a fool's errand, while we both can tut our fingers about Debbie Wasserman Schultz's stacked DNC.
My mom loathes Hillary viscerally, and it makes me crazy. She's not a monster, and Bernie Sanders ain't God, and the black-and-whiteness of it makes me insane. THEY'RE BOTH GOOD. THEY'RE BOTH FINE. I like Hillary better (a little), but BERNIE IS NOT MY ENEMY and I wish to fuck and back my mom could feel the same way. It would at the very least make an about-face easier, if Hillary is the nominee. Then, my mom will not take her ball and stay home. She will put on her bumper stickers and go hold her signs (and her nose) and she will show up on Election Day and tell other people they have to too.
"What do you think of Hillary's Mao jackets?" I asked my mom idly last night, a couple few nights after our fight. "LOVE THEM," my mom responded without hesitation. I was heartened. It's fucking something at least.
Oh my family is pretty diverse. El Dad, two of my brothers and my sister and I are all left of center to varying degrees, but the right wing of the family includes my dippy televangelical-following mother who pines for a Rick Perry candidacy, hates Obama with a white-hot passion, routinely refers to Bill Clinton as "that scummer" while slamming me about disrespecting Dubya by calling him Dubya, and refers to Hillz as "Mrs. Scummer," my stepfather, who has been dragged deeper and deeper into the Fox Nooz universe, and my evangelical, climate-change-denier brother who, though he now supports Rubio, was formerly the state co-chair of the Carly campaign.
We have interesting family parties.
Don't "need", "choose.". You have many other options.