I leave you all alone for less than 24 hours and my replies are a Bernie vs. Biden-a-thon.

So.

Loathe as I am to do this, some thoughts:

1) Electoral campaigns can serve a lot of functions, well beyond getting a candidate elected.

One function is injecting ideas into the popular political imagination in a meaningful way.

Regardless of how you feel about Bernie as a candidate, he's been really good at this.

2) we can debate longshot scenarios, but real talk: Bernie isn't likely to win the nom unless something drastic and unexpected happens.

That means the continued campaign isn't super practical from a get-him-elected perspective.

3) Bernie's campaign is an agitational one.

It isn't just about getting a candidate elected

It's about the injection of those ideas into our imagination.

It's also about injecting them into the Democratic political mainstream in a concrete way.

4) Bernie staying in right now gives him and his campaign the ability to meaningfully pressure the DNC to incorporate more progressive policy points into its platform and more progressive practices into its infrastructure.

That's what happened in 2016, and it was a good thing.

5) Biden is decidedly unprogressive, and to the extent that he can be pressured into commitments on more progressive policy, this is a really good thing.

6) real talk: Bernie's continued campaign serves a practical purpose, but also Bernie's 2020 campaign has been highly problematic in ways we're going to need to post-mortem eventually, and it isn't going to be pretty.

7) the Rogan thing, the friendliness with dirtbagger podcast culture, the unwillingness to address online harassment culture, the failute to address 2016 sexual harassment issues meaningfully, Jeff Weaver's continued presence obviously guiding strategy... it wasn't good.

8) the harassment of Warren supporters and demonization of Warren were particularly telling.

I have PLENTY of critiques of Warren, but this harassment was ugly and opportunistic and deeply misogynistic, and it should have been decisively condemned & shut down by the campaign.

9) The Bernie campaign allowed a significant amount of online Bernie culture to center around outright mosogyny, and the disregard the campaign showed for complaints about this was deeply hurtful for many of his women supporters, myself included.

10) a reminder, though:

Elections aren't about electing heroes.

They're about electing targets.

A target is the person or people you pressure into giving you what you want.

I would STILL prefer Bernie as a target to any other candidate who was in the primary.

11) Probably, though, that isn't going to happen.

Probably, Biden will get the nomination.

The practical math I do there is, would I prefer Biden or Trump as a target?

And the answer is pretty decisively Biden.

12)

BUT.

Big but.

I believe Tara, and it fucking breaks my heart that I have to do that math about two alleged rapists.

13) as someone who has spent four years doing sexual misconduct accountability work within the Dem party, it sickens me that even after the tidal change of #metoo and #timesup and #believewomen, this is where we ended up.

14) as someone who knows very well what it's like to go public with a story of sexual misconduct within the Dem party, as someone who has been publicly mocked and doubted and suffered career hits as a result for YEARS, it pains me to see women do the same thing to Tara now.

15) my math and my heart are really struggling with each other right now.

The stakes are so high, especially for vulnerable people. I probably will end up voting for Biden (assuming we have an election).

It sickens me, though.

16) it's a painful math v. heart decision that will be deeply personal for every woman and especially every survivor.

I don't feel like I can tell any woman what to do here, or judge any woman for her choice (unless that choice is to vote *for* Trump)

17) I'm livid watching the Biden stans who plastered #metoo and #believewomen across their walls during the Kavanaugh hearings now try and minimize and make excuses for dismissing Tara's story outright

18) I'm equally angered watching these Bernie-or-bust dudes who treated the 2016 Bernie campaign sexual harassment allegations as high treason now yelling #believewomen at Biden voters as though they EVER cared about survivors ever until the moment we became politically useful.

19) I'm not in any position to judge women for voting for a nominee who, for all his faults, might be our last chance to save Roe v. Wade and also impact a host of other life/death Supreme Court decisions for vulnerable people.

I will probably be one of those women.

20) I'm ALSO not in any position to judge women and especially survivors who simply cannot bring themselves to vote for a credibly accused rapist and instead vote third party or withhold their vote.

It's just an incredibly painful decision to have to make.

21) I have a LOT of thoughts about folks rushing to make those judgments or treat Tara's story as a political trump card.

Especially, especially, especially strong thoughts when those people are white dudes, who have the least to lose should Trump win a second term.

22) they are, uh, not particularly kind or generous thoughts.

23) At the end of the day this is going to be an ongoing and difficult and traumatic conversation.

The stakes are great, the likely nominee stands accused of doing something intimately wrong and terrible.

24) There's no one right way to have this conversation, but there are a lot of REALLY obvious wrong ways.

Gloating about how a woman's traumatic experience strengthens your political agenda is one of them.

Minimizing or denying her traumatic experience is another.

25) There are good reasons for Bernie to stay in the race.

Bernie's affecting really positive change re: economic justice in our political system and especially the Democratic party.

He also allowed a sexist campaign culture that tolerated misogyny in his base. That sucks.

26) Biden may very well end up being our last hope in preventing the installation of radically reactionary Supreme Court justices that would enact decisions that would devastate oppressed people and our communities, women very much included.

He's also a credibly accused rapist.

27) There are no easy gotchas, no crystal political clarity, on any of this.

The primary candidate who would have impacted the most positive change as a nominee ran a campaign that tolerated misogyny.

The likely nominee is an accused rapist AND our last hedge against Trump.

28) Anyone trumpeting that there's a single clear moral choice in any of this is being willfully over-simplistic.

This primary taught us once again that women's pain is viewed as irrelevant and silly, and the general will continue to rub that truth in.

29) I'm going to take a dim view of anyone acting self-righteous about their candidate choice in my mentions.

There's no righteous choice.

This is an ugly time and all our choices are ugly.

It didn't have to happen this way.

It did, though.

We have to do better next time.

If there is a next time.

Time is so close to running out, it may already be gone.

Those are the stakes.

That is the level of emergency.

There'a nothing and no one to crow about here.

(the end)