The Democratic Primary Ruined My Friendship!
Why Bernie-Hillary has gotten so personal.

By Michelle Goldberg

A couple months ago, one of my husband’s former colleagues from a progressive digital strategy firm popped up on his Facebook page to castigate him for supporting Hillary Clinton. “Matt, do you remember the exact date when you gave up?” the man wrote. “Was it when Obama turned out to be a damn conservative? Or were you never 100% behind this progressive thing to begin with? Tired of losing, so pick a candidate who, if she loses, it won’t really matter that much? I think it’s the last one. Sellout.”

That was the moment I realized that the Democratic primary, while incredibly high-minded compared with the Republican one, is creating lasting interpersonal enmity. On Saturday, Peter Wehner wrote in the New York Times about conservative friendships fraying in the age of Trump, describing people for whom “differences over the Trump candidacy have caused such a loss of respect that they feared their friendships would not survive, and that even if they did, they would never be the same.” I wish I could feel schadenfreude, but the same thing is happening among some committed progressives. Even now, with the primary season limping toward its foregone conclusion, collegial disagreement has given way to hostile incredulity, as people wonder how those who they thought saw the world in the same way could be so utterly, bafflingly wrong.

A necessary disclaimer—evidence for this is entirely anecdotal. The people who came to hate each other over the Democratic primary are a small, unrepresentative group of political obsessives. Most people never talk about politics online; in a 2012 Pew Research Center study, 84 percent of social media users said they’d “posted little or nothing related to politics in their recent status updates, comments, and links.” Like those Wehner writes about, people who’ve spoken to me about damaged relationships either work in liberal politics or are serious activists. They are part of a fairly minuscule subculture.

Among this little group, however, it’s easy to find people whose ties are being tested. “It has been an eye-opening and heartbreaking election cycle that has revealed some ugly truths about ‘progressive bros’ in my circle that will take some time for me to digest,” says Maryna Hrushetska, a 47-year-old curator and art adviser in Los Angeles who supports Clinton.* In the past, Hrushetska tells me, she’s worked on behalf of Palestinian rights and the environment, and she’s been shocked to see men she knows through those movements repeating sexist anti-Clinton slurs.

Read more at Slate...

“He’s not going to get the nomination, is he?” my wife asks anxiously as she gazes out of the kitchen window at the Bernie for President sign on our front lawn. No, I assure her, and he certainly won’t win Maryland on April 26. I’m voting for Bernie, and my wife may, too, but we’re doing so on the condition that we don’t think he will get the nomination. If he were poised to win, I don’t know whether I’d vote for him, because I fear he would be enormously vulnerable in a general election, even against Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, and I’m also not sure whether he is really ready for the job of president.

Why, then, vote for him at all? For me, it’s entirely about the issues he is raising, which I believe are important for the country’s future. Hillary Clinton and her various boosters in the media have made the argument that it’s impractical and even irresponsible to raise a demand like “Medicare for all” and “free public college” that could not possibly get through the next Congress, even if Democrats eke out a majority in the Senate. They presumably want a candidate to offer programs that could be the result of protracted negotiations between a Democratic president and Speaker Paul Ryan – like a two percent increase in infrastructure spending in exchange for a two percent reduction in Medicaid block grants. I disagree with this approach to politics.

What Sanders is proposing are political guideposts – ideals, if you like – according to which we can judge whether incremental reforms make sense. He is describing, whether you like them or not, objectives toward which we Americans should be aspiring. That’s a central activity in politics. Should it be confined to issues of Democracy or National Affairs? Or is it the kind of activity that is entirely appropriate for a nominating contest? Ronald Reagan and the conservatives thought so during the 1970s. And I think Democrats should be thinking this way now. So I applaud Bernie Sanders for not limiting his proposals to what might appear on a President’s often-ignored budget requests.

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Does the country really need turning around? Sanders has been derided for holding up Denmark and other Scandinavian countries as examples. They are far different from the US, and they are also beginning to experience problems sustaining their own social democracies. But I think in comparing life there with life in the United States, there is one useful point to be made. . What people in these countries enjoy is not assured lifetime employment or control over their workplaces, but a degree of basic security about their lives that is missing in the United States. Americans endure needless anxiety about access to education and healthcare and about being left penniless or homeless. Our social safety net doesn’t just need mending, but replacement. It’s worn out. And Sanders provides a set of guidelines in his proposals that will move exactly in that direction That’s why he gets my vote on April 26 – even if I hope Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee.

Do All of Bernie’s Voters Want Him to Win?

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...primary exit polls consistently show voters concerned about electability are heavily tilting toward Hillary. After all, you don't need a political-science degree to suspect that a 75-year-old self-styled democratic socialist with a Senate voting record a bit to the left of tofu is going to get Dukakised to death after a good, vicious billion-dollar Republican general-election ad campaign. That makes you wonder how many Hillary voters there are who'd pull the lever for Sanders if they really thought he could win the general election. And it also makes you wonder exactly how many Sanders voters like Judis don't really want him to win the nomination because they don't think he can win the general election — or want to fence in Clinton ideologically because they think she can.