I Voted for Bernie but I'll Never Be #BernieOrBust

Last Christmas, I flew into Ohio from Portland, OR to visit my parents. My art school student sister, her Army Ranger boyfriend, and I went last-minute gift shopping at the mall, then met my parents at The Cheesecake Factory—a restaurant that passes for fine dining in most parts of rural Ohio. Over heaping plates of carb-laden food, we discussed the upcoming primaries. My sister, her boyfriend, and I were all feeling the Bern. My parents, both in their early fifties, were with her.

"You don’t really think he has a chance at winning?" my dad asked.

"I don’t know," I said, still hopeful from living in the Bernie-obsessed bubble of Oregon. "I think he has a shot."

As much as it pains me to say this since my dad loves to brag, he was right. Hillary Clinton neatly cinched the Democratic presidential nomination.

In the last few weeks, I’ve watched Facebook friends go through stages of grief:

Denial: "If Hillary hadn’t cheated in the primaries, Bernie would’ve won."
Anger: "Shillary is a lying, corrupt war hawk and if you voted for her you can unfriend me right now."
Bargaining: "Bernie is going to go all the way to the convention."
Depression: "I am so sad for our country right now."

The problem seems to be reaching acceptance. As someone who enthusiastically voted for Bernie Sanders in the primaries, I understand the disappointment of seeing a candidate you were optimistic about lose. But I also recognize that my dad’s skepticism about Bernie’s chances of winning the primaries wasn’t just cynicism; as someone who lives in middle America, he’s more in touch with how the vast majority of the country is leaning politically.

His skepticism about Bernie is the same skepticism he has when I tell him I believe everyone should have free food, free housing, free education, and free healthcare because they are basic human rights—beliefs that make every political candidate seem like a centrist. It stems from his awareness that the vast majority of the country does not hold the same political beliefs as Bernie Sanders. However, an alarming number of people hold the same political beliefs as Donald Trump.

"How do you know progress is happening?" a Women’s Studies professor asked my class my sophomore year of college, months before the 2012 election. We sat silent, shrugging. "You know progress is happening when you see the backlash."

Donald Trump’s Klan-esque rallies, his plans to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico and to ban Muslims from entering the United States, and his praise of the anti-immigrant motivated Brexit vote—this is the backlash. The idea behind #BernieOrBust is that a Trump presidency will start a revolution, and that would be better than a Clinton presidency because Hillary Clinton is no better or worse than Donald Trump. But revolutions are long and bloody, and not quite that easy to start. If Trump and his supporters represent the backlash, we have to be able to acknowledge the progress.

When I voted for Barack Obama in 2012, I knew I was also voting for policies I didn’t believe in. His plans to further escalate the drone program and his history of killing off the Environmental Protection Agencies proposals were alarming. But I was also voting for a health care act that was far from perfect but had provided insurance to dozens of previously uninsured people I knew. I was voting for a president who supported LGBT and women’s rights, who regulated oil speculation, and who reduced unemployment.

Hillary Clinton is not my perfect presidential candidate, but neither was Obama, or Bernie Sanders, for that matter. Still, when I vote for Clinton, I won’t worry about a Supreme Court that could dismantle my rights. I won’t give up on progress and bet on a revolution that may or may not happen under a Trump presidency that could hurt millions. I will be voting for a candidate who plans to expand disability rights, strengthen background checks for gun buyers, enact immigration reform and close private detention centers, raise the minimum wage, make college more affordable and enable those with existing debt to refinance, and defend women’s health and reproductive rights. I’m voting for a candidate who is incredibly qualified, experienced, and capable of navigating our often divided and deadlocked political system.

Sure, Clinton only wants to raise the minimum wage to $12 versus Sanders’s proposed $15. She’s not promising free higher education, but she might make crushing student debt a thing of the past. She hasn’t been consistent on every issue, but I respect the ability to evolve more than I respect someone pointing to a march they attended in the 1960s while failing to address present concerns.

Voting for Clinton doesn’t mean I’ll stop fighting for all the things that make my dad laugh and roll his eyes. It just means it’ll be a lot easier to continue the fight, to keep pushing forward, if I’m not scrambling under a Trump presidency to try to stop our country from falling back.

On the night of President Obama’s reelection, still living in Chicago, I invited friends over to watch the results come in. We sat in a circle on the floor, staring intently at the TV screen, sometimes glancing out the window to see all the other windows on the block lit up blue from their TV screens. When his win was announced, we jumped up, screamed, hugged, and danced around the living room. We opened the window and heard a hundred other people, spilling out into the street or hanging from their own windows, shouting with us.

When the results come in this November, I don’t want to sit in my living room crying, terrified for my future, terrified for the people I care about, wondering how many friends I could hide in my closet or trying to figure out how to compile a stash of hormones and birth control. I want to scream, and hug, and dance around the living room with the knowledge that for another day we are safe and that tomorrow the fight to move forward can continue.