Dream Log: Awkward Closeness With Bernie & AOC

I dreamed that Bernie and AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, were a couple. (Only in the dream! In waking life, I have no reason to suspect they're a couple.)

I dreamed that they and I were sharing a small house near the corner of 17th and Laurel in the Fort Sanders area of Knoxville, Tennessee, or to put it more precisely: they were renting the house, and renting a small room to me. I felt very cramped, very uncomfortable. I felt like the 3 of us were always on top of each other. I wanted to move out.

In real life, I lived in the Fort Sanders area for a number of years. I've most recently seen Knoxville in 1992. In those days, Fort Sanders was a residential neighborhood which ran from 11th Street to 24th Street, and its southern boundary was Cumberland Avenue. On the other side of Cumberland from 11th to 17th, the campus of the University of Tennessee was across Cumberland from the Fort, and from 17th to 24th there was the Strip, which consisted of stores, restaurants and bars on both sides of Cumberland.

I imagine it's possible that the area has changed quite a bit since 1992, but in my dream, it hadn't changed much at all.

In my dream, I had been hired by the Sanders 2020 campaign in some unclear capacity. It was unclear to me: I didn't know what my job responsibilities were.

I was hauling a backpack up the hill from the Strip. It was full of chains whose links were an inch and a half long and a quarter-inch thick. The pack was very heavy. Besides being difficult to carry up the hill, it was so heavy that I was concerned that the straps on the backpack would break.

I was not at all certain whether Bernie and AOC would have considered me carrying that backpack up that hill to be a good use of my time as a campaign employee, or not. They could have said Yes, that's fine, or No, why the Hell is he doing this, or Why doesn't he have a motor vehicle to do this, or Why is he messing with the chains at all -- no conceivable answer would have surprised me, because I couldn't read Bernie or AOC, I couldn't tell what they thought or felt about me or anyone or anything else.

I finally got the pack all the way up the hill and into the house. My muscles were aching all over my body.

Besides the 3 of us who were living there, Bernie, AOC and I, many people were coming and going in the small house: other campaign workers, volunteers, reporters, people from the Democratic Party, and Other People.

I went to the kitchen to get a drink of water, and then I woke up, and got a drink of water irl.

Bernie for President 2020

This is not a joke. I'm completely serious: I'm endorsing Bernie Sanders for President in 2020, and I'm doing it now, before the primaries even start.

I've said many times on this blog that I hate Bernie Sanders, and I meant it. And I still hate him. I've blamed him for Trump being elected, and I stand by that. I said back in 2015 that Bernie was the only man who could get Donald Trump elected President, and by God, Bernie did it. I said that the math was clear back in March 2016 that Hillary had it sewed up, just like Rachel Maddow and Barack Obama, and we were right, and I'm not going to discuss it because I can do math, but I don't know how to teach math. And also because most of the people who say they want to debate this don't want to debate, or learn, a goddam thing.

I'm endorsing Bernie this time because I believe that if we don't nominate him this time, he will get Donald Trump re-elected. Because he has a hard core of fanatical, hard-core, unreasonable followers. When Bernie and the Bernie Bros didn't get what they wanted in 2016, they behaved like spoiled babies and wrecked everything.

I do not see the slightest sign that they learned a goddam thing from the experience.

Let me be clear: I'm not talking about the majority of people who voted for Bernie in the 2016 primaries. I'm not talking about the majority of people who put Bernie bumper stickers on their cars. Most of those people were reasonable enough to get behind Hillary before Bernie did, and in a much, much more enthusiastic and meaningful way than Bernie ever did, even though many of them hate her intensely. Even most of the people left of center who hated Hillary still understood that the differences between Hillary and Bernie were tiny compared to the differences between any Democratic candidate and Trump. They were able to grasp the concept of party unity. And the vast majority of people who are supporting Bernie now are going to vote for any Democratic candidate rather than Trump.

I'm talking about the more than 1 million people who wrote Bernie in. I'm talking about the Bernie Bros who didn't vote in November 2016, or voted for Stein or Johnson or Trump, and I'm talking about Bernie, who either can't do the math, or pretended that he couldn't, and honestly, which would be worse?

I'm talking about people who can't be reasoned with.

It will be much more effective to just give these idiots what they want, and unite around Bernie, than it would be to nominate anybody else, and try to get the Bernie Bros to unite around them, and to get support from Bernie himself which would be more than half-assed.

Bernie is far and away the strongest candidate we have for President in 2020, because he has that hard core of idiots who will screw it up for anybody else, exactly the same way they screwed it up for Hillary in 2016, and none of the other candidates has a hard core like that. And he has a hard core like that because he's like that. But he still will be a far, far better President than Trump. Biden or Bloomberg would be much worse presidents than Bernie, and they would still be much, much better Presidents than Trump. Almost any Republican Senator, Congressperson, governor or mayor in the US would be a far, far better President than Trump, but it looks like they're going to nominate Trump for a 2nd term, so this is no time to fuck around. Bernie is the best bet to stop Trump, so I'm 100% behind Bernie. And if I'm in a place where a lot of swing voters can hear me, I'll wear my very best shit-eating grin and pretend to love Bernie, because this is no time to fuck around. (The readership of this blog is very close to 100% Leftist.)

It's easier, it's smarter, to just give Bernie and his Bros want they want. They don't understand the concept of party unity, but enough of the rest of us do. Yeah, it's sort of paradoxical and ironic. Try to enjoy the irony, if you hate Bernie too.

And again, just to be perfectly clear: when I say "the rest of us," I'm including the great majority of people who support Bernie, the great majority of people for whom Bernie would be the first choice. I'm talking about the vast majority of people to the left of center, who understand how important it is that Donald Trump not be re-elected.