Because Hillary Listens (And now I do too)
You know, it’s funny - I used to just support Hillary by merit of “Not Donald Trump” (or, honestly, “Not a Republican”). I was feeling the Bern pretty hard during the primary elections, and I just was really concerned that she wasn’t liberal enough, wasn’t honest enough, was offput by the Debbie Wasserman Schultz stuff, etc., etc.
And then I… actually started reading things? And realized that she had the exact same PoliticFacts honesty rating as Bernie Sanders? That I was falling for a narrative of repeated indictment constructed by Republicans seeking to delegitimize her way back when?
So then I started rethinking things. And around this time, I got a call, actually, from my local Democratic party organizing group - not strictly “for Hillary” so much as generally trying to organize the disparate Democratic groups in the area, which is something I’d wanted for a while. So obviously, I went in, and at first we met once alongside some others from my family, but it became quickly apparent that he was really, really interested in meeting later to discuss social media strategies. Like, that was clearly the biggest thing he was interested in. Simultaneously, it became apparent that he’d organized for Hillary in the primaries. I agreed to meet for a coffee later to discuss strategies, but at the meeting, I went ahead and made it pretty clear up front that I’d been a Bernie supporter but I thought unity was important, etc., etc. And he was just…
I guess I’d sort of expected to have to fight for things a little bit? That I’d have to be holding my ground, that he’d be sort of smug or whatever, but it wasn’t like that at all. He was just immediately welcoming, talking about how glad he was to have me aboard, how important he thought it was to address Bernie supporter’s concerns, how much great work Bernie had done and how eager they were to integrate it into the campaign. But the moment that really stuck with me was when he made a casual reference to abortion rights as “women’s rights” and I stopped him and went “That’s trans exclusionary, I don’t like to call them that.” (Grade A Tumblr discourse, right?) And he didn’t get defensive or anything, just immediately went “Oh, I’m sorry, what should I be calling them?” I was a little taken aback and immediately checked back into the conversation, explaining that “reproductive rights” was more inclusive, etc.
He immediately thanked me and explained that this was why he was so excited to have me and people like me in the campaign, to make sure everyone was included.
I left the conversation feeling a lot more optimistic about this whole thing, feeling like maybe I wasn’t just chipping in to stave off a worst case scenario and was actually fighting fo a cause that was actively including me.
But the real tipping point was… embarrassingly recent, if I’m honest, and came about through a Spotify ad of all things. You may have heard it a zillion times - “millions of jobs”, yada yada yada, but with the stinger at the end that you should go onto her site and read The Plan. “You know, maybe I should actually read that whole ‘Plan’ thing,” I said, and did.
And uh, guys. Do you… has anyone else actually read this? I won’t say I agree on every single point, but there is so much that I’m actually really excited about??
I knew that Hillary was opposed to voter ID laws and probably vaguely supported early voting, but did you also know that she plans to do automatic voter registration at the age of 18 like we’ve wanted to happen for ages? I knew that Hillary had talked about “mending trust between the police and Black communities”, but did you know that her platform explicitly includes body cameras? Did you know that it specifically calls out the school to prison pipeline and her plan to end it? Did you know that it specifically calls out ending private prisons? Did you know that it specifically calls out ending violence against trans women of color with a crosslink to her LGBT rights platform? Did you know that it talks about defending Puerto Rican rights, something even a lot of the mainstream Tumblr SJ discourse tends to overlook?
And that’s just two of the pages on this thing! Look at this stuff! She has the only autism platform that has the ASAN stamp of approval and explicitly includes autistic adults! She has explicit plans to fight anti-LGBT “conversion therapy” and to upgrade the service records of everyone discharged for being queer! Increased HIV/AIDs combating funding including increasing the usage of post-exposure prophylaxis (something not too surprising in retrospect, I suppose, given the Clinton Foundation’s long history of combating HIV/AIDs).She not only supports debt-free college education at all state colleges (something I knew), but she has plans for investing in historically Black colleges and debt relief plans for people already dealing with student loans! She has a substance abuse platform focused on improving treatment options and eliminating jail time for possession! Mental health infrastructure reform!
And I’m still barely touching on all of this, Jesus Christ - we could be here all day discussing all the policies I looked at and went “Oh, wow, that’s actually pretty in line with why I liked Bernie.”
So yeah, okay. You win this round, Hillary. I wanted Bernie to be our candidate, but you know what? Maybe sometimes, primaries are just choosing between two candidates who are actually both pretty great. And maybe you’ve proved that you’re actually willing to listen. And all it took to win me over was, uh, me actually reading your campaign page.
But hey, better late than never, right? It was a slow path to get here, but a worthwhile one, and dammit, at least now I can say without reservation that #imwithher
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