I thought about watching the DNC coverage on tv last night, but I decided against it after seeing a lot of commentary on Twitter about Sanders supporters disrupting things, booing people who were talking about important issues, and demanding Clinton be thrown into prison. I didn’t need that aggravation. I could say a lot about how Sanders started that grease fire and now wants to toss a cup of water on it in the hopes it will go out, but I don’t feel like getting into it.
I am, however, flummoxed by the commentary that says Clinton supporters were far more gracious at the 2008 DNC. I didn’t watch the coverage then either, but I remember being a part of PUMA and hearing my fellow PUMAs talk about fighting all the way to the floor of the convention to get Clinton the nomination in spite of what we saw as the party machine changing rules and pulling strings in order to unfairly hand it to the far less qualified Obama. (I did not support McCain like some people claimed PUMA was about. Instead I voted Green.) Were Clinton supporters in 2008 more gracious, or were our representatives at the DNC that year just as disruptive and people simply have a short memory? I wouldn’t know.
In spite of my unwavering support for Clinton I haven’t preached party unification partly because the DNC isn’t my party—I am Independent—and partly because the guilt trips make my skin crawl. My choice to not add to that conversation says nothing about my support for Clinton or my feelings about the Democratic party or Obama. I don’t regret my support of her all of these years, I don’t regret leaving the Democratic party over the way they handled her bid in 2008, and I don’t regret not voting for Obama either times he ran for president. If I had to do it over, I’d do it again. People tried to guilt me into voting for Obama back then with promises of gloom and doom for the next four years if I did not. I didn’t appreciate it then, and I refuse to be that person now.
Perhaps the stakes are higher now than in 2008. They certainly feel like it from where I’m sitting, but since I don’t claim to know the future I don’t feel comfortable making that claim. Besides, the people disappointed in me for not supporting Obama in 2008 were just as emphatic with their predictions of gloom as anti-Trump people are now. But I know Democrats and Independents managed to get Obama elected without my support in 2008 and 2012, and I am doing my part to do the same for Clinton now. And if Sanders supporters’ choice to vote third party or not vote at all somehow causes Trump to win, they’ll figure out their mistake without me browbeating them the way people browbeat me in 2008.