Pro-Bernie, Never-Hillary

Democrats divided.  

Bicker, bicker, bicker, bicker.   Guest Post author John Shutkin offers an explanation.

One of the on-going wars on Facebook within the Indivisible groups, within my college class group forum, and within Democratic activist groups, is the division between the Bernie people and the Hillary people.

It shows up as Bernie supporters who aver that they will never support a Democrat after the conniving of Wasserman Schultz.  Or it shows up as environmental activists who believe that Democrats are no better than Republicans, so they vote for Ralph Nader and then Jill Stein.  Or it shows up as Hillary-supporting Democrats who resent and blame the Trump victory on Bernie supporters who stayed home or voted third party.

Those of us who accept politics to be, as per Polonius in Hamlet, "'twere a thing a little soiled in the working", accept compromise and imperfection in the match between our ideal candidate and the real live humans who present themselves as candidates.   Other people see it differently and don't want compromise; wrong is wrong.  They get urged to go along, to accept the lesser of two evils.  Some do, some don't.

Those that hold out and refuse to accept the presumed better of two options (e.g. a Bernie voter supporting Hillary, to avoid the election of Trump) gain attention and power but only if they hold out.  In game theory it is zero sum; they lose if they cast the compromise, strategic vote.  When the results are counted, if the "better of two evils" candidate wins, they have lost both their conscience and their preferred candidate.  The person urging them to be "reasonable" would have won the argument.  But if the worse of the two candidates win, and the compromise candidate (e.g. Hillary) loses, then they are vindicated.  "We told you so."    

Bernie supporters who refused to "hold their noses and vote for Hillary" can state they are  confident Bernie would have won handily.  Maybe he would have.

The effort to get a Bernie voter to cast a strategic vote against Trump runs up against their pride and reluctance to "lose".  The effort easily backfires.  The more intense the pressure to "go along" the greater the stakes in hanging on to their pride and integrity.  Arguing a point confirms ones belief in it; one thinks of reasons and justifications, and uttering them integrates them into ones convictions.   "Minor" points get amplified in importance.

Never-Hillary, 2017:   We were robbed!

Now, nearly ten months after the election, the resentments and recriminations still persist.  Democrats cannot likely resolve this problem by choosing Bernie in 2020.  The wounds would stay open.  There is a new generation of leaders and spokesmen, but each of them can be interpreted against the Bernie/Hillary lens.   Are they corporate?  Are they globalist?Are they socialist?  Are they team players?  There are pitfalls because everyone has baggage, every candidate who has gained enough stature to be considered remotely viable is, themselves, "a little soiled in the working."  They had a position on Bernie/Hillary.

Democrats in the forums are already nitpicking potential candidates and digging in.

John Shutkin, a college classmate and an attorney, is general counsel for a consultancy and a close observer of the ongoing battle between the Bernie and Hillary people.   He considers it an artifact of the Narcissism of Minor Differences.   People fight over small points, minor heresies against an acceptable orthodoxy.  Democrats are working out just what that orthodoxy is.

A small political heresy has the potential to infect ones own team. Interest groups and activists are alert for backsliding and deviation.  A giant disagreement with an opponent is less dangerous than a small one because there is less temptation for ones side to backslide or compromise a position if the division is small, but a great one if the differences seem minor to those on the outside of the argument.

Protestant sects divided over whether baptism by water on the forehead was sufficient or whether full emersion was required.  No need at all to argue with a Buddhist.

Bickering is safer than a grand battle; the stakes are small.   Small point bickering proves ones purity and fastidiousness.  Two educated men can squabble over whether the question "Who do you trust?" is more appropriate than "Whom do you trust?"  The very argument makes each feel smug and secure.  Each can dig in.  There is no pleasure in having the argument with a foreigner in his first year learning English and totally unaware of what the fight is about.

In Shutkin's opinion we are witnessing a squabble over minor things right now.  But, predictably, the actual participants in the ongoing fight don't consider the stakes minor at all--which is the point of the narcissism, and why the fight continues.

Guest Post:  John Shutkin

"The Narcissism of Minor Differences"

Shutkin

The Narcissism of Minor Differences, NMD, posits, somewhat counter-intuitively,  that the closer  -- not the further  --  that one is to another's non-identical philosophic views, the more angered one is by the other's views.  The premise, I assume, is that one doesn't even bother trying to convince those who have diametrically difference views of the superiority of one's own; they are simply a lost cause and may even come from a different planet.  Conversely, however, those who are generally on your side but for some reason don't agree with you 100% can possibly be brought fully into your fold if only you can get your message clearly (and loudly) across to them. At the very least, they are deserving of your withering scorn for not being there, given where they already are.  

i first heard about NMD in a column in our college newspaper in the late 60's, in the midst of the Vietnam War protests.  The columnist cited and defined NMD in the context of explaining why the two largest anti-war groups on campus, SDS and the Progressive Labor Party, seemed to spend most of their energy and anger venting back and forth about how the other one was selling out The Revolution --  as opposed to both going more full bore after their common enemies: LBJ, Nixon, ROTC, etc.  

I have kept NMD in mind over the years and do find it particularly applicable to the political arena.  Most recently, I have observed what I believe is a prime example of it in the anger that Bernie Sanders supporters directed at Hillary and her supporters, resulting in an apparently good number of Bernie's supporters not voting for Hillary in the presidential election.  (I think there was a fair amount of NMD going in the other direction too, but, of course, that did not have any impact on the election voting.)  And this has occurred at a time when the gap between the views of the Democratic and Republican parties can best be described as an abyss. And it anyone doubts the objective existence of this abyss and/or the overall compatibility of Bernie's and Hillary' views, I have just three words for you: Supreme Court nomination(s).

Ironically, at least in this election cycle, though there were a few outspoken NeverTrumpers (chiefly among the conservative punditocracy), for the most part the Republicans did not succumb to NMD and came together and voted for Trump, even if many held their noses in the process.  And keep in mind that Trump was not only not the first choice for many of the Republicans, he was a truly odious and unqualified candidate.  Perhaps Republicans have embraced a mirror opposite philosophy to NMD; let's call it the Pragmatism of Major Differences. But that's for another day to be considered.