“I hate to say it, but I told you so.”
I’ve truly been surprised at how much I’ve been hearing this from my own acquaintances. And then reading through the vehement reactions to IndianObserver’s heartfelt, reasonable diary in defense of Hillary I realized we’re in danger of “I told you so” becoming a meme. I guess I expected we would all be licking our collective wounds with sympathy and empathy, and focusing with soberness on next steps. I know I wasn’t in the mood to throw blame around. But it’s becoming clear that our next steps are in danger of being crippled by this sort of meme, regardless of how horrible the next administration is.
(Parallels can be seen in 1968, when anti-establishment liberals staged a hostile takeover of the party after Humphrey’s loss, leading to the nomination of George McGovern in 72, who I supported, but who lost in a heartbreaking landslide to Nixon — even after Watergate had broken.)
The fact is, voters (and nonvoters) decided this election. Blaming Hillary for losing the electoral college would be like blaming Leonard Cohen for losing to Ted Nugent in a popularity contest. The role of contestant is not only to win (as many here keep insisting). It is also to lead. And to remain true to one’s vision. You simply can’t force people to avoid self-destruction if that’s what they’re intent on.
Not that Hillary didn’t try as hard as she could to win (and she received shit for that too). But we’re living in an unprecedented, unpredictable time — with Facebook and Twitter and Russian hacking and Wikileaks and voter obstruction — and we can’t place the entire blame on one candidate for figuring out how to navigate all that. We all need to chip in and watch each others’ backs.
That didn’t happen.
There are strikingly disturbing parallels between the “I told you so” faction here and the obstructionist Republicans of the past eight years. Their entire strategy was to break the country and then win voters by proclaiming that the country was broken. Similarly, the I-told-you-so faction routinely worked to depress the vote by dumping on Hillary — all the way up to election day. They even piggy-backed on right-wing talking points/lies (such as Bernie got cheated by the super-delegates). Far too many young voters were convinced, often by memes started here, that an exceptionally capable woman who spent the vast majority of her life in true public service was an evil money-grubber.
I personally know many people who barely kept up with the news (didn’t watch debates, etc). And what little they absorbed (from their cell phones) could be summarized in tweets, such as “Hillary stole the nomination,” or “We need to blow the whole system up.”
We now know that the impact of all that whining on turnout was significant. It has changed history and reshaped our country. Rather than enjoying my last years on earth watching the continued expansion of civil rights and rooting for our increasingly decent national character, I will watch a Supreme Court stunting all cultural progress for decades. Most of the political progress — yes, incremental — that has been painstakingly fought for over the last eight years will be blowtorched — simply because it became hip to want to blow up a “corrupt” system.
At first I thought the I-told-you-so response was just a necessary way for some of you to assuage guilt, or at least to help you come to terms with these heinous results. But if you keep trying to turn your my-way-or-the-highway feelings into some kind of self-righteous movement — well, there will be more blame battles to come.