Chile, I done caught the Holy Spirit after reading Brittany Packett Cunningham’s tweet thread this morning
OK, I don’t know what Bernie said or didn’t say to Elizabeth Warren, Bernie has been known to say some awkward sounding shit at times...but moving right along.
Here is the thread unrolled (tweets that could not be rolled up remain visible in the diary)
I rue the day we decided to stan presidential candidates. All of them are imperfect. Not being honest about their growth areas hurts us all. They’re never pushed to be better for *all* of us when we treat them like gods.
It is totally possible that your fave candidate said or did something, wrote a policy, or holds a belief you don’t fully back.
It is disingenuous to treat literally anyone who asks about these things as dishonest or a troll.
Pete fans don’t get to be indignant about race questions. Tulsi fans can’t be upset about Fox News questions. Bloomberg fans don’t get to scoff at billionaire questions. Klobuchar fans don’t get to brush off prosecutor questions.
You lose credibility by deflecting. Just answer.
People have been asking for years how to reconcile Bernie’s “stop the identity politics” rhetoric that lacks intersectionality with policy white papers that do the opposite.
They’ve been asking “can we trust you to truly act?” They’ve been asking others, too. It’s fair.
I believe Bernie was talking about his lack of belief that the country will vote for a woman (not he doesn’t *want* a woman.) Lots of folks say this.
We should discuss *why* validating “electability” is an issue instead of pretending like its impossible he could have said it.
Sorry, but Bernie told me, a Black woman, that black people are disproportionately jailed because, Black people ‘deal more drugs’ in ‘15
I sincerely hope he knows better now. But that def happened 🥴 🤷🏾♀️ He doesn’t deny it & I don’t believe he “misspoke.”
It is not at all impossible he said that to Liz.
It is also not at all impossible for us to intelligibly discuss the fact that “electability” conversations often validate sexism, racism & misogynoir intentionally and unintentionally, without falling to standom and toxicity.
How many times have women been told “well he didn’t say that to me” (Tulsi) or “He is very supportive of women!” to invalidate her experience?
It is wild to see how fast folks jumped to use a defense that we’d drag any other day on this app.
The fairweatherness of it all... I’m not saying hate Bernie-Liz doesn’t. You shouldn’t. I don’t.
I’m saying the vitriol is unnecessary. Let’s be smarter. Let’s challenge the commonly held belief that a woman can’t win, wherever it may come from, and not reduce a woman to “liar” because she’s inconvenient.
Let’s try to stop the fandom and yelling for long enough to help *every candidate* work on their shortcomings during this primary so that the eventual candidate is as strong as we can get them.
This is part of the purpose of a primary, friends. That’s what we deserve. ❤️✊🏾
I figured since I’m back I’ll just go ahead and get on with saying something half of y’all don’t like and get it over with 😂
(Yeah, even thread reader unwraps require a bit of editing, I see!) CK
I really don’t care and am not all that invested specifically in the Bernie-Liz thing, to be honest...and that seems to be the situation out of which Ms. Cunningham’s tweetstorm here arose. I’ve felt like this for a very long time.
The OED says the word stan can be used as both a noun and a verb.