Thread by @frodofied

1. So, here's the thing. We progressives would like to think of ourselves as learned, thoughtful, open-minded, and introspective.

And many of us are, individually.

But put more than ten of us in a room and we will almost certainly start fucking things up immediately.

2. And we are fucking 2016 up royally. We seem to have learned very little about how any of this works and it's pretty damn frustrating to sit and watch yet another self-immolation.

Two white male octagenarians are really the best we think we've got?

3. Seriously, the only way I'm voting for either of these guys is if they are the name that's sitting next to Trump's on next year's ballot.

We have lost our nerve and it shows. We nominated Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton successively to lead our party people. Now this?

4. It's no small thing that both received more votes than any white man that came before them, ever, from either party.

Even if you believe that @HillaryClinton lost the 2016 election (I don't) you have to have noticed that it took an unprecedented effort to defeat her.

5. And that "Clinton was defeated" narrative will forever be muddied by the fact that she lost by getting three million MORE votes than the white racist dude she was running against.

And now we are unnerved.

Falling prey, yet again, to the same bullshit we did then.

6. Fuck. Their. Narratives.

@HillaryClinton was a great nominee and worked her ass off for our party and our country. She lost because we failed her not the other way around.

And shame on us for allowing them to turn her into a warning label when she should be our battle cry.

7. In June I wrote a thread about how the media and the Trump machine would work to retool his image and reshape his narrative.

Business is almost booming again in the news world and they know from where their blessing flow.

https://twitter.com/frodofied/status/1141012246979497984?s=19

7. If we are not careful then the post-mortems for 2020 are going to look and sound eerily similar to those from 2016.

When that last shameful debacle began I warned what they would do, or at least try to do to Hillary Clinton.

But too many assumed that it was about her.

8. They can be forgiven on some level I suppose because they were, in the end, partially right.

It was never really about Hillary Clinton, ever. I have argued, and this will be borne out in the coming months, that it was always about what they believed she represented.

9. Evidence of this can be found everywhere. As a political figure Clinton represented an existential threat to traditional Republican rhetoric. Disarmingly brilliant, effective, hard working, ambitious, and intolerant of male centered ignorance, she was a formidable foe.

10. But the same people (men) who were so publicly critical of Clinton in 2016 had long admired her privately, and more than one had at various points considered her a friend. Clinton's collegiality in the Senate is well documented and her Republican colleagues appreciated her.

11. Clinton reclaimed the mantle as the most hated Democrat in the world from Barack Obama when it became clear she we would undertake a second run for the Presidency.

From about March 2015 Clinton became the almost singular focus of the right wing attack machine.

12. Hillary Clinton had always been used as a tool of the right to raise anger, polling numbers, and money. Whenever they needed a symbol for what they viewed as the great sins of the left (civil rights, women's rights, the Great Society) they trotted her out; caricaturized her.

13. Later they would turn to Barack and Michelle Obama.

It was particularly urgent that they undermined Clinton & Obama, because despite the criticisms flung from the right they knew that Clinton and Obama were the best evidence that those great social experiments had worked.

14. There is nothing more powerful than living proof, and @HillaryClinton and @BarackObama are proof enough that when opportunity is more equally distributed and social poisons like racism and misogyny are, at least partially, set aside then the oppressed can and will flourish.

15. So, if you've ever wondered why these two are so mercilessly attacked and so disliked, look no further than that. Their very natures and the nature and level of their success undermine many of the right's most cherished beliefs and doctrines.

16. Racism, misogyny, and homophobia did not and will not go away because Obama was president, or Clinton almost was, or Buttigieg is being seriously considered.

All they did/do was to force us to throw a spotlight on the glaring shortcomings of our social framework.

17. They helped expose underlying threads of fear, anxiety, entitlement, anger, and hatred that permeate every class, institution, and function of our white powered patriarchal society.

Yes, it is ok to stare at us white people.

We are so the reason we can't have nice things.

18. But their desperate efforts to destroy Clinton and Obama are actually further evidence of how cornered they feel and how little faith they have in their own political beliefs.

They prove that we are winning the actual war, even if we've stumbled I'm recent battles.

19. But we can't lose nerve now, because the future is literally watching. What we do now as a nation and as a party in response to the last five years will define us historically for a generation.

Turning back to what we are trying to walk away from helps no one.

20. It would be a different story if either Biden or Sanders were the person of the moment or honestly the best to lead this nation forward, but they are not.

Not by a long shot.

And, know this (the point of this thread will now reveal itself)...

21. It was never really about @HillaryClinton or @BarackObama. Truly it wasn't. They would have fashioned others into the demons they needed in their absence. These were two great people who frightened their political foes and those foes had feared that moment for decades.

22. And they are still afraid. They will try to to ANY Democratic candidate what they did to Clinton and Obama.

Black or white. Woman or man. Gay or straight. Joe or Bernie.

And they already know what they are going to say. The plans have already been lain.

23. So bear this in mind when you make your choice for who represents us in 2020. They will be turn to shreds whomever we choose, but never forget that we are the majority and we are going to win this thing.

I repeat, we are going to win this thing.

24. @KamalaHarris may not have made it through till the vend like so many of us had v hoped, but just because she didn't, it doesn't then mean that Biden or Sanders are the only choices left.

Or that we can't call a certain Ms. Clinton back to the front lines if we chose.

25. The media want another four years of Trump. For all of their criticisms and hand wringing they have profited immensely from Trump's illegitimate presidency

So, like thry told us Clinton could not win they will now say Democrats can't win.

They will be wrong.

#WeGotThis