Note to JtC: Take it down if Illuminaughty shows up and crossposts it. This appeared yesterday afternoon at 5:34pm at Orange.

Why am I gung-ho for Bernie? Let's start with this: I'm a schoolteacher. And I live in my car.

This is my first diary, and I’m going to start by writing about what I know best: myself. And politics.

Count me among the many millions who have waited our whole lives for a presidential candidate who had the courage and credibility to take on the leaders of our corrupt political and economic establishment, and the rare combination of vision and common sense to show the way toward a progressive future within our reach. Despite what his critics may say, Bernie isn’t just another politician, and his campaign is objectively unlike any campaign ever in history.

And yet, what Hillary supporters don’t seem to understand is this: Bernie’s campaign isn’t about Bernie Sanders. As Bernie himself said at the outset of his campaign, this campaign isn’t about him, or Hillary Clinton, or Trump, etc. It’s about millions of ordinary people, working families, saying “enough is enough. My life has dignity. My dreams have meaning. I am sick and tired of working more and more and yet never having enough.”

Why must it be this way, in the richest country in the history of the world?

For years, we’ve been hearing and talking about the “disappearing middle class”. Well, folks, it seems that trend has finally reached a tipping point. On the Republican side, angry (mostly white) ‘low-information voters’ are ready to throw their support to a ridiculous, dangerous demagogue who clearly would be a disaster for our country. Yet Democrats, progressives, and populists of the left are no less hungry for real change.

I live this reality every day. I currently work 2 jobs, and a year ago, I was working 3 jobs, including as a Substitute Teacher in some of the neediest neighborhoods in Las Vegas, along with a third job ‘push-polling’ for Democratic candidates. Some days I literally worked from 6am to midnight, working all 7 days a week. And yet, supporting a family which included a young step-son, we were always badly behind on the bills. And did I mention that I’m one of the cheapest guys you’ll ever meet? My wife, meanwhile, was a victim of the 2008 collapse, who had worked her tail off as a nurse for her whole adult life, raised a son with low-functioning autism pretty much all by herself, and made a pretty decent life for herself, her son, and her many pets. Yet, within the span of 4 months in 2008 (and through no fault of her own), she lost (in order) her health, her job, her car, her home, her dog, and (most devastatingly) custody of her autistic son she loved so dearly. She had worked so hard, and is/was the kind of nurse and person who gives her all for the good of others, and yet the system failed her, as it has so many others.

Sadly, my wife, Vera, has yet to really recover — financially, emotionally, or health-wise — from the many blows suffered those 7 years ago. And despite my working 3 jobs, the constant financial strain on our family contributed to the disintegration of our marriage.

After we were separated, my wife moved to Lake County, California, and I remained in Las Vegas, until my wife was in a horrible car accident 10 months ago, shortly after her house in Lake County burned to the ground in a fire. Though we’d been separated, she has no family to speak of, and I came to support her recovery at a hospital just north of San Francisco.

Unfortunately, the rent in Marin County (which is just across the Golden Gate Bridge from SF) is nearly as insane as the rent in San Francisco itself. So, for the last 8 months I’ve been living in my car outside the hospital, supporting her recovery — while working 2 jobs, including as a Substitute Teacher in Marin. I work nearly every school day, and most weekends. Bottom line: I’m a teacher, and yet I can’t afford to live indoors, so I live in my car.

And in case you’re wondering, these days there really are no affordable places in the SF Bay Area that I could commute from. To give you some idea, I lived for many years in Oakland, in a neighborhood near MLK Blvd, in the ‘hood. When I moved out of Oakland, I was paying $1200 a month for a place in a warzone — a neighborhood in West Oakland called the ‘Ghost Town’. It would take a novel, not a blog, to describe the desperation and violence and tragedy I saw and experienced there. Just to give some idea, for a couple months, my front porch was taken over by a local gang, who sold crack literally 2 feet away from my bedroom window. This was not an apartment, and I was not free to come and go from my own home — and I learned firsthand, here in the United States of America, what it is like to live under what felt much like an occupying army. One day, a boy I was babysitting went to the corner store (just 20 yards from our front door) to get some candy on a Sunday morning. He was nearly caught in the crossfire of a shooting, as another boy about the same age (and African-American) was shot ten times by some older boys over, rumor had it, a stolen cell phone. This is life in the inner city today. Life may be cheap, but the rent isn’t.

What, you may ask, does all this have to do with Bernie Sanders? The point is this: We need a revolution, folks.

It strikes me as out-of-touch when people say that Bernie is just another politician, whose ideas are pie-in-the-sky. In the past, the argument that Hillary is “more practical”, that she’ll “get things done,” would’ve carried some weight. But in case you hadn’t noticed, the system isn’t just corrupt — it’s also broken. Republicans aren’t going to work with Hillary any more than with Bernie, so the ‘pragmatic’, incremental approach that Hillary and her supporters are working for has just as much chance of passing a Republican Congress as Bernie’s ambitious programs — slim and none.

So the question you should ask isn’t, ‘who is more pragmatic?’ The question you should ask is, who will be able to fundamentally change the dynamics that have led us to this broken and corrupt status quo?

And the answer is: all of us, working together.

But we need leaders. Lots of them. And Hillary, unfortunately, is not — and I don’t believe could be — the leader we need, for 2 basic reasons. First, she is deeply indebted to, and in bed with, the leaders of a corrupt economic system — not to mention a corrupt political system.

Hillary supporters shrug off the issue of her Goldman Sachs transcripts as if it were just another example of ‘gotcha’ politics. Actually, this gets to the heart of why we need Bernie: Hillary does not want us, the public, to hear what she says to Wall Street. Because what she says to Wall Street (and corporate America in general) is not congruous with someone who is truly willing and able to take on a corrupt system. Because she is part of that system. She is a leader of that system.

The other reason we cannot expect a real change under Hillary is that she does not have the necessary moral authority to lead a political revolution. She is distrusted by a majority of Americans, and for good reason. She and especially her hubby are frequently dishonest, and embody everything that people hate about politics and politicians. As the political commentator Jeff Greenfield recently pointed out in an article in Politico, What's Wrong with Hillary?,

...when you look at the positions she has taken on some of the most significant public policy questions of her time, you cannot escape noticing one key pattern: She has always embraced the politically popular stand—indeed, she has gone out of her way to reinforce that stand—and she has shifted her ground in a way that perfectly correlates with the shifts in public opinion.

There is a strong argument to be made that it is just such political insiders who are most able to facilitate the sort of changes we need in government. LBJ and FDR were insider politicians in every sense, and they understood the necessity of compromise and collusion with the status quo. And yet today they are celebrated for their incredible success at passing some of the most significant progressive legislation in American history. Then there is the ‘Nixon going to China’ argument: that a paragon of a particular status quo is in the best position — and is thus most able — to change the status quo because s/he has the connections and credibility among the ‘powers that be’ to enact such a change.

I sincerely hope that, should Hillary be elected, this will be true of her presidency. (Of course, FDR and LBJ were only able to pass such landmark legislation re: civil rights, unions, social security etc. because of major pressure for change from the grassroots. That’s where we, the progressive left, come in.)

Yet I doubt that Hillary will be able to accomplish much as president, for the same reasons that Obama has been stymied for the last 5+ years. Yet under Hillary, I expect government dysfunction to get even worse. Obama enjoys widespread trust and affection among Dems and independents. Hillary does not. And worse, the never-ending scandals that have dogged the Clintons will not go away if she’s elected. Indeed, most Clinton supporters are under the delusion that Billary’s dirty laundry has all been aired by now. The sad truth is, as we will soon learn if Hillary is the nominee, there is much dirt on the Clintons that they and their allies have managed to sweep under the rug for decades now. (I know this may seem preposterous, given all the dirt that we HAVE HEARD, but you can expect plenty more Clinton scandals to come).

Bernie, on the other hand, is tapping into the pain and frustration that so many of us feel. Ordinary Americans aren’t stupid. We know the system is corrupt. We know it’s not going to change quickly or easily. And yet we also know that Bernie is the real deal. We know it because he’s spent his entire adult life fighting for us, regardless of how popular it made him among the elites. And he’s the kind of leader who knows that this isn’t about him — the kind of leader who has been brought forth, out of necessity, because the times demand it. Thank you.

#NotMeUs.