Missive from the future: The 2016 presidential campaign was a major turning point in American history. Voters, fed up with the corruption and dysfunction of Washington, sent a powerful message by choosing Donald Trump for the Republican nomination and Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination. As promised, former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg entered the race as an independent, hoping to appeal to moderates. But the presence of yet another billionaire in race did not sit well with voters, and Bernie Sanders won with a plurality of the popular vote, but a large electoral majority.
What would happen? This is not an outlandish scenario. In fact, based on current polling, at least, it would seem that there is a very good chance that this is exactly what is going to occur. If, like me, you instinctively recoil from the idea as being unrealistic, stop and ask yourself why. Because nothing like it has ever happened? Maybe we just live in interesting times.
If Bernie Sanders becomes the Democratic nominee, the Right — regardless of nominee — is going to lose its mind. Socialist. Communist. Baby killer. Sodomite. Satanist. Child Molester. To a large swath of the electorate, these things are indistinguishable from one another. Sanders and his surrogates will try to explain it, of course, and they might even do a good job. Sanders has a way of putting things succinctly, and Elizabeth Warren (a likely VP choice, but who would undoubtedly be involved in the campaign regardless) is very good at explaining things in a plainspoken way that makes sense. Some people might be swayed. But a sizable subset of conservatives will remain unmoved. To say their position is based on emotion would be a gross oversimplification. For many it is a matter of self-identification. It represents a way of life, and a vision of America, that is dying. So-called progressives like to joke about how backwards such people are, how old-fashioned and hopelessly out of touch. All of these are accurate and valid criticisms. But they fail to take into account what it must feel like to be on the other side. The world is changing around you faster than you can follow, and every day it seems like the rules change. To you, some things are just wrong; it's not a matter of logic or reason, it's simply how it is. These Americans — and we should never forget that they are our fellow Americans, like it or not — are generally older and less sophisticated. They don't use the internet as much, they are less likely to have a smartphone, or even a cellphone. In many cases religion forms the centerpiece of their lives.
Some proportion of the überconservative set will threaten outright secession/revolution if the Socialist Sanders is elected. Never mind that most of them probably couldn't spell "socialist," much less understand it. These are old, primal emotions, culture-memory going back over half a century.
If Bernie Sanders were elected president, especially if it is without a popular mandate, as in the example above, there will be unrest in some quarters of far-right conservo-world. I think there would be Oregon-like occupations, probably better organized and coordinated, particularly in red states and conservative parts of the country. Would some states outright secede? I think that's a distinct possibility. Kansas, Texas, Utah, and Idaho are probably the most likely suspects. Hell, there are rumblings in these places now about secession.
Maybe this is It. The It we've been waiting for. The It we've been building toward for lo these past thirty years. Maybe this is the final, epic battle between Left and Right, the physical culmination of the Culture Wars.
I kind of hope it is. But I have the luxury of being able to say that safely ensconced in the heartland of liberalism. If there's going to be unrest, it won't be in Boston. If there's going to be bloodshed, it won't be in the Northeast. The South and Mountain West, the Bible Belt, places where conservative politics are strong — these will be the places where the fight is carried out.
One by one they drop out. Some band together to form a new confederation, called the "Real" United States of America, with Donald Trump as its titular president. Utah does its own crazy Mormon thing. In a year President Sanders finds himself governing a rump nation consisting of the West Coast, the Northeast and Chesapeake Bay, Industrial Midwest, and Great Lakes regions. Kansas has declared itself a Christian Republic and Florida has gone off on its own, finally a banana republic in fact as well as presentation.
I'd be okay with this.