Written by Megan Hunt
From URLs to primetime commercials to celebrity endorsements, you know you’ve found an effective way to communicate with people when corporations are willing to shell out millions of dollars for it. While it’s easy to shrug off Twitter hashtags as mindless fun or slacktivism, you can’t ignore the fact that companies think it’s such a powerful method of communication they’re paying to promote them.
Similarly, hashtags like #FeelTheBern, #ImWithHer and #Scum4Prez (oops, I meant to type #Trump 2016, silly autocorrect) can help a politician gain enthusiasm and connect to younger voters who aren’t particularly passionate or new to the election process. These hashtags might be fun ways to learn more about the candidates’ records or start needless Twitter drama, but they can also be a vital tool in ensuring the voices of the public are included in political process. With journalists, pundits and the candidates themselves dictating what information the public knows and how they get it, it’s refreshing to see that social media can be used to remind us that we’re the ones who are owed a say in everything.
Three of the hashtags that have found popularity on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr- and have even found their way into national headlines- are #ReleaseTheTranscripts, #BernieMadeMeWhite and #ToneDownForWhat.
#ReleaseTheTranscripts started after Hillary Clinton refused to disclose the transcripts of the paid speeches she made to a number of companies after her time as Secretary of State, namely two speeches to Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs, which altogether earned her over six hundred grand. This issue isn’t about attacking a woman for making money- this is about transparency. Hillary Clinton has vowed to take action to keep Wall Street in check to avoid another economic collapse, like the one we saw in 2008, and work to ensure every American has access to affordable healthcare. But believing her can be hard when her donor list includes Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and major insurance and prescription drug companies, and her reluctance-turned-refusal to be open about what she discussed with these companies is cause for alarm. Is it possible that a candidate would tell us one thing, and tell the powerful entities who help fund her campaign another thing?
Even the New York Times, who endorse Hillary Clinton in her run for presidency, agree that it should be the public who get to decide how much transparency they’re entitled to. The call to release the transcripts has had a large online presence, and while it hasn’t led to action from the campaign, it’s kept up a dialogue about political transparency and served as a constant reminder of where the candidate’s funding has come from. It’s also created a conversation about transparency and the ethics of our current campaign finance system- and while the opinions on the issue vary, it’s a topic that many politicians (and the media outlets that fund them) have tactfully avoided, and is now quite central to the 2016 election cycle.
#BernieMadeMeWhite is a newer and more comical hashtag that seeks to make the corporate media- such as CNN, New York Times and Fox- feel foolish for its constant whitewashing of Bernie supporters. While the national trends show Bernie winning only about a quarter of the Black and Latina vote, he has been doing better with voters of colour (especially millennials!) as he gains more recognition, and has been able to win (by a landslide) Hawaii and Alaska, two very diverse states. Regardless, the Bernie supporters using this hashtag aren’t attacking the media for pointing out an inarguable trend and a demographic problem for the candidate, but rather whitewashing his campaign altogether. When you lump his campaign into a “for white people by white people” narrative, you don’t just erase the people of colour who have worked to get his campaign where it is today and have gone out to vote or caucus for him. You create a narrative where the values and goals of his campaign inherently and purposely don’t align with the values and goals of people of colour. #BernieMadeMeWhite does not simply seek to remind people that there is diversity in his campaign, but that the media is unknowingly erasing thousands if not millions of people from one of the largest grassroots movements in American history, and lumping his ideals, such as bold and urgent action on climate change and universal healthcare into “white people” issues.
Finally, #ToneDownForWhat.
For those of you who may not know the backstory, Bernie Sanders challenged opponent Hillary Clinton to a debate in New York, because both of them could be considered a “home state” for them (Bernie was born and raised in Brooklyn, and Hillary Clinton served as Senator for eight years), and because, well, that’s what usually happens in an election. Hillary declined, and of course there was backlash, with some suspecting she now thinks she’s above the primaries because she has a wide (but not insurmountable!) lead in delegates, or because she is afraid that with every debate Bernie will gain more support and momentum, which could be dangerous considering the number of delegates up for grabs there (291). An HRC campaign official later disclosed a statement stating that Hillary will only consider another debate if Sanders alters his “tone” and claims that he is running a very negative campaign against her. Her chief strategist also claimed that he will “campaign like a Brooklynite” while she will campaign like a Senator.
And thus, a hashtag based on clever wordplay and a regrettable (and despicable) choice of words was born.
First things first, Bernie’s “negative” campaign is entirely fair, plain and simple. He has stayed away from her personal life, from her well-publicized martial struggles to her time campaigning for Barry Goldwater (a Republican candidate that was against civil rights) while he was being arrested for protesting segregation, to her current FBI investigations, which he very well could have gotten away with criticizing considering that these reasons have contributed to her historically low approval ratings. He has stayed away from hurtful personal attacks or scandals because he has no desire to win because someone was hated more than him. He wants to win because people see him as the better choice, and so he absolutely has to highlight their differences. After all, there’s no way a person can decide which one is a better choice if both adopt a narrative where they’re virtually the same.
If Hillary Clinton did not want to get called out for her corporate donors, for her inconsistencies on issues such as gay marriage and fracking, and her paid speeches to major Wall Street corporations, she shouldn’t have accepted the money or voted the way she did or made those speeches (or at least let us have the transcripts).
But the remarks concerning tone are more than problematic. They’re straight up undemocratic.
“Tone” is simply a matter of HOW we communicate our ideas, not a reflection of the ideas themselves. Bernie is loud and sounds angry and gestures with his hands and manages to tie most of his answers back to his stump speech on wealth inequality and the billionaire class. But he needs that stump speech- unlike Hillary, Bernie has not enjoyed close to three decades in the spotlight, and he has gained most of his supporters through his core ideologies. It may sounds tiresome for the dedicated and politically-driven who watch every debate and keep up with the news, but debates aren’t actually for those people. They’re for the busy mother working two jobs who doesn’t have the chance to read what the New York Times thinks about Bernie. It’s for the man who knows next to nothing about politics but can immediately associate Hillary with Democrats- but has been hearing about this Sanders guy lately and wants to know more. It’s for the nineteen year old whose just started to read about politics. Debates don’t exist for those who are already well-informed, and it’s likely such people already know more about the candidates’ plans than they have time to discuss in their two minute responses- they exist to expand the number of voters and leave the average person well-informed about the basics of each candidate.
If Hillary was really passionate about high voter turnout and an informed population, she would be willing to debate. By trying to attack Bernie’s “tone” she’s doing two things- firstly, she’s trying to silence the ideas his tone carries, and that’s not fair. The second thing she’s doing is creating a separation between people and politics. It’s a common thing in establishment politics for people to present themselves in a very particular way- the way they dress, what their family looks like, how they speak, and what they say is all very calculated to make politicians into a kind of class on its own, that is separate from the rest of the country. Politicians usually have to be photogenic and professional, married and not divorced, straight, with children, and speak in a way that makes it clear that they are educated and smart. Only, the way Bernie Sanders speaks isn’t uneducated or stupid. He speaks like a normal person- a very specific type of normal person. He is the stereotypical Brooklyn Jew. But why can’t a Brooklyn Jew who communicates like a Brooklyn Jew be allowed in politics? You can disagree with his policies all you want, but you have to admit that it’s not progressive to suggest that the voices of real people should be filtered out of the democratic process.
Finally, there’s the classism of that final Brooklynite comment. Brooklyn, up until recently, has always been considered a lower middle class and working class area, and there is a stereotype (though younger voters may not be as aware of it) of “New York Jews”. Hillary’s staffers comments seem to reinforce ugly stereotypes and be intentionally implying that his tone is lower class and therefor somehow inferior to Hillary’s uber-professional but personality-less “Senator” tone.
Luckily, Twitter was putting up with that crap at all. #ToneDownForWhat goes much deeper than a defense of a candidate- it’s a real discussion about the importance of televised debates as a form of accessible information, and of the dangers of tone policing and erasure. This discussion is important, and luckily it has gained traction and headlines from national news outlets.
Only time will tell if public pressure will lead to another debate, but regardless, these three hashtags have worked. They are not just a bunch of unhappy Bernie fans, and they are not just teenagers wasting time on the Internet. The political atmosphere is clogged with pundits and powers that don’t represent the people, and social media is creating a genuine challenge to that. Through these mediums, voters are given a voice to reach out to not only each other but also the media and the candidates themselves.
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