January 20th, 2017
Hillary Clinton was officially sworn in as the 45th President of the United States Friday, an occasion that was met with rejoicing and celebration from Clinton's supporters. President Clinton is the first woman to be elected to the highest office in the land in all of America's history.
"I've been waiting seven decades for this," said Lenore Bernard, a 72-year-old grandmother from Connecticut who attended the Inauguration. "I get to look at my granddaughters' faces when they look at the television and know that they too can be president someday."
Not all Democrats or liberals were ecstatic, however. Demonstrators also flocked to our nation's capital to protest what they call "a premature inauguration."
"I mean, so she defeated Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Primary, and then Trump in the general election. So what? It's always possible that the FBI could reopen their investigation of her, which would give Bernie a shot," said Mike Hunt, who drove all the way from California to take part in the protests. "It's typical of the Clinton campaign at this point. Declaring victory before they've actually won."
Demonstrators held up signs and marched in circles, chanting slogans such as "Bernie or bust!" and "This is what Democracy looks like!"
"Just because she won a majority of votes, doesn't mean she won the election," said Tanya Skagle, a marijuana enthusiast and legalization advocate from Michigan. "I mean, there could've been voter fraud. We'll never know what the actual vote counts were. And the superdelegates, er, I mean members of the Electoral College, were pledged to her from the start. It was a conspiracy."
Ray Drecker, a 28-year-old Uber Driver from Chicago, led many of the demonstrators' chants through a bullhorn. Drecker said that he did not believe that Clinton could have actually won the election.
"We have people chanting," Drecker said, patting his bullhorn as if he were proud of it. "I've never seen anyone chanting for Hillary Clinton. How can you possibly win an election, or institute progressive change, without chanting?"
When asked why he was still supporting the long-shot candidacy of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) even after Sanders conceded, endorsed Clinton, and campaigned for her during the general election, Drecker and other supporters shrugged.
"I think it's a strategy," said Howard Koontz, another Californian who'd come to DC specifically for the protests. "Bernie Sanders has created the greatest presidential campaign of all time, with no Super-PACs. Sure, he lost the election, but anything can happen. He's a senator, right? So there could be a freak accident that kills literally everyone in line for the presidency in front of him. President, vice president, cabinet, every single congressman and senator except for Bernie. It could happen. A meteor, maybe."
Ronnie Haxon, 26, would not speculate on any specifics of Sanders's plan to get into the White House, but did insist, "He's cooking something up. You know that famous Gandhi quote? I think it was Gandhi. Might've been Abe Lincoln: First they fight you, then they ignore you, then they laugh, I think, then you win? Something like that. Well, we're at the point where they're ignoring us now. Soon they'll laugh...and then we'll win."
Back on the Capitol's western lawn, supporters of President Clinton seemed unconcerned by the protests.
"Are they still on about that?" Lenore Bernard, the grandmother we heard from earlier, said when asked if the protests bothered her. "No. They can do what they want." Bernard took a moment to clap as President Clinton waved goodbye and departed the stage.
"You know," she said when it was quiet enough to hear again. "I did like Senator Sanders. I thought his agenda was right for this country. It's a shame all his young supporters are too busy being angry and making excuses to actually keep fighting for Bernie's ideas. I bet if all of them got together to do that, nothing could stop them."
This is satire, written by an extremely zealous Bernie Sanders supporter, who almost certainly will not vote for Hillary Clinton in the general election, and does not believe that she will necessarily win. Let's all try to laugh at ourselves once in a while, okay, fellow #BernieOrBust -ers?