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The Schmooze

Debra Messing’s Meaningful Feud with Susan Sarandon Over ‘Bernie or Bust’

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Lior Zaltzman

By Lior Zaltzman March 30, 2016

Yesterday, Susan Sarandon went on Chris Hayes’s show on MSNBCto talk about, among other things, Bernie Sanders and her support for him. Here’s what happened when he asked her if she would vote for Hillary Clinton, if Clinton won the primaries:

Sarandon: I don’t know. I’m going to see what happens.
Hayes: Really?
Sarandon: Really.
[…]
Sarandon: Some people feel that Donald Trump will bring the revolution immediately if he gets in, things will really explode.”

Debra Messing, best known for starring in “Will & Grace,” and of course, a member of the tribe, watched the interview and disagreed vehemently. So, as many celebs do nowadays, she took her feelings to Twitter.

This is how she started:

For non-twitter users: “Susan Sarandon muses that Trump presidency would be better for the country than Hillary. Wonder if she’d say that if she were poor, gay, Muslim or immigrant.”

Jamie Lee Curtis also echoed Messing:

But for Messing, one tweet wasn’t enough:

Sarandon was fast to tweet back:

Messing insisted:

We thought it was over, but the next day Sarandon replied to Messing with these two tweets:

But Messing wasn’t ready to back down, replying in three parts:

Sarandon was not ready to make any concessions:

Despite attacks from Bernie Bros and others, Messing stood her ground, sharpening her arguments with 125 character tweets and retweets. She responded to her detractors, proving that sometimes refusing to back down is more important than not feeding the trolls:

Messing’s point remained. She had no intention of swaying voters to vote for her candidate (Messing is a Hillary supporter), she didn’t in any way want to ignore the importance of independent voters, or to deny the fact that it might be easier to sway a certain type of Republican voter to vote for Bernie (these were all points her detractors tweeted at her).

What she wanted from Bernie supporters, including high profile ones like Sarandon herself, is to say that if (if!) Hillary wins the nomination, they will do everything they can to stop Trump from getting in the White House. And that means voting for her in the General Election. A hypothetical concession that a significant number of Bernie supporters(33% of them, according to a Wall Street Journal poll) claim they’re not willing to make.

For Sarandon, a former fervent Nader supporter, that concession may not be in the cards. She might, like the Bernie Or Bust movement, put in a blank ballot or refuse to participate at all. But for Messing and many Democrats, for who the stakes are so high, that feels stupid and selfish.

That sense is especially heightened today, after Trump claimed that women who get abortions should be “punished in some way.”

One thing is for sure. This twitter Celeb debate was much more civilized than any of the GOP debates.

Another potential Jewish president we can get behind!

Lior Zaltzman was the Forward’s Digital Fellow. Follow her on twitter @liorca.

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